Love Storm (46 page)

After dinner, the adults stayed at the table to chat over coffee, and we "kids" were banished from the dining room. I let Isaac and Isaiah use the computer downstairs to play whatever online games they liked to play (Shockwave games, or whatever they were), and Gavin, Ian, and I were left to find a way to amuse ourselves. We wandered into the backyard, Gavin and I still making conversation enthusiastically. I smiled as I chatted away with him, happy at this unexpected change of events. Gav had a way of making my mouth loosen up, and it definitely lifted my spirits to be able to talk and hang out with him again. On the other hand, Ian settled more and more into a stoic silence, which I ignored.

We had a swing in our backyard, on the back porch, and the three of us sat down on it. Gavin easily settled himself between Ian and me, ever the peace maker, still listening attentively as I talked to him about my summer, laughing in the appropriate places and sympathizing with me when it was necessary. The swing was comfortable, and it was nice being squished between Gavin's reassuring body and the wooden side panel of the swing. My bare feet grazed the tops of the grass blades as Gavin swung the three of us, pushing off from the ground with his feet every once in a while. The air outside was warm, and, due to Daylight Savings Time, it was only dusk, the last of the sun's rays splashing color on the sky in long, blazing streaks.

"Gavin?" I whispered, when I was done filling him in about the past few weeks.

"Yeah," he whispered back. He had slung a friendly arm around my shoulders as I talked, its weight warm and comfortable on me. I rested my head on his shoulder.

"Thanks." I smiled up at him, and his lips quirked up as well.

"What for?" he asked softly, dark emerald eyes holding my gaze curiously.

"For being you," I said simply. "For being here when I needed you to be." I closed my eyes, enjoying the roughness of his old t-shirt on my cheek.

He sighed, almost imperceptibly. "You're a sad girl," he said gently. "Tell me why?"

The corners of my lips curved up automatically. It was just like him to be so perceptive of my feelings.

"You wouldn't wanna hear it," I said very, very quietly. "It's a long and weird tale. I guess I was kind of stupid about the whole thing." I smiled; a bittersweet smile. "And besides, you've been listening to me talk for the past fifteen minutes. You talk now."

"I want to hear it," Gavin insisted softly. I opened my eyes and looked up at him through my lashes. "Please?"

"Okay," I whispered. "But not now. Some other time." I looked past him to Ian, who was sitting on his other side, silent as a stone, face turned away from us, and made a small jerk of my head to indicate him.

"Alright," Gavin said, catching on to the movement. "I'll hold you to it."

"As long as you tell me about why you're part of the Farrington household."
"You have yourself a deal," he grinned. "That's too simple. I ran away from home. Ian's mom is giving me a couch to sleep on, basically."

I made a small face. "Why doesn't she give you a bed? Hell, if you stay at my house I can give you bed." I brightened up. "Wanna stay at my house? My parents wouldn't mind. And I definitely wouldn't mind."

Gavin chuckled. "A sorely tempting offer, but I think I'll stick with Ian. I think you know why."

I nodded. It was part of the best-friendship deal. You couldn't just refuse the hospitality of your best friend, even if the couch was the hardest, lumpiest, oldest, smelliest, most uncomfortable couch in all of America. I knew.

"So why'd you run away from home?" I asked gently. I had the feeling that Gavin trusted and liked me enough that he wouldn't clam up and refuse to tell, and I was right.

"Because my parents hate me," he exhaled. "And I can't say I like them too much either. We came into conflict so much, that one day, I just couldn't take it anymore, you know? Sometimes you can only take so much before it's too much. So I packed up, put my suitcase in the trunk of my car, and left. Easy as that. Haven't looked back since."

"Wow," I whispered, a newfound admiration and affection for Gavin stirring in me. "You're braver than I am."

"Not really," he laughed. "I was scared to death when I left my key to the house under the front mat for them and got in my car. It took me about fifteen minutes of self-pep talk to get me to start the ignition."

"I don't think I'd ever be able to do something like that," I said.

He shook his head sadly. "You could if you wanted to. Sometimes I wonder if I took the easy way out, just avoiding my troubles. Maybe, at best, I'm a coward."

"Hey," I said, catching his other hand and holding it tightly. "You're not a coward. Sometimes there's just no other way out."

He shrugged lightly. "Okay," he said, changing the subject. "I'm done. Your turn."

"I said some other time."

"Now is 'some other time.'"

"Some other time, after
this
'some other time.'" Just as I was saying it, Ian rose from the swing and went back into the house without a word.

I looked after him, astonished. "Where's he going?"

"Back inside. You know," Gavin said slowly, "He's not a bad person. Sometimes he's arrogant and cocky and stuff, but…that's kind of just his way of covering up his insecurities. Everyone has those."

"I knew he wasn't rotten at heart," I said.

"Did you?"

"Yeah. You wouldn't be best friends with someone who was."

Gavin smiled. "I knew there was a reason we get along so well. Okay. Now, spill. All the down and dirty details. I want to hear all of it."

I laughed. "There's nothing really down and dirty about it," I said, stalling for time, unlike he, who had told me his story without a pause when I had asked him for it.

"Let's hear it anyway. Hey, want to spread out more? There's room now, you know."

I glanced at him sideways, and grinned when I saw him brush a piece of his unruly brown hair out of his eyes, annoyed with it. It had gotten slightly longer since the last time I'd seen him. "But I like this spot right here," I said.

He tilted his head slightly as he looked down at me. "Okay," he said. "I like my spot too. Now go on."

"Okay," I said quietly. "Let me think where it all started." Because it really was hard to remember when it did all start. After a moment's contemplation, I said, "Well, I guess we could
start…with Eva. She's my best friend, you know. Anyway, it was…wow, I think it was last summer when it all began," I realized with a start.

Had it really already been a year? It seemed impossible. But it had been. What a different person I was now than I had been a year ago. I could still remember that call with Eva, during the summer. What had we started out talking about? SAT camp or something? Something small and insignificant, anyway. It was hard to believe that so many changes had happened within the past year. Eva's family had broken apart and moved away from Branner City, while a tall boy with a tan complexion, dark curly hair, mysterious golden eyes, and the only smile in the world that could make my heart pound, had both entered and left my life. Forever. Because now there was no doubt in mind at all that he would ever be back, heartbreaking as it was.

I sighed, brought back to the present as a gust of warm air blew by us. "Yeah, it was a year ago," I said to Gavin. "Anyway, I was in my living room, and I got this call from Eva…"

Chapter 30: Closure

-Zack-

"Oh, shit," I muttered to myself as the box came crashing down. It was a white cardboard packing box that wasn't taped together at the top, and when I turned it over, the contents spilled out. It piqued my interest and quelled my anger momentarily.

There was a patchwork quilt – it was old and tattered at the stitches, but clean nevertheless. The colors of the patches had faded with time, but the cloth was soft and beautiful still. I weighed it in my hands – it was light. I set it aside and reached in for the next object, a rag doll. It, too, was old, and her dress had been repaired lovingly with colorful scraps of many different materials; silk, gingham, cotton, satin, denim, fleece.

What else was in there? I kept digging. A cream colored gingham sun dress. Three books,
Great Expectations
(I snorted),
Jane Eyre
, and a
Peanuts
cartoon collection, all translated into Italian. A jewelry box, which I didn't open. A diary which I leafed through briefly, its aged yellow pages filled with flowing cursive, also written in Italian. A scrap book, written in the same hand, with many odds and ends, such as colorful paper candy wrappers, glued in carefully – but also glued in was something that heightened my interest:
pressed flowers
.

Pressed flowers? I only knew of one person who liked pressed flowers, and that was my mom. Was it possible that these were
her
things? I pulled out the last object from the box. It was a framed black and white photo of a teenaged girl, wearing the cream colored gingham sun dress I had taken out of the box seconds ago, and an older woman, who was sitting. They had identical smiles, and there were subtle similarities between them – the same face shape, the same narrow, aristocratic nose, the same way they carried themselves – that I knew the older woman must be the girl's mother. I took a closer look at the teenage girl. She was beautiful. She was standing behind her mother, and her elegant hand was resting on the older woman's shoulder. There must have been a slight breeze blowing when the picture had been taken, because the skirt of her sundress, which went to her knees, was being tugged by the wind, as were wisps of her dark, curly hair. Who were these people?

I took another look at the photo, and started. I knew who the teenage girl was. It
was
my mother. These must be her things.

But what were they doing in an old box in my closet? I frowned. Why had she left them here, if they held as much sentimental value as it seemed they would? None of it made any sense. I placed everything back in the cardboard box and left it off to the side so I could finish what I had started earlier.

Looking around my temporary bedroom, I figured I had most of my belongings either on my bed or already packed in my suitcases. I spent the next forty five minutes methodically folding all my clothes and running checklists through my head, just to make sure I had everything.

I stood up later with an acing back from bending over to fold my clothes, exhausted from my frantic packing, lack of sleep, and too much thinking. I took one last look around the room with a kind of grim satisfaction. If all went well I would never have to set foot on this property ever again. I would make sure of that.

Jason would have willingly dragged all my luggage downstairs for me, but nobody was home, so I did it myself. I didn't mind. I made a call to the local taxi company and sat down on the marble floor in the foyer next to my suitcases. Now it was only a matter of waiting. I checked my watch – it was two o'clock.

The house was eerily quiet. For the three months that I had spent here, it had never been this silent on a weekday afternoon before. The reason? Today was the house staff's day off. And my mother and father were at some charity event or other. My father had wanted me to go with them, but I had feigned sickness. He wasn't happy, but my mom had let me stay.

I sighed and unzipped my backpack. I pulled out four envelopes and just looked at them, sadness, disappointment, and a twinge of lingering anger sitting heavily in my stomach, an unpleasant mix. These letters were why I was leaving. They had finally given me reason enough.

My parents had been gone since early this morning, and I had wandered around the house with nothing to do. Eventually I had drifted into my father's study. It started with a casual look around the room, then a closer look at his meticulously clean desk. One of his desk drawers hadn't been closed completely, and sitting in his swivel chair, I had pulled it out and rummaged through, simply because there hadn't been anything else to do. At the bottom, I had found these four letters. Two were addressed to me in a very familiar hand. And the other two were in my handwriting, addressed to Branner, California. And suddenly I had realized why Winter had stopped writing me.

My father had been monitoring my mail. I had never gotten her letters, and she had never gotten mine, because all this time,
he
had been keeping them. The good for nothing bastard.

It had been the last straw. He had forced me to move from California, to attend that damn American school, to dress up formally every day of this past summer and go to his office (where I had been bored out of my mind), to attend meetings with him, to go to charity balls and fundraising events and all kind of crap for the whole summer, but here, I was drawing the line. I had had enough.

I had been so angry I had done the first thing that had come to mind – I called the nearest travel agency, booked the next flight to SFO, and started packing. The ticket hadn't been cheap, but I had charged it on the credit card my father had given me, so it wasn't my money anyway.