Letting Go (8 page)

“Anyway, in the morning,
Dad was already gone when she woke us up, fed Jamie the bottle, made me breakfast, and then took me to kindergarten. When it was time to go home in the afternoon, no one came for me. I waited and waited, the teacher tried calling my parents, but the phone was constantly busy. Finally, about two hours after the usual time, when she was about ready to call the police, our neighbor came for me.”

Harper
turned his head to look at her. His eyes were hooded, dark, and hurting with the distant memories, she thought. For a moment she regretted asking him.

“It was a good thing that was ages ago. There’s no way they would’ve let me go with her today when they’re so anal about safety.”

He fell silent. Isabelle pictured him in the classroom, the only one left, and the teacher impatiently calling his house. He must’ve felt awful. Deserted. How could anyone ever forget something like that? It must have left a mark on him, being abandoned at such an early age.

“Mrs. Hanks didn’t want to tell me anything on the way.
I’m not sure she even knew anything. I kept asking and she just griped about irresponsible parents and things like that. The fifteen-minute walk lasted like five hours with that crone. When we got home, Dad was all sorts of crazy, yelling into the phone about his wife gone missing. Jamie was howling in his playpen. Mrs. Hanks left me at the door to fend for myself.

Once Dad had called all their friends and family to see if anyone knew where Nora was, he finally realized that
Jamie had to eat. The poor kid probably starved all day long because no one knew when exactly Mom had left.”

“Didn’t she at least leave a message or something?”

“She did, but in his haste to find her, Dad didn’t check their bedroom carefully enough, so he only found it later that night.”

“Did the police try to find her?”

Harper shook his head. “It was just a few hours since she went missing; they wait for twenty-four hours before they start searching. But after Dad took care of Jamie as well as he could—he was never the hands-on type of a father—and put him to bed, he vanished into his bedroom, only to burst out again ten minutes later after finding her letter. It was short, as far as I can remember. I don’t know what it said, I couldn’t read her handwriting, but it must’ve been something along the lines of a ‘Dear John’ letter from the way Dad reacted. The phone calling started again. Only now it was full of ‘bitch this’ and ‘bitch that’.”

Harper
paused, staring at his hands, before he continued, “I think it was a few days before Dad calmed enough to go back to work and function somewhat normally.”

In the silence that followed,
Isabelle realized he never said what had happened to him in all this mess.

“Where were you? While
your dad took care of Jamie?”

“Playing with my Mack truck,” he smiled. “
That’s why I remember it was a rainy day, I couldn’t escape outside. Anyway, after Dad had gone to his bedroom, I raided the fridge, eating peanut butter from the jar for dinner that night.” He chuckled. “Just the smell of it makes me sick these days.”

“Wait, he didn’t give you any dinner?”
Isabelle asked, shocked. Even her father wasn’t that bad. Every evening, he’d come out of his study and check on her. Usually, she’d already prepared dinner for the both of them, but at least he made sure she ate. It wasn’t until years later that she realized he’d set an alarm clock on his desk to remind him when the time for dinner was, so he came out of the study and spent half an hour with her. Otherwise he would probably work well into the night without food or Isabelle ever crossing his mind. But at least he tried.

“He’d forgotten I existed.”

When he saw Isabelle’s appalled stare, he added, “Don’t think that the same wouldn’t have happened to Jamie if he hadn’t had his loud way of making himself noticed. He howled, he got fed; I didn’t, so I had to take care of myself. Dad wasn’t in his right mind.”

“Still, that’s awful,”
Isabelle whispered. Harper shrugged.

****

It was close to one in the morning when she started to get drowsy. Her body had been tired, but her brain couldn’t stop buzzing. So much had happened in one day, bad but also good things. She’d been anxious about this road trip but it was surprisingly revealing and even enjoyable. She’d gotten to know things about Harper that she never would have otherwise. Like that he was a food fanatic, that his humor sometimes had dark origins, that he liked her. She was beginning to feel he was a friend, although she was certain that he still kept tons of things from her. But she could be persistent and she’d wheedle them out of him eventually.

“I should
go and let you sleep,” he said when she yawned.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“A bit. I don’t sleep all that much.”

“How come?”

“I don’t need it. A few hours a night is enough.”

“What do you do the rest of the time?”

“Watch TV. Or read.” He was full of surprises.

“You must’ve read a lot of books then.”

“I’ve read some. I mostly re-read my favorites over and over.”

“Which are your favo
rites?”

“Stuff you’d find boring.” When he decided he didn’t want to reveal something he
could be very stubborn, Isabelle thought.

“By the way, what do you do?”

“As in a job?”

“Yeah,
Jamie never said and neither did you. I know it’s something with computers, but I don’t know what.”

“I’m a web designer.”

“Really? I didn’t expect that,” Isabelle said without thinking.

“Why not?”

She couldn’t tell him that she’d expected a more ‘manly’ job. She didn’t even know what sort of a job that would be. Designer seemed too artistic for the acerbic, sarcastic guy sitting next to her with his hands behind his head. But it explained why he was interested in art and why his comments about her paintings were spot on.

“I don’t know. You don’t strike me as a designer dude.”

“I started out as a software developer but web design turned out to be a better option for remote work.”

“What do you mean?”
Isabelle asked.

“I had a job in a software company
, but after I moved here, I started working with web design. It’s a bit of a downgrade, but it pays the bills.”

“Why did you move?” she asked, hoping to catch him
unawares so he’d spill the secret that both he and Jamie were guarding so jealously. She was willing to bet it would turn out to be something stupid and utterly unimportant. Guys were like that, making things seem more important than they were.

But
Harper wasn’t unprepared: he smirked at her and didn’t answer.

“Okay, so you
don’t have to tell me, but can I ask you something else? Something personal?”

He
raised his eyebrows.

“Not that kind of personal,” she hurried.
Her earlier conversation with Chloe reminded her of the time when Harper had first arrived in town. She was full of questions about this mysterious older brother, and Jamie was just as reluctant to answer them as Harper was now. Until one day she caught him unprepared and he let slip that Harper had had a drug habit. He wouldn’t tell her any more than that, later he even tried denying it. Harper seemed fine now, but she wondered.

“You didn’t want to tell me why you’re unhappy and I was wondering
, has that something to do with ... drugs?” She almost whispered the last word.

She’d tried smoking pot
. It made her feel dizzy and she’d laughed for two hours straight. The trouble was that watching her friend being sick over and over again was nothing to laugh about. Since that was far from her idea of having fun, she’d never tried it again.

“Ah,
Jamie,” Harper said sweetly. “Dear little brother.”

“Please don’
t tell him I said anything. He let it slip one day and he was sorry about it later.”

“
Of course he was.”

She looked at him and a long moment passed before he nodded.
“Back to the grisly family history, then,” Harper joked. “After Mom left, Dad spent more or less all of his time at the office. There was a nanny, Rose, that took care of Jamie and the housework.”

“Who took care of you?”
Isabelle interrupted.

“I was
seven, so I took care of myself.”

Isabelle
could relate, so she nodded. “What happened?”

“
When Jamie started kindergarten, Rose left and so all the house chores fell on me. Hence the cooking skills.” He grinned at her. “I’m also experienced with ironing and washing clothes. It’d be perfect to put in a personal ad, what do you think?”

He did
n’t convince her with his jokes as she watched him fidget with his long fingers.

“So anyway, b
y sixteen, I was sick of it all and I wanted to go away. So I did.”

“God,” she sighed.

“You know, the usual martyrdom story.” He tried shrugging it off.

“That must’ve been awful,” she almost whispered.

“Oh, no, getting high was mighty fine.” His fingers were now picking at the torn spot on his jeans. “The getting back down to earth sucked. It was worse every time until I didn’t give a fuck anymore whether I lived or died. That was, ironically, my wake up call.”

Isabelle
didn’t know what to say. She wondered whether his joking about such tragic things was his way of coping. He’d had enough to cope with.

“I’m sorry.” She meant everything terrible that had happened to him, everything that drove him to drugs, to this cynic veneer behind which he was hiding everything else.

His dark eyes were on her, and he looked tired and older. So much older than her.

He nodded, accepting her sincere words. He
stared down at his tanned hands in his lap, turning them over, scratching a knuckle, worrying the cuticle on his thumb.

When he looked at her again, his
face seemed brighter, but still tired. “I should go. Get some sleep. We should start early tomorrow. The weather forecast said it’ll keep raining, so the ride might take a while.” He got up and walked to the door.

“Would you wake me up, please
, in case I won’t hear the phone alarm?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he grinned.

She couldn’t hide her smile, so she threw a pillow at him. “Get out.”

She could hear him chuckling down the hall.

Under the covers, her sigh was long and deep. She was in need of sleep, a lot of sleep. She wished a few hours a night would be enough, like it was for Harper. The things she could do in the spare time. She fell asleep with the image of his face when he offered to make her mom’s dish for her.

****

The ringing of the phone woke her up. Isabelle needed a moment to figure out where she was. The window to her left, the strange bed, the unknown smells, nothing made sense. Until she remembered she was spending the night at a motel with Harper. When the events of the previous day rushed back to her consciousness, she was lucid enough to answer the phone.

“Morning,”
Jamie sounded wide awake and cheery. A bit too cheery for the early hour.

“Morning,”
Isabelle croaked.

“Did I wake you?
”

“The jet lag,” she said, still hoarse and half dead from sleepiness.

“Oh, I forgot. I thought you’d be on the road already.”

“Don’t worry. It’s good that you woke me.
Harper must’ve overslept, too.” She got up, all her muscles protesting, screaming ‘more sleep!’ at her.

“Isn’t it early for you too?” she asked, dragging herself towards the bathroom.

“Oh, I haven’t gone to bed yet,” he chuckled.

That’s why the cheeriness, Isabelle thought. For some reason, she resented it. It must be the lack of sleep, she thought.

“So, how’s Florida?” she asked. Jamie had gone to Florida over the weekend with his lacrosse team. It was a last minute trip to have some fun and relaxation before they returned to school on Monday. He’d only told her on Wednesday that he was going.

“It’s great. It’s sunny, we’re chilling on the beach all day … You know.”

She could see him shrug with a wide smile on his face.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry about this.”

“No, I said it’s okay. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be home.”

“I meant asking Harper to drive you home. I should’ve tried finding your dad or ask someone else instead.”

“It’s fine,
Jamie. He’s fine,” Isabelle said and realized she meant it. “Really.”

“He’s not being an ass?”

Well, occasionally. But he was far nicer than she’d expected and just as fun. At least the ride wasn’t boring. For a second, she imagined being on this trip with Jamie. Would it be less exciting? She didn’t know. There would be less bickering, that’s for sure, less intensity.