“Well, he shouldn’t feel guilty. And neither should you.”
“I’m twelve. My mom is gone and my dad’s a zombie. I don’t feel guilty about anything.”
“Good. I really don’t want you to feel bad about the fact I’m here. I want to be here.”
“So it really isn’t a boy?”
“It really isn’t a boy. Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know. Mom had secrets. Dad has secrets. Why wouldn’t you have secrets?”
I stared at my sister, but Paige was on her knees, looking at the earth and not at me. “What do you mean?”
“About what?”
“Secrets. How do you know either of our parents had secrets?”
Paige took the trowel with both hands as if it were a spike and plunged it as hard as she could into the soil. “Die, Vampire!” she yelled. “Die!”
“I’m serious, Paige.”
Still she didn’t glance up from the ground. “Got him. The world of the undead just got a little smaller.”
“How do you know they had secrets?”
“Because sometimes when I’d be playing Snake on Mom’s phone, it would ring. We’d be in the car. She’d take the phone and tell whoever was calling that she couldn’t talk.”
“Maybe Mom was just being a good driver.”
“She took calls from Dad or Marilyn when we were on roads that actually had cell service.”
“Who were they from—the calls Mom wouldn’t take? Any idea?”
She pulled out the trowel and studied it as if she were inspecting it for blood. “I don’t know.”
“The same number?”
“I told you, I was usually playing Snake. I didn’t check. I don’t think I even know how to check.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“Sometimes I did. She’d say it was nothing. She’d say it wasn’t worth turning off the radio. She’d say she’d call them back.”
“But it could have been just a client or something. Or her hairdresser.”
“She took those calls. At least usually she did—like when she was building a ski house in Sugarbush or something.”
“And this was during the last three years,” I murmured, thinking aloud as much as I was speaking with my sister.
“It was. I mean, we didn’t even have cell service in a lot of this area four years ago,” she said. “So, yeah, it was this summer. It was this spring.”
I thought about the detective and wished that I would simply trust Gavin. There was no reason to leap to the conclusion that some of the calls were from him and, thus, he had lied to me about when he and my mother had lost touch. But this was where my mind had wandered. And yet I was drawn to him, too: I wasn’t sure any of the boys or younger men I had dated had left me with the sort of exquisite longing I felt as I anticipated Montreal. I could try and convince myself that I was seeing him because I was the hunter on the scent of details he might not otherwise share about my mother’s disappearance, but I knew in my heart—truly, in my heart—that there was more to it than that.
“And Dad?” I asked finally. “What were his secrets?”
Paige had found another beet, this one a giant the size of a peony, and she rolled it along the grass as if it were a bowling ball. “A perfect strike—no bumpers needed!”
“Paige, you just said you think Dad had secrets,” I repeated. “What were you talking about? Give me an example.”
“I can’t.”
“Then why would you say he did?” I snapped.
“Don’t get all bitchcakes with me—”
“And where did you hear that word? You’re too young to use it!”
“I probably learned it from you. And as Dad says, words are just words. Some are better than others, but only because they are better at explaining what you mean.”
“Dad was in professor mode when he said that. Not dad mode. You’re too young to say bitchcakes.”
“I’m in seventh grade. We say a lot worse. I could have called you a dick.”
“Paige!”
“You’re not my mom.”
I thought my head was going to explode and took a deep breath to calm myself. “I’m as close as it gets,” I said finally. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. You can’t use words like that, just like you can’t smoke cigarettes or drink beer.”
Paige didn’t say anything in response. She rooted around and found a much smaller beet, this one the size of a grape. “We did a terrible job harvesting these,” she said, holding the beet in her hand. For a moment I thought she was going to apologize. But then she continued, “Mom is in heaven going bitchcakes over the waste.” For a split second we both waited, the air between us charged, but when Paige looked up, her eyes were wide and her smile was mischievous. I couldn’t help but laugh. Then she put the beet in the palm of her left hand and flicked it at me with her right middle finger. She missed, but it was close—a testimony, I thought, to what an incredible athlete my kid sister was.