Landed when the plane touched down, and yes in response to him asking if Verity had picked her up. She had hoped she could get away with that, at least for this evening. She wanted to feel like she was here, feet solidly on this once-familiar ground, before the fishing-line tug of home pulled at her again.
“Call your father,” Verity said, unimpressed. “He’ll be worried about you.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Verity just kept looking at her, so Sorrow gave in. “Fine. Fine! I’ll call.”
Verity assured her the only place on the property she would get a cell signal was the end of the driveway, so Sorrow fetched her phone and went outside. The farmhouse had a landline now—they had never had a phone when she was a kid—but there was no way she was having a conversation with her father where Verity and Grandma could overhear.
The sun had set, and the sky was streaked with wispy clouds lit from below in hues of pink and orange and red, a brilliant palette above the shadowed humps of the mountains. The evening was warm, but it would cool off overnight. The green closed around Sorrow as she started down the driveway between the rows of sugar maples. Like all the trees on the farm, the maples were old, so old they should have stopped producing syrup long ago, but somehow they endured.
In the autumn the maples would turn a brilliant blazing red, but for now they were as green as everything else in the valley, a deep, deep green fading into black with the encroaching twilight. Sorrow felt a nervous flutter in her chest thinking about how dark it would be when the last sunlight was gone. It was never dark in Miami, not even when a storm knocked out the power, and it was never quiet.
She stopped at the bottom of the driveway to check her phone. No service. Took a few more steps, past the fence, right up to the edge of the asphalt. The road smelled of tar and oil, still radiating the heat of the day. There, at last, a weak signal appeared. Sorrow called her father.
Dad answered right away. “Sorrow! I was just about to call you.”
He might have been telling the truth, or he might have been just about to call the same way he was just about to stop traveling so much for work, or just about to plan a trip with Sorrow to visit her stepsister, Andi, at Stanford. During one of the rare times when Dad and Sonia’s recent coldness had erupted into yelling, Sonia had shouted, “You’re never where you need to be! You’re never here!” Sorrow, hiding in her room and pretending to do homework, had felt a crushing mix of embarrassment and anger and hurt. He was her dad, and he wasn’t a bad person, but Sonia was his wife, and she was right, and Sorrow hated knowing she was right almost as much as she hated all of the petty disappointments.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m here,” Sorrow said. “At the farm. I made it just fine.”
“Good. That’s good.”
A pause. The television was on in the background: the gentle roar of commentators speaking over a cheering crowd, a sound so familiar Sorrow felt a pang of homesickness. Phillies hosting the Giants at home. Sorrow strained to hear, but if Sonia was home, she wasn’t saying anything—and Sonia wouldn’t be watching a Phillies game without saying anything, usually several anythings, many of which could not be repeated in polite company. A year ago it would have been a Saturday night date for Sorrow and Sonia, to watch the game and eat takeout and curse the players for their many mistakes.
But by the time the season had started this year, Sorrow had been so wrapped up in her own worries she hadn’t noticed until it was too late that Sonia hadn’t said a word about spring training or games in months. The few times she had wanted to approach Sonia with takeout menus on game night, she had stopped herself, cringing with uncertainty. She didn’t know if they did that anymore. Sonia didn’t make a point of being home for games. She didn’t offer up tickets as a way to have a girls’ night when Dad was out of town. Everything had changed, and neither of them had said a single word about it.
“So everything is okay?” Dad asked. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing,” Sorrow said. “Just dinner. I haven’t even unpacked. I’ve only been here a couple hours.”
“Well, I know, but—it’s okay?”
“It’s fine,” Sorrow said. “Why wouldn’t it be fine? I’m in Vermont, not Syria.”
“Sorrow.”
Sorrow squirmed at the scolding note in his voice. “Really. It’s fine.”
“And how’s—”
Don’t ask, Sorrow thought urgently. Don’t ask.
“How’s your mother doing?”
“She’s doing great,” Sorrow said, a shade too loud. “Really good. Everything looks great around here. You wouldn’t believe the renovations they’ve done. It looks like something out of a magazine.”
She winced, fully aware she was laying it on thick and Dad would see right through it. But it wasn’t just that he was asking. It was the way he was asking: cautiously, almost hopefully, like he was fully expecting Sorrow to beg to come home tomorrow.
“You’ll have to send me pictures,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” Sorrow said. “Where’s Sonia? Is she there?”
“She’s out at dinner with friends,” Dad said.
“Oh. Okay. Sounds fun.” Sorrow wanted to believe Sonia was out with her friends. She didn’t want to think Dad was covering up that she had gone to stay with her sister, finally giving up the happy-couple pretense now that Sorrow and Andi were away. She wanted to believe it so desperately it hurt, but she didn’t dare ask for fear of what her father’s answer would be. “Tell her I said hi.”
“You should call her tomorrow,” Dad said.
“Yeah.”
“And let me know right away if there are any problems.”
“Really, Dad?” Sorrow said, exasperated. “Come on. There aren’t going to be any problems. It’s going to be fine.”
“But if you need anything—”
“I know! I know.” Sorrow craned her head to look up at the sky. “I’ve got to get back in to help clean up.”
“Okay. Enjoy your visit, sweetie. I love you.”
“Yeah. Dad, do you—”
The words caught behind Sorrow’s teeth.
Do you even remember her? That’s what she wanted to ask. It was unfair. It was the wrong time. She’d spent three months pushing her father and his concern away; she couldn’t spring the past on him now like none of that had happened, however much she needed to know: Do you remember Patience? Am I allowed to talk about her? Verity won’t even say her name. We’ve talked about a hundred things and she hasn’t once said her name.
The words were there, behind her lips and on her tongue, but she said nothing.
“Sorrow? What is it?”
It wasn’t her father she wanted to ask anyway.
“Nothing,” she said. “Love you too. Talk to you later, okay?”
They exchanged good-byes and good nights, and Sorrow stared at her phone until her father’s picture blinked away.