Second Chance Summer (41 page)

“Your sister’s next door at Nora’s,” my mom said. “And Warren went somewhere with Wendy; I haven’t been able to reach him.”

“Okay,” I said, making myself take deep breaths. “What can I do?”

“Help your sister,” my mom said, and I felt immediately ashamed of myself that I’d spent the afternoon trying to avoid doing exactly that. “And don’t tell her we went to the hospital. She’s looking forward to tonight. I’ll tell her when I get back.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat, noticing the singular pronoun. “But Dad will be coming back too, right?” I asked slowly.

My mother shrugged, her chin trembling, and I felt my stomach plunge. She pressed a hand to her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When she spoke again, she was more composed, back in her efficiency mode. “I’m going to need your help getting your dad into the car,” she said. “And then please be either here or by your phone tonight, in case I have updates.” I nodded, feeling a second wave of shame crest over me that I had been actively ignoring my phone all afternoon. “And,” my mother said, biting her lip. She
seemed to be weighing something in her mind. “I’m going to need you to call your grandfather.”

“Oh.” This was not what I’d been expecting to hear. “Sure. But why am I doing that?” My father’s father was a former naval officer who now taught at West Point and had always reminded me of Captain Von Trapp from
The Sound of Music
—just without the easygoing personality or penchant for songs about flowers. He’d always terrified me, and the few times a year I saw him, we never seemed to have all that much to talk about.

“He wanted to know… when we got to this point,” my mother said. “He wanted to come and say good-bye.”

I nodded, but it felt like the breath had just been knocked out of me. “What point?” I asked, even though I didn’t really want to hear the answer, because I was afraid that I already knew it.

“He wanted to come,” my mother said, slowly, like she was having to think about each word before she spoke it, “when your father would still understand what was happening. When he would still… be here.”

I nodded again, mostly just so that I would have something to do. I couldn’t believe that only twenty minutes ago, I’d been eating icing and making out with Henry. “I’ll call him,” I said, trying to sound competent and together, and not like I was feeling, which was the exact opposite.

“Good,” my mother said. She rested her hand on my shoulder for just a moment, and then she was gone, heading upstairs, calling to my father.

Fifteen minutes later, each of us taking one arm, my mother and I got my father down the stairs and into the backseat of the car. The change in my dad from just that morning was startling—his skin had taken on a grayish tone, and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his eyes were, for the most part, closed tightly against the pain that he was so obviously feeling. In the past, I could not remember my father ever complaining about his own discomfort, and I’d never seen him cry. But now his forehead was furrowed, and he was making a low moaning sound in the back of his throat that scared me in a way that nothing else yet had.

When Murphy saw us loading my dad into the car, he rushed full-out down the driveway, and scrambled up into the backseat. I reached for him, but he darted past me and settled behind the driver’s seat.

“Taylor, would you get the dog?” my mother asked, as she put a large duffel bag on the passenger seat. I was about to ask what it was, when I realized that it was probably clothes in case she—or my dad—had to stay over.

I reached for Murphy, who tried to get away, clearly only wanting to be where my dad was. “Stop it,” I said, more sharply than I needed to, as I snatched him up and shut the car door.

“I’ll call with updates,” my mother said, climbing behind the wheel.

“Okay,” I said, holding tight to the dog, who seemed to be ready to make a break for it again. “I’ll be here.” I made myself smile and wave
as the car backed down the gravel driveway, even though my mother was concentrating on reversing, and my father’s eyes were closed.

When it disappeared from view, the dog seemed to droop a little in my arms. I stroked his wiry head, and felt myself let out a shaky breath. I knew exactly how he felt.

Fortunately, Gelsey was too excited about the carnival to ask many questions. When she got home from Nora’s, I told her that Dad had a doctor’s appointment, which I figured sounded much less scary than going to the hospital, and she simply accepted it without question.

I flat-ironed Gelsey’s hair while she took calls from Nora on her cell, getting an update every time there was an outfit change. As I stood behind my sister and looked at her excited expression in the mirror, as she giggled with her best friend, I felt both envious that she could still be this lighthearted, and anxious knowing that soon, she wouldn’t be laughing like that. That none of us would.

Once her hair was straight—and with hair as curly as Gelsey’s, it took a while—I had her sit on the bathroom counter while I did her makeup, less than she wanted, but probably more than my mother would have approved of. When I was finished, I twisted the cap back on my mascara and stepped back so that she could take in her reflection.

She leaned closer, examining her new self closely. “What do you think?” she asked. “Do I look like you?”

I stared at her. She had wanted to look like
me
? I blinked, then smoothed down the back of her hair. It actually explained why she’d wanted it straightened. “You look better,” I said, smiling at her through the mirror. Gelsey smiled back at me for a moment before her phone rang, and she hopped off the counter, already chattering to Nora as she headed down the hall to her bedroom.

Kim and Jeff were driving the girls to the carnival, so they came over with Nora. “Where are Katie and Rob?” Kim asked me as Gelsey and Nora got their purses and checked the mirror one last time. “Is everything okay?”

“They had to go to Stroudsburg,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. I looked over at Kim and saw that she was still waiting for more, worried. “To the hospital,” I said, and I lost control of my voice on the last word. I took a deep breath, knowing that I had to keep it together for just a few more minutes, so I wouldn’t ruin my sister’s night.

Kim nodded, and even though I could see she wanted to, she didn’t ask any more questions, for which I was grateful, since I didn’t have the information to answer them. “Well,” she said after a moment, “just please let us know if there’s anything we can do. Your dad’s in our thoughts.”

“Actually,” I said, “would it be okay if Gelsey slept over?” I wasn’t sure when—or if—my mother was getting back tonight, and this just seemed like a way to buy some time.

“Of course,” Kim said. She smiled. “Nora asked me the same
thing, so I was going to ask your mom. Gelsey!” she called, heading over to join Jeff, who was fruitlessly trying to get Murphy to fetch. “Want to stay over after the carnival?”

The prospect of a sleepover
and
the not-date raised the decibel level in the living room significantly, and Murphy finally escaped and fled to my room, no doubt seeking solace under my bed. When Gelsey and Nora were finally ready, they all piled into the Gardners’ Prius, waving at me through the back window as the car headed down the street.

I watched them go, then closed the door, walked inside, and sat down on the nearest couch to think. I couldn’t get my mother’s words out of my head when she asked me where I had been. And I knew why I hadn’t told her—because of how silly and frivolous it would make me look. I wasn’t around to help out with my father because I’d been giggling like I was Gelsey’s age and kissing Henry. I hadn’t been where I was needed. What was happening with my father was more important than my summer romance, and I shouldn’t have let myself forget it.

But it was more than that, I realized as I got up and paced to the kitchen, getting a Diet Coke I didn’t really want out of the fridge. It was how I’d come to depend on Henry, how I’d been running over there every night when I needed to be consoled. What would happen when he wasn’t there? What would happen when the summer ended and I went back to Stanwich and had to learn how to
be without him? From what my dad’s doctors had said, we had all been expecting that we would make it through the summer. But nobody was really hoping for beyond that. And if I was dealing with a terrible breakup on top of just losing my dad—I couldn’t really let myself even finish that thought. Feeling the need to stay in motion, as though I could somehow escape this, I walked outside, closing the screen door behind me, heading down the driveway to the dock.

There was also the fact that I could glimpse, still half-hidden in shadow but there, what a mess I’d be once the terrible inevitable happened. And did I really think it was right to put Henry through that? Especially knowing how he tried to take care of Davy—of everyone, really, even my dad, attempting to cure him through cookies. He was always trying to help people. I had known this from the moment we’d met, seven years earlier, the first time he’d come to my rescue. I knew that he would stick with me afterward. Because it would be the Right Thing to Do. And I didn’t want to force that responsibility on him. Henry had been through enough already.

I walked to the end of the dock and sat down, hooking my legs over the edge. It was twilight, the sky slowly darkening and the first stars just beginning to appear, but I barely noticed it. The facts were hard to argue with. I needed to end it with Henry before he was pulled along with what was inevitable. I needed to end it before things got more serious, before he felt like he had any obligation to me. Suddenly, the very fact that I’d started anything at all with
him seemed monstrously selfish. There were so many reasons why it wasn’t a good idea to stay together. It was impossible to ignore. I saw the light in Henry’s bedroom come on, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I would do it fast, before I could reconsider, or let myself remember how we’d laughed together, or how his kisses had melted me. It would be like pulling off a Band-Aid—painful at first, but in the end, better for everyone.

I took a deep breath and sent him a text, asking him to meet me on the dock.

Henry was smiling as he walked toward me, and even though I wanted to look away, I made myself look back at him, memorizing what he looked like when he was happy to see me. I had a feeling that it would be the last time I would be seeing it.

“Hi,” he said, reaching the dock and coming close, his hand stretching out for mine, clearly expecting me to meet him halfway. But I locked my hands together behind my back and took a tiny step away, going over in my mind the list of reasons why I had to do this. Henry’s smile dimmed a little, and one of his eyebrows went up. “Is everything okay?”

“I think we have to stop this,” I blurted out. It hit me that this was how I’d first proposed becoming friends, as well. For whatever reason, there was something about him that made it impossible for me to ease into a subject. Henry looked confused, and I clarified, “You and me. What we’ve been doing. We should stop.”

Henry looked at me for a long moment, then out across the lake before turning back to me. When he did, I couldn’t help but see the pain in his expression—pain that hadn’t been there only a few seconds ago. “Why?” he asked me. It was a gentle question, not demanding an explanation, even though he was entitled to one. “What’s going on, Tay?”

I knew that if I lied to him, he’d be able to tell. And plus, he deserved better than that. “I just,” I started, taking a deep breath, “need to spend my time with my family right now. And it’s not fair to ask you to just hang around while I go through this.”

“So I’m supposed to just go away?” Henry asked, sounding equally baffled and hurt. “Is that the plan?”

“I just don’t want you to—” I started.

“Taylor,” Henry said, taking a step toward me. Suddenly he was right there, so close, close enough that I could have leaned forward and kissed him, reached out for him, done all the things that I wanted to do. “Don’t think about me. Really.”

It was hard to do, nearly impossible, but I made myself take a step away from him. “I just can’t be with you right now,” I said. “With anyone,” I clarified quickly, lest he think I’d suddenly developed some bizarre crush on Leland. “I just think it’s for the best.”

“Okay,” Henry said. He looked at me steadily. “But we can still be friends, right?”

I swallowed hard and made myself shake my head. I knew that
if he was in my life, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from wanting to kiss him, needing to find solace in my spot. “No,” I whispered.

Henry’s face changed, and he looked angry for the first time in this conversation. “Are you cutting out Lucy, too?” he asked. I just looked down at the planks of the dock, giving him my answer. “I just don’t see,” he said, more quietly now, “why I have to be the only one shut out.”

I had no idea how to respond, how to tell him the truth that was behind this—that I could feel myself falling for him, and I was already on the cusp of losing someone I loved. And the closer we got, the harder it would be when I lost him, too. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “But you don’t understand what this is like, and—”

“I do,” he said, causing me to look up at him. “My mother’s gone, and—”

“But she’s not dead,” I said, my voice coming out sharp. “You can talk to her if you want. You could find her. She doesn’t have to be gone. That’s your choice.” Henry took a step back; it was like I’d slapped him. “I’m sorry,” I said after a moment, knowing I’d gone too far.

Henry let out a breath and looked back at me. “I just want to be here for you,” he said, his voice quiet and pained. “I don’t understand what’s changed.”

Suddenly, all I wanted was to tell him, about the hospital, about my grandfather, about all of it. I wanted to feel his arms around me, the one thing that made sense while everything around me was falling apart. But I had a feeling that if I did, I’d be hurting him—and myself—much
more after the summer than either of us was hurting now. “I can’t explain it,” I said, making my voice as cold as I could, trying to push him away hard enough so that he’d go, and stay gone. “Sorry.”