She grabs the door handle. “Couldn’t you just call her and ask?”
I shake my head as Ariel pulls open the door. Sun-blinded, I blink until my vision returns to normal. Nearly everyone in the bar is staring at us, and none of them seem particularly friendly. Except my mother, who smiles at me from behind the bar as if she’s been expecting me all along. “Look what the cat dragged in.” She closes the tap on the pitcher of beer she’s pouring. “Guys, this is my baby girl.”
Chapter 21
Some of the men are missing teeth, and their eyes are hungry. I am a drop of honey in a room of ants. An eight-year-old girl in a room of Franks. The undercurrent of menace pushes me backward against Ariel. I wonder if it’s just my imagination until I realize that she’s trembling, too.
Mom comes out from behind the bar. “Surprised to see you,” she says, smoothing my hair away from my face as if it’s just us. Over her shoulder a man with a dirty-blond ponytail shot through with gray leers at us as he talks to the guy at the bar beside him. “But nice. I’ve missed you.”
“Can we, um—can we go outside?” I ask.
Her dark eyebrows lift—maybe because I don’t tell her I’ve missed her, too—but she calls out to the giant of a man behind the bar that she’s going out for a smoke break. Back outside, the Florida sunshine floods my dark corners, making me feel more at ease.
“In the car if you need me.” The parking-lot gravel crunches beneath Ariel’s sneakers as she leaves us to talk.
“So my court date is coming up.” Mom props herself against an older red Hyundai and taps a cigarette from the pack in her hip pocket. “I’m going to be honest, Callie. I don’t want to go to jail. I’ve been laying low, but once I miss my date—” She takes a drag off her Marlboro.
“I’m ready,” I say. “We can go now.”
“Really?” Her face is luminous and in it I catch a glimpse of the Veronica Quinn she used to be. Her excitement bubbles out of her in a happy laugh and I feel lighter than I have in days. “Okay, we’ve got a car.” She pats the Elantra. “Got a good deal on it from Tony, but it’s left me cash-strapped.”
I show her the roll of bills. “I’ve got my savings from the gift shop.”
“That’s my girl. Think it’s enough to get us to Oregon?”
A knot creeps into my throat. “Oregon?”
“Yeah.” She paces and smokes. “I was thinking about how beautiful it was there, remember? And there are so many little hideaway towns tucked along the coastline.”
I only have one outstanding memory of Oregon. “What about Colorado?”
“Well, you’re never going to believe it, but I caught up with Frank,” she says. “Remember him? I found him on the Internet and gave him a call. So I was thinking if we were in Oregon maybe—”
“No.” The word comes out more forcefully than I anticipated and her eyes reduce to slits. Except for my stray complaint the last time, when we were packing to leave Illinois, I’ve never offered an opinion. Never disagreed. But no matter how messed up things are here in Tarpon Springs, they’re infinitely better than going back to Frank.
“We’re going to Oregon,” she says with a familiar note of finality. “We had it good there, Callie. You loved Frank.”
“No, Mom, I didn’t.”
“Of course you did. You were young, so maybe you don’t remember—”
“I remember everything.” I press the rubber-banded roll of money into her hand. “You can have it all, but I’m not going.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Frank molested me.”
Her laugh is short, sharp, and dismissive. I can hear the echo of his voice in my head, reminding me that she won’t believe. “Now you’re just talking crazy. I get it. You don’t want to go to Oregon, but you don’t have to make up—”
“I’m not.”
The smile slips from her lips. “Callie—”
“It’s true, Mom. Sometimes when you were asleep or at work, he would come to my room—”
“No.” She shakes her head and I hear Frank whisper I told you so. “That can’t be right.”
“He would take off my nightgown.” My voice is shaking. My hands are shaking. I close my eyes and think of Alex, pacing angrily at the side of the highway as I told him this truth. It gives me the courage I need to keep talking. Tears stream down my cheeks and curl under the edge of my chin, trickling down my neck. “You remember the one with Hello Kitty on the front? And he would put his fingers—”
“Callie, stop it!” She clamps her hands over her ears, as if silencing me will block out the truth. Frank is laughing his phlegmy laugh. I told you so.
I wipe my face on the bottom of my T-shirt. “You know what? You’re never going to change. You’ll spend the rest of your life running away from reality and making one bad decision after another. Believe me or don’t, but Frank hurt me, Mom, in a way no little girl should ever be hurt. And you let him.”
“I didn’t know.” Her eyes are glazed with tears, her voice husky with remorse. “Callie, you have to believe me. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, but you should have.”
I look over at the primer-freckled Porsche where Ariel is waiting and watching. Even from a distance I can see the concern on her face. For me. Someone she barely knows. This is what good people do for each other. Unless she gets help, my mother will never be that kind of good.
“We won’t go to Oregon.” There’s desperation in the way she clutches at my hands. As if a change in destination will solve everything. “You can pick the place this time.”
“I love you, Mom.” I give her hands a gentle squeeze and then I let go. “But I’m going home.”
I don’t look back as I walk to Ariel’s car because I’m afraid if I do, the guilt will send me running back to my mother. Or, worse, I’ll turn around and she’ll already be gone. I don’t look back because if I never see her again, I want to remember her with tears in her eyes. Feeling something for me.
Sadness spreads inside me, organ to organ, cell to cell, until it feels as if I’m made of pain. It hurts to think. It hurts to breathe. Ariel asks only where I want her to take me and even giving her Greg’s address—my address—is painful. But I don’t cry anymore. I’m finished.
The driveway is still empty when she drops me off, and at first I wonder why Greg and Phoebe have been away so long, but then I realize I’ve only been gone a little more than an hour. Not long enough for anyone to notice I was missing. Not long enough to even be missing.
Ariel lifts my baggage from the truck. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” I was so certain I’d be leaving Tarpon Springs today that I have no backup plan. “I’d have been lost without you today. Thank you.”
“No problem.” She gets in the Porsche and rolls down the window. “Hey, have you thought anymore about the job?”
Only now do I realize that I walked away from the gift shop in the middle of my shift. Even though I’m pretty sure Theo secretly wants to fire me, he’ll probably take me back if I show up for work tomorrow morning. I think it’s time to let us both off the hook. “I’ll take it.”
“Yes!” Ariel’s grin is huge as she reaches up for a high five. “Stop by after the holidays and I’ll teach you everything you need to know about selling books, okay?”
When she’s gone, I return everything to where it belongs—Phoebe’s suitcase included—until there’s no evidence that I ever left, and get in my bed. A second later, I nearly jump out of my skin when the screen door slams.
“Oh, thank God.” Kat is standing beside me. The grit in my eyes and the alarm clock on the dresser behind her tell me I’ve been in bed longer than a second. She crawls in beside me. “I’ve texted you eleven billion times and you didn’t answer. I’ve been crazy worried.”
“I’m sorry. I just—there was something I needed to do.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Right away I feel bad because I know Kat wants me to be the kind of friend who confides in her. “I mean, I do, but right now it’s too hard. Give me some time?”