“Your ruffle dress,” she said, just as I saw the polka-dot fabric.
I put it together. “You’re the coffee girl? That was you?”
“You didn’t recognize me that day,” Augusta said. “I’ve changed a lot.”
Hadn’t we all?
“But I recognized you,” she went on. “I was just coming over to say hi when Parker knocked me down. And then you were helping me up and giving me your dress. Sweet as ever. I thought about saying something then, but I was so late. I googled you later to find a way to bring your dress back, and I saw the notice about the art show.”
“Did you make it to the airport?” I asked.
Augusta nodded and held up a sparkly engagement ring. “I did.” Then she turned back to my dad and Lucinda. “I was going to write you a letter to set things straight. And I really just came here tonight to say hi to Sadie and support her show. But then I wound up eavesdropping … and I couldn’t resist jumping in.”
Augusta turned back to me. “Parker framed you for it, huh?”
I nodded. “They kicked me out of school.”
“I’m so sorry,” Augusta said. “I had no idea. After we left, my parents shielded me from every single thing related to this place.”
“Understandably,” I said.
“Anyway,” Augusta said, turning back with false brightness to the slack-jawed pair of my father and Lucinda. “I couldn’t help but overhear Sadie saying that you never believe her. But here’s a little pro tip from somebody who knows both of your daughters pretty well. If you have a choice between Parker and Sadie? Pick Sadie—every time.”
Twenty-Seven
WAS IT A big cathartic moment when my family realized they’d been wrong all along only to burst into tears of regret and beg me for forgiveness?
Uh, no.
We never even got to see Parker’s reaction because when we looked over, she had taken off—slipped her disgraced and guilty self off into the night before ever having to own up to anything.
And then Lucinda promptly got the vapors and asked my dad to take her home. I wound up stuck outside my own art show holding up the near-to-fainting Lucinda as we waited for my dad to bring the car around.
There were no apologies. There was no Greek chorus of remorse.
But did it feel nice to have my name cleared at last?
It did. Too little and way too late—but nice, all the same.
Plus, I got my favorite polka-dot wrap dress back.
And in fact, Augusta had barely left to go into the show when Mr. and Mrs. Kim showed up with the most enormous, elegant, fuchsia-colored potted orchid I’d ever seen. Mrs. Kim wanted to hand it to me, but my arms were busy holding up my evil stepmother, so she wound up setting it lovingly at my feet.
“What’s wrong with Martha Stewart?” Mr. Kim asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“Shouldn’t you be inside?” Mrs. Kim asked.
“That’s an even longer story.”
“You’ve worked hard,” Mrs. Kim said.
“We are very proud of you,” Mr. Kim said.
“You don’t have to go in,” I said to them. “Just coming by is more than enough.”
But Mr. Kim shook his head. “We want you to win.”
“I have no hope of winning,” I said.
“We’ll see about that,” Mr. Kim said, and they went in anyway.
My father showed up with the car then, and I thought that would be it: car doors slamming, red taillights in the sudden distance, me left standing on the sidewalk alone. But to my dad’s credit, after he helped Lucinda get settled in the passenger seat, he turned back to me and lingered for a minute—offering a little moment of closure.
“Is it true? About you blaming me?” I asked. “Or was Parker lying?”
My dad looked down at the sidewalk as he said, “I don’t think she was lying.”
“You don’t think she was?”
“I did say all that stuff once,” he said. “To Lucinda. Late at night. I was horrified to hear the words coming out of my mouth. I think I hoped that saying them might get rid of them. But I guess it just gave them a different life.”
“I guess it did,” I said.
“I remember worrying afterward that you might have overheard us,” my dad said. “So I went to check your room. But you were fast asleep. I didn’t think to check on Parker.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Mom?”
“I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”
“But you blamed me.”
“That was my problem. I knew it was wrong. I knew it wasn’t fair. That’s why I married Lucinda so fast. I knew I was letting you down. I hated how quiet the house was. I wanted, honestly, as strange as it must sound … to find you another mother. I thought, Let’s hurry up and heal and get back on our feet.”
“You can’t replace mothers like appliances.”
“I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
“And now you’re stuck with Lucinda.”
“I actually like Lucinda.”
“I kind of do, too. Occasionally.”
Then I forced myself to ask: “Do you still blame me?”
My dad rested his hands on my shoulders. “Sweetheart … of course not.”
His voice sounded dismayed that I could even ask. But how could I not ask? “You did once.”
“I did once,” he confirmed, “yes—but I was…”—he searched for words to describe it and finally settled on—“crazed with grief.”
I looked down.
“I couldn’t even see straight,” he said. “I blamed everyone. You, yes. But your mom, too, for being so damned stubborn. And the doctor, for explaining her situation so casually that she could think putting the surgery off was even an option. I even blamed the Norman Rockwell museum. I had fantasies of driving to Massachusetts and burning the place down. I blamed her friends, her travel agent, and most of all—more than all of the rest of you put together—I blamed myself. How had I not insisted? How had I let her just ignore it? Knowing what I knew? Doing what I do for a living? I could have stopped her. She could still be here right now. Our lives could have been so different. Everything could so easily have been okay.”
I nodded. “She wasn’t really one to be bossed around, though.”
My dad laughed a little.
I went on. “You make it sound easy when you say you should have stopped her. But how would you have done that?”
He shook his head. “Stolen her keys? Tied her to the newel post? Kidnapped her for the surgery?”
“She wouldn’t have taken too kindly to any of that,” I said.
“And then we lost her,” he said, his voice going gravelly. “And I didn’t know how to go on.” He took my hand. “This isn’t an excuse,” he said then, “but it’s true. I couldn’t look at you without seeing her, too—getting flashes of the two of you dancing to oldies, or spraying me with the hose while you washed the car, or disco skating. I don’t know how to describe it, but my chest would seize up so bad I thought I might suffocate. It hurt so much, it scared me—and I was afraid to feel that pain. So I turned away.”
“I remember that,” I said. “You averting your eyes whenever you had to talk to me.”
My father nodded. “I was ashamed.”
Then I added, “You still do it. To this day.”
We’d been talking like this was all the distant past. But so much of it was still going on.