Reason Is You (9781101576151) (19 page)

Every nerve ending in my body stood up on full salute, as the ringing in my ears rocketed to a deafening pitch and the words
swam in front of me. I felt hotter than before, and I pulled at the neck of my T-shirt like it was cutting off my air.

“Are you kidding me?” I choked out as I touched the faded black print.

She was like me. My mom was like me.

And Dad knew.

“Oh my God.”

I flipped page after page, only half seeing the images, looking for the ones that had no images. There were only a handful of them, but it was enough. As I turned the last page, there was my picture, tucked loose into the back cover. Me and my mother.

“My moth—” I sobbed on the word and touched her face. “You knew this world. You knew how hard—why—why didn’t you come help me?”

I tossed the book aside and buried my face in my hands. All those years of feeling cut off from her. Of needing a mother. Of feeling like an outcast. Treated like a freak.

She was a freak, too.

But—I raised my head—she didn’t come across that way. She tried to take pictures of them, for one thing, and then put them very publicly in a book just because
she
knew they were there. She didn’t have to do that. She could have hid them or thrown them away. She chose to write about them, and—

“Oh my God.”

Riley looked at that book. But said nothing. Did she not understand? Maybe she didn’t read the captions? Or just thought old people were odd and blew it off. I swiped at my eyes and sweaty face, and then saw something else. Clipped together in a box next to some old framed school photos were a group of folded papers. I pulled them out and unclipped them, the old faded paper retaining the indention. I opened one, and my breath caught as I saw my mother’s handwriting.

I ran my hand over the faded ink, trying to feel her. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it took forty years to find it out. I folded it back carefully and opened two more, which only talked about school and graduation and not having to work at the drive-in for a week because she had a sprained wrist. And little hints about their sex life, which was more information than I needed, but even that I soaked up because it made her more real to me. She was human in those letters. Not just captions under pictures.

There were many generic ones that I scanned, and then the last letter I opened slowly, not wanting it to be over where I’d be searching for more again.

I felt light-headed. I carefully folded each letter back up and replaced the clip, just as I heard the footsteps on the wooden attic stairs.

“Hello? Dani, you up there?”

“Yeah,” I called, but my voice sounded odd and weirdly pitched.

Dad’s heavy footsteps made the trek up and stopped at the top.

“Whatcha doing, sweetheart?”

I couldn’t turn around. Everything inside me threatened to ooze out my pores and scream. He walked up next to where I sat, and I heard him let out a defeated sigh. I could imagine him scratch his beard as he took in the album and the group of papers I still held in my left hand. I suddenly felt oddly guilty for having read his letters, but not enough to stem the flow of anger that poured from my eyes.

Without a word, he walked to the dirty window and stood staring out of it, hands shoved into the pockets of his blue jumpsuit.

“You need to tell Riley,” he said without turning around. “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

Then he walked back to the stairs and went down and outside. I heard the screen door close behind him. I sat there, unable to move, wondering if there was more to be found. I rooted around halfheartedly but saw nothing else. So I grabbed the album and picked up the letters, then stopped and put them back in their place. The album was fair game, but the letters didn’t belong to me. And they were forever burned into my brain anyway.

I spent the next hour in my room, studying that album like the little kid I used to be, trying to grasp some little new piece of my mother. But I had gold now. Getting to read actual thought processes in her letters was just short of a video for me. Which
really
would have been awesome, but that wasn’t happening in the sixties.

I was so glad that Riley wasn’t home. My brain was too swirly with secrets to be able to piece any kind of logic together.

But I did need to go face one person.

I wandered out onto the porch with two orange sodas in my hand. Dad was in the porch swing, staring off at nothing.

I took one of the big chairs and pulled my feet up with me, as we popped the tabs on our sodas and I marveled at how big a sound that makes when you’re dancing around silence.

“When I first met your mother,” he began, “I knew something was different, but I didn’t know what. I just knew I was completely in awe.”

“She was beautiful.”

“She was more than beautiful. She had a presence. An infectious laugh. And nothing bothered that girl; she embraced everything as a gift.”

There was a moment of silence, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to fill it, but I couldn’t.

“The first time I found out about it was by pure accident. Walked up on her talking to someone.” He stopped and took a long swig of his soda. “I thought she was joking, but she spilled it all. I wasn’t sure I believed it. I mean, to the outside eye, it just looks like you’re talking to yourself.”

“Guess so.”

“But Jiminy—he thought it was cool, or he just thought
she
was cool, or probably a little of both. I couldn’t blame him. You couldn’t help but love Nadine.”

“He’s never said anything like that.”

“And he won’t. But he was a better friend to her on that subject. He listened to her. To be honest, it creeped me out a little bit, watching her talk to nothing, whereas Jiminy was all into it.”

Well, at least he was honest. Now.

“And when people looked at her funny, she didn’t care. She laughed it off and people loved her regardless. She just had that way.”

“Unlike me.”

My dad looked at me straight on, and I winced a little at his pained expression.

“Exactly. Honey, when your mother died, I was a wreck. But I went on the best I could because I had someone counting on me. I had this precious little girl that grew to be quiet and thoughtful and watchful and more like me than her outgoing mom.”

I nodded.

“When you started showing signs of—seeing people—” He shook his head and faced forward. “I thought, oh, hell no. Not this girl, please. I was so afraid for you. You didn’t have the thick skin that she did.”

“Like Riley.”

“God, I’m telling you, Riley is so much like her, it’s eerie sometimes. Such a free spirit and doesn’t care.”

“And I’m scared for her. I mean, she’s strong, but she’s also new here. Her roots aren’t deep enough.”

“You’re gonna have to trust that she can handle it, Dani. I screwed up, pretending I didn’t see it half the time, thinking it would go away if we didn’t acknowledge it.” He blew out a breath. “I was wrong.”

My eyes burned with the unspoken subject. “Okay. I can understand that part. But—” I stopped and tried to get it together so it wouldn’t sound angry. He beat me to it.

“Why didn’t I tell you about your mother?” He closed his eyes and scratched at his beard. “I don’t know. I guess because you and I never talked about it, and after a while, too much time had gone by.”

“But—” The hot tears spilled over. “Do you know how alone I felt? I was a freak, Dad. A complete outcast. I still am. Do you realize people threw food on me last night?”

He flinched. “What?”

“Yeah, it hasn’t changed.” I rubbed at my face. “Do you know how much easier life would’ve been just to know I wasn’t the only one? That I had something in common with her?”

His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“Why did you keep that from me?” I cried.

He shook his head. “I was wrong.”

We sat in silence for a while, till I got myself under control. I thought of what he’d said about Jiminy, and his relationship with her.

“So—” I began, then having to clear the crying from my throat. “Is that why you and Jiminy grew apart? Because of him and my mother?”

“Not really,” he answered, his voice quiet as he sat back and rocked the swing gently. “I was okay with that. It was more after she died that we didn’t see eye to eye.”

“What do you mean?”

He breathed in slowly and released it even slower. “He took it pretty hard. I don’t think he was ever quite the same without Nadine to light things up.” A silent chuckle came with a small smile. “And she did. She made everything—glow.”

“So being around you, I guess that made it harder?”

“I guess.” He took a long swig of his soda and wiped the orange out of his white whiskers. “Things got more normal later on, we started hanging out a little again. But when you started seeing ghosts, too—and I asked him to keep a lid on it—it all kind of went south.”

I traced the wet on my can, watching the drops creep down in scraggly lines. “He thought what—people should know?”

“He thought you should know. He said Nadine would want it that way, and that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of.” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Of course he was right, but I was a pigheaded fool running on little sleep and even less money. I met myself coming and going half the time; I thought all that was foolishness.”

The things you don’t know about your parents. Like that they’re real people with crap on their plate just like you. My dad had quite the double helping.

“He stopped coming around after a while, and that just became the new normal.”

“That’s sad.” I thought of Alex. “Friendship is important.”

“Yeah,” he said, barely putting sound to the word.

I looked at him, taking in the weariness on his face. It wasn’t fair to beat him up for this. He’d done everything alone. I, for one, knew all about that.

I took a deep breath and blew it out, finishing off my soda. Time to change the direction. “So, how do you bring this up to a teenager without them thinking you’re certifiable?”

“Do they have reflections?”

I looked at him, unsure. “Do—what—have reflections?”

“The—people. The spirits.”

“No.”

“Then have your friend stand in front of a mirror.”

T
HAT
was a great idea. I hoped. In all honesty, I could see it going either way, and that had me up all night. I didn’t grab the opportunity when she got home, because she was in a great mood and I hoped it wasn’t “first sex” kind of great mood. Regardless of that, I had trouble getting my mind around the new idea that evidently the women in my family have a secret club. Besides, Alex wasn’t around.

And then there was that. Alex had spilled it all to me and then left distraught, which had me concerned for him. And Jason would be there tomorrow and would it be different? Had he talked to his son? Did he think about me? Yeah, I was pathetic enough to latch onto that last question, too.

Miss Olivia was at the shop bright and early Monday morning, actually before I was.

“Hey, Dani girl,” she called out as she climbed out of her blue Cadillac.

“What on earth are you doing up this early?” I asked as I climbed out of my creaking tub that ten minutes earlier had lost electric window capability. How I wished for that old-fashioned crank.

“Dropping off some soap before I head out for a couple of days.”

I caught up with her in all her green-and-yellow glory. Green top with yellow pants and, of course, the straw hat.

“At six in the morning?”

“Afraid so. Going to see one of my brothers for a week or so, leaving Grady here—so heads up on that, by the way,” she added with a wink.

“Good to know.”

“I’m glad they’re bonding,” she said. “He may be going to school out here this year.”

“Really?”

“His mother’s a wuss.”

I laughed. “Well, bonding is fine. As long as mating is out.”

“I hear that. I love you but I don’t need to be related.”

She linked her arm with mine to go in, and I had to admit that it did take the edge off seeing Jason after the hot dream from hell. There’s a reason girls travel in packs.