Alan laughs. “Yeah, I’ll be over in a few.”
“Cool.” I hang up and call Mabel. “I know you’re probably busy,” I tell her, “but Alan’s coming over to hang out if you want to join us. Hope will be here.”
“Sounds awesome,” she says. “I’ll bring wine.”
“Where you gonna get wine?”
“Um, have you met my dad? We’ve got it stockpiled in the garage.”
A half hour later, Alan, Mabel, and I are sitting around the kitchen table, drinking wine and eating pumpkin cheesecake. Well, Alan and I are eating the cake. Mabel had a tiny slice and claimed to be full. Hope’s in her swing in the middle of the kitchen.
“No more updates on the journal search?” Mabel asks, pouring herself a second glass.
I shake my head.
“That’s ’cause they don’t exist,” she says.
“I’d have to agree,” Alan says through a mouthful of cake. “Where the hell did you get this cake from, anyway? It’s glorious.”
“A friend,” I say. “But you’re wrong—the journals are out there.”
“You know, Ry,” Alan says, his voice taking on a tone of I’m about to say something genius, so listen up. “There’s this song by Eminem and Rihanna called ‘Love the Way You Lie.’ It’s about domestic abuse, so not entirely applicable here, but there’s this line where Eminem says he can’t tell you what it really is. All he can do is tell you what it feels like.”
I wait for him to start making sense. “And?”
“That’s you, man. I think you’re living a completely different version of Meg’s life and death than the rest of us are. But it’s real to you, because that’s how it feels.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Think about it—you’re convinced there are two other journals that hold magical answers to everything.”
“Not everything—just to tell me how to be a better father.” Is that really too much to ask?
“Wait—you’re trying to find the journals so you can be a better dad?”
I nod.
“But how? I mean, why? I mean…huh?”
I tell them how I know Hope hates me, and how I attempted to find Michael but failed miserably, and how I was hoping Meg would have left clues that would make this whole parenting thing click.
“For a smart guy, Ryden,” Alan says, “you’re being pretty moronic.”
“Dude. Not cool.”
“Don’t you think the way to do a good job with Hope is to forget all this other stuff and just work on being a good dad?” He holds up his bracelet. “What would Sandra Oh do, man? You’re focusing on the wrong thing.”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing!” I down half the glass of wine in one gigantic swallow. “The checklists. They mean something. I don’t know why you’re ignoring them.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible it was a note Meg wrote to remind herself of something? Or, like Mabel says, even if she did plan to leave behind two other books for us to find, that she got too sick to finish whatever it was she meant to do? Maybe that’s the real truth.”
I gulp the rest of my wine and pour more. “I knew her. I know she left those journals for us. It’s the least we can do to find them.”
“Just like you know you’re responsible for her death?” Mabel asks, slurring her words a little.
I glare at her. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
“Wait, what?” Alan asks, palms braced on the table.
“Oh, you didn’t know?” Mabel says. “Ryden is convinced he killed Meg and ruined all our lives because he got her pregnant.”
“That is such bullshit, man. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Your version is warped. You made her life better for that last year, not worse.”
“Oh, totally,” Mabel says. “Hey, Alan, remember how she got you to convince our parents to let her go out with Ryden in the first place? Didn’t you get them to admit it would be good for her to do some normal high school stuff, and when they finally said yes, you casually slipped it in that it wasn’t you she’d be doing that normal high school stuff with but Ryden?”
Alan laughs. “How badass was that?! That was some John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim shit right there.”
“Most badass Korean ever,” Mabel says, clinking glasses with him.
I really don’t feel the need to join this conversation. I’ve heard this story before, and none of it matters now anyway. But Mabel and Alan don’t seem to notice. They’re drunk and haven’t seen each other in a while apart from in passing at school, and they happily tra-la-la on their journey down memory lane.
I tune them out and focus on the wine in my glass. Red wine is totally a misnomer. It’s not red. It’s more like crimson. No, maroon. Or burgundy. Wait, isn’t Burgundy a kind of wine? Is that what Ron Burgundy is named after? There are little swirly shapes floating in the top of the wine from the grease in my ChapStick. It looks like a solar system. Not our solar system. A different one.
“Ryden!”
I snap out of it and blink at Mabel. I think I’m drunk. “What?”