Heartbroken (23 page)

“I guess I am.”

“Well, congratulations, dear,” Birdie said. “It must feel good to have
finally
found your calling.”

She saw that tentative smile on Kate’s face fade, and she felt a rush of regret.

“What type of book is it?”

“It’s a novel,” said Kate. “About family. Caroline left me some journals that belonged to her and to Grandmother Lana. The journals—inspired me.”

“You’ve written about
our
family?” asked Birdie. She felt something akin to horror.

“No,” said Kate quickly, lifting a palm. “No, not about us. Not exactly.”

Birdie found that she couldn’t say more. She couldn’t bring herself
to ask more about what Kate had written, or what the advance had been, or any of the things an excited and proud parent would ask. She
was
excited for Kate, and proud. Wasn’t she? She didn’t even know why, but all she wanted to do was take her leave.

“Well,” said Birdie after an awkward moment of silence passed between them. “I’ll go see to the boat.”

“You do that,” said Kate.

Kate looked more like Caroline than she did like Birdie, which made an odd kind of sense, since Kate had always preferred her aunt’s company to her mother’s. She was pretty the way Caroline was, with an upturned nose and pink cheeks, full lips. Birdie searched for something else to say. What would Caroline have said? Something gushing and effusive, something kind. But Birdie found herself, as usual, lost to bridge the distance she felt between herself and her children. Her cup sat untouched on the tray.

Kate turned her gaze back from the window. “Call if you need help,” she said.

“Why would I need your help?” Birdie said. She got up quickly and pulled on her jacket. She hadn’t meant it the way it came out. She’d meant that she could handle it, as she had since she was a child. And just because she was older, she was no less capable than she’d been once. But the words, the sharp tone, the misunderstood meaning all hung in the air between them, and she wouldn’t clarify. She shouldn’t have to.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Kate.

Her daughter turned away again, picked up a magazine, and started flipping through the pages. Birdie hastened from the room.

chapter seventeen

E
mily remembered that both visits had been around this time of year, in the waning days of summer when it was still hot, before the leaves started to turn. As a girl, she’d always suffered motion sickness. She was queasy in the backseat, even with all the windows open and the clean air rushing through. She remembered vomiting in the car.

But that wasn’t what she remembered most. Most of all, she remembered him and the way her mother was someone all new when he was with them. When he was around, her mother smiled and laughed like a girl. He wore a shiny gold ring on his left hand, and a thick gold bracelet. He didn’t smell like the other men she knew, who all smelled like cigarettes and booze. He smelled like perfume.
That’s the smell of money, honey
, her mother told her when she mentioned it.
Lots and lots of money
.

His skin was always richly tanned, and his eyes were a smiling, sparkling sea green.
Where’s my little Em?
he’d call, and she’d run to him. He’d lift Emily high in the air as if she weighed nothing, and then he’d hold her tight. How old was she when she last saw him? The last time he took her there? Maybe she was four or five? And that last time, something happened. Something awful. She couldn’t remember quite what—there were raised voices, the sound of something thrown and shattered. After that, she never saw her father again.
He doesn’t want us, Emily
, her mother told her.
He never wants to see us again
.

Since Emily never heard another word from him, not another phone call, no cards or gifts, she had no reason not to believe that. He was the sandman, appearing to her as a bright and silvery memory right before she’d fall asleep. Just a dream she had.

There were other men in her mother’s life. They were always fine. Emily didn’t have any horror stories to tell about abuse. But they were stick figures that came and went, leaving behind nothing except a few awkward snapshots and cheap dolls she hadn’t wanted in the first place.

“We have to get rid of the car,” said Dean.

They’d been driving for so long. The motel where they’d left Brad was in New Jersey somewhere. They had just entered a town called The Hollows, where they’d stopped to get gas, and food at a McDonald’s drive-through.

“They’ll be looking for it,” he added.

She’d already thought of this but hadn’t said anything. She didn’t want to steal a car, which was what they’d have to do if they wanted to keep running. And wasn’t there part of her that was hoping they’d get caught, that all of this would soon be over? She’d thought the drive-through girl had looked at them oddly. She wondered if there was some kind of bulletin out. But then she realized that the girl must have been looking at her swollen jaw. She’d covered it self-consciously with her hand, and the girl looked away.

Dean pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I saw a nice one back there.”

“No,” she said. “Keep driving. If we steal a car from someone’s house, they’ll report it. Then the police will be looking for that car. They’ll find the Mustang nearby, and they’ll know it was us. Better to steal one from a parking lot somewhere. Right?”

She thought it was logical, but Dean looked at her uncertainly. What did she know about stealing cars? Or what the police would be looking for?

On the radio, they heard that the police didn’t know who had robbed the Blue Hen and killed the young employee, leaving the owner in critical condition. The security camera had captured two masked men entering the back door and leaving, carrying a young woman from the restaurant. They thought she was a hostage. Carol obviously hadn’t emerged from her coma to tell them differently. And Angelo wouldn’t be telling anyone anything ever again.

Dean kept driving. Since the motel, he’d been pliant. But he was starting to seem edgy and jittery. He chewed mercilessly on his thumbnail while he drove. “How much farther?” he asked.

Emily glanced at the navigation computer that sat on the dash between them, another bizarre gift from Dean. She had no idea where it had come from, but it was new, in its box. So she’d kept it in her car, in case she ever needed it. She really hadn’t thought she would—she never went anywhere she hadn’t been a hundred times before. But it was coming in handy now.

“Not far,” she said.

For many years, she told anyone who asked about her father that he was dead. He’d died in a car accident when she was little, she’d say. She didn’t even remember him. People, especially adults, found that so sad. She got a lot of attention and sympathy, which she enjoyed. The truth was that her mother had an affair with a married man. Emily was the product of that affair. When his wife found out, there was a terrible drama. To save his marriage, he had to promise never to see them again. He’d kept his promise. That was what Emily had pieced together from the little her mother would tell her, from overheard conversations between her mother and her aunt. She had his last name, different from her mother’s.

When she was thirteen, she’d found a check on her mother’s dresser. It was written in the amount of five hundred dollars; at the top of it were his name and address. The information was all so black-and-white, printed words on a slip of paper. He was real, a real man with a checking account. She had always thought of him as
existing someplace unreachable and so far away. She never imagined him nearby, living a real life.

She was nodding against the window when she smelled smoke and gasoline. She sat up. This had happened before. A moment later, the car started to stutter, then rattled to silence.

“Fuck!” yelled Dean. “Fuck me!”

He steered the rolling car toward the side of the road, where it drifted to a halt. Dean tried the ignition a couple of times, and a terrible grinding sound came from the engine. He popped the hood, and Emily watched big plumes of black smoke billow into the sky. They got out of the car, coughing. Dean covered his mouth and leaned over the hood, cursing. Neither one of them knew anything about cars, but only Emily seemed to realize that.

After a few minutes of staring pointlessly into the engine compartment, Dean came away coughing harder. It was dark, with only the dim light from a streetlamp up the deserted road a bit. There was nothing around them but trees. An old mailbox tilted up a bit at the end of someone’s long driveway.

“Now what?” Dean said. His voice echoed in the quiet night, and something in the bushes moved. Emily figured he’d get angry with her, start yelling like he usually did when things went wrong. She braced herself for it, but when she glanced at him, he looked as lost and desperate as she felt.

“Maybe this is it. We’re done. We have to turn ourselves in,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it: The words flew out.

“No,” he said softly. “I can’t.”

He sank down on the grass by the side of the road and put his head in his hands. She sat beside him, rested her head on his shoulder. They weren’t going to make it to the place they were headed. It didn’t exist. Like everything else she’d ever wanted, it was too far away for her to ever touch. She thought they could go there, and hide through the winter. The idea of that, that she could visit and be with Dean, live there, just the two of them even for a short time, filled her
with a luminous joy. Everything good and right lived in that place. Even people who weren’t happy, like her mother, were happy there.

“What do we do now?” asked Dean.

She was about to say she didn’t know when she heard a car approaching. Without thinking, she moved into the road. Dean leaned into the car. She saw him grab the bag with the money and the larger one with all the supplies. He had the gun at his waist.

Emily watched the headlights draw closer and started waving her arms. Dean leaned into the car one more time, then moved out of sight.

It was as if they’d done this before, even though she didn’t have a plan. She’d pulled back her hair, managed to get the rest of the blood out from beneath her nails. She knew she looked young and clean-scrubbed, except for the bruise on her face. Who wouldn’t stop for a stranded girl with a broken-down car on a dark stretch of road?

The other vehicle, a beefy maroon SUV, came to a halt, and she ran toward it. She couldn’t see who was in the driver’s seat, and she had no idea what would happen next. She didn’t know what she would say when she reached the car. It seemed to Emily that some moments were an eternity; they stretched and yawned with possibilities. And something about that simultaneously terrified and thrilled her.

chapter eighteen

M
other and I shared something that she didn’t share with Birdie or Gene. Even though it wasn’t my fault, or hers, I think Birdie and maybe Gene, too, hated me for it a little bit. There was something kindred between us, something beyond even the mother-daughter bond. It’s why she left her journals to me. I think she wanted me to know her as a person, as Lana, a young woman who made choices and mistakes, not just as my mother. She wanted me to know about her, her joys and sorrows, her failures and successes. You can’t really know your mother that way until you’re grown, maybe not until she’s gone
.

You’re the closest thing I have to a daughter, Kate. That’s why I am leaving my journals and hers to you. I know that you, and maybe you alone, can understand and appreciate the things written here. I know you won’t judge me—or your grandmother. You told me that it was your worst nightmare to think you’d one day be like Birdie. You could never, ever be that. You’re nothing like her. You’re not like your father much, either. In fact, I think you’re the perfect product of their incompatibility. Somehow, darling, you’re the very best of both of them
.

Since Kate had arrived at the island with the girls, Caroline’s words had been alive in her mind. It was the first time she’d been back here since completing her novel, and she was seeing the place with fresh eyes, with the eyes of an adult and not a child.

She’d been living inside the pages of Lana’s and Caroline’s journals, and the island seemed electric with their recorded memories.
Their words mingled with Kate’s own recollections of all her summers spent here. The island was alive in a way it never had been.

At this point, Kate knew more about her mother’s sanctuary than Birdie did. This thought brought a mingling of emotions—sadness, fear, and a little bit of glee.

She’d wanted to share it all with her mother, even though she knew it wouldn’t be easy. Sitting there, with a pot of tea between them, it seemed like the perfect time to tell her: about Caroline’s and Lana’s journals, about everything written there and how it had inspired Kate in so many ways. In fact, she had brought the journals to the island with the intention of giving them to her mother. But Birdie had practically fled from Kate’s news. The moment, uncomfortable and not at all what she had hoped, had passed.

Birdie left the girls with specific instructions on how to prepare dinner. And now Kate listed the rules for them to follow while she and Birdie were across the channel:
Clean as you go along. Don’t leave dishes in the sink before dinner begins. Make sure the lettuce doesn’t have any grit in it. Turn off the oven as soon as the ham is done. No smoking in the house, Lulu
. She’d seen Lulu smoking down by the shore earlier and was glad to note that Chelsea had not been smoking with her.

If it were up to Kate, the girls would come to Cross Island. But Birdie didn’t think children should socialize with adults. And Kate could tell that Lulu was already regretting coming along.

“I thought you said there was cell service,” she said to Kate. Lulu was wearing an apron Birdie had insisted she wear; it was too big for her and covered in a hideous floral pattern. It made Lulu look like the child she actually was.