Tumble & Fall (28 page)

There’s a loud jangling and Zan turns to see that Nick has nearly knocked over a basket of mood rings on sale. The man looks up quickly, then back at the binder. “Anyway, I told him what I knew. That she’d left the Cape to move to New York, and then she was on the road a while. Last I heard she was working at a bar in Boston. I wrote down the number for him, I think.” He stares at the ceiling like he’s trying to remember more. “I’ll tell you, she wasn’t the world’s most reliable employee, but she was one hell of an artist.” He shakes his head wistfully.

Zan picks up the envelope, the trembling in her hands so extreme that she’s sure he’s going to notice.

“Well, there you go,” the man says. “Hope the necklace finds its rightful owner. Before it’s too late…”

The jeweler disappears behind the starry curtain. Zan feels suddenly hot, the air close and humid. But the envelope is heavy in her palm, as if it’s pinning her to the shop’s tiled floor. She can’t move. She has to open it, now.

She pulls back the tiny tab and pours the contents into her palm. The necklace is a silver chain, and at the center, a small square pendant with the image of a vintage typewriter, much like the one she gave Leo for their anniversary last year. On either side of the pendant are two bold-faced letters, glossy and round, like typewriter keys.

An “L” on one side, a “Z” on the other.

Zan lets the necklace fall through her fingers. It trickles to the floor. Zan pushes past Nick—she doesn’t know how long he’s been standing behind her and she doesn’t care—and hurries out into the daylight. She looks for a break in the crowd and ducks into a small passageway between two shops, where she folds in half, clutching her stomach as she waits to be horribly, violently ill.

Joni. Leo was searching for Joni. He wasn’t cheating on her. He was trying to give her the one thing she’d always wanted. He wanted to give her her sister back. She’d had it all wrong. He never let her down. Not once.

She had taken care of that, all by herself.

CADEN

Sophie drives fast, expertly maneuvering the stick shift with one finger hovering in the air. Caden’s knees knock against the dashboard and he grips the bottom of his seat with both hands. His pulse is still racing and he tries to take deep, calming breaths, but so far they just seem to be making things worse.

“I can’t believe you actually hit him.”

Caden stares at his hands curiously, as if they had a plan of their own. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know, I mean, I didn’t think that I…”

Suddenly Sophie is laughing, her eyes bright and wide as she slaps at the steering wheel with her open palms. “That was incredible!”

Caden swallows. “It was?”

Sophie takes her eyes off the road long enough to look at him, really look at him, like she’s seeing him for the very first time. “Nobody has ever stood up for me like that, Caden,” she says, before staring back at the road. “Ever.”

Caden feels warm all over, but tries to play it cool. He glances out the window, watching the signs as they point back toward Boston. He hadn’t asked where Sophie’s mother lived. He’d assumed it was nearby. It feels strange to be free and still moving away from home.

“It isn’t far,” Sophie assures him, noting as he eyes each passing exit. She fiddles anxiously with the radio dial, finding nothing but coarse, muffled static.

The quiet between them moves from natural to heavy. He wants to say something big. Racing adrenaline still floods his veins. They’re free, and it’s because of him. He scaled walls and leaped through the air. He changed somebody’s life.

Surely he can make a little conversation.

They drive in silence until Sophie switches on her blinker, leading them off an exit ramp and into a small, hard-bitten town. A narrow rural road winds through the dark woods. They pass a deserted gas station, an empty hardware store, an abandoned beauty salon with a neon sign still blinking “Nails” over a padlocked door and barred windows. The town feels sad and lost in a way that’s deeper than what’s happening, like the desolation isn’t new or specific. Caden sees now why Sophie stayed so long with Arthur. He may have been demanding, but at least he wasn’t here.

They turn down a crowded cul-de-sac and pull up to a small two-story ranch, a single exposed bulb flickering over the door. Sophie kills the ignition and takes a deep breath. She looks at Caden like she wants to ask him a question, or tell him something he isn’t going to like.

“Ready?” Caden asks, stretching his dry lips into a manufactured smile. It feels immediately uncomfortable and wrong. He wishes he’d hung on to the silence.

Sophie stares at the house, as if she’s waiting for it to come to her. Finally, she puts a hand on the car door and swings it open. Caden follows her inside.

The house smells like cleaning products and cheap, fruity candles. Across the entryway there’s a round red lantern that hangs from the ceiling. It glows eerily over a framed portrait of the Virgin Mary and a string of rosary beads. Caden remembers the haunted house he and Carly and the neighborhood kids used to visit every Halloween. He pretended the masks and cobwebs didn’t scare him. It helped that he had to be brave for Carly, but the nightmares had lasted for months.

Sophie quietly drops her keys in a ceramic bowl in the shape of a flower. She steps out of her shoes. Caden does the same.

“She’s back here,” Sophie whispers. She leads him through a small living room, dimly lit by the reflected red glare from the hall. The low, ratty couch is covered in factory plastic, and a hulking TV with old-fashioned bunny ears lurks in the corner.

Caden isn’t sure when he first hears the clicking sounds. They must have been there when he walked in the door, but it’s not until he sees the blinking lights of the monitors, the tubes, the frail, sunken woman swaddled in the middle of the reclining hospital bed, that he realizes what’s going on.

“Hi, Mom.” Sophie crouches on her knees, reaching for a bony white hand under the flimsy hospital sheets. “I’m home, just like I promised. I missed you. Did you miss me?”

Caden stands back, one foot still planted firmly in the living room. The woman on the bed doesn’t move; her eyes stay closed, her mouth slack and open just enough for the breathing tube tucked into one corner.

“This is my friend, Caden,” Sophie says. “He’s the reason I’m here. I was thinking, in the morning, we should make him a big breakfast. Blueberry pancakes and whipped cream, like we used to, okay?”

Sophie looks back at Caden and smiles. He knows it’s too late to do anything about his face, the wide eyes or the clenching of his teeth, but Sophie doesn’t seem to notice.

“The doctor said she probably can’t hear us, but I think she can.” Sophie shrugs. “At least enough to know I’m here…” She pushes up to her feet and lays her mother’s hand carefully back under the sheet. She brushes back a few strands of wispy gray hair and leans over to kiss a spot on the older woman’s papery forehead.

“Are you hungry?” Sophie asks. She cuts through another narrow hallway to the kitchen. “The nurse usually leaves snacks.”

Caden’s socks feel glued to the nubby beige carpet. Sophie’s mother is in a coma. She has no idea what is happening. She is completely oblivious to the fact that soon, tomorrow in fact, the world will be forever changed. They will all be gone. And still, Sophie wants to be with her, at the end.

He feels Sophie near him again. She holds out a plastic strainer full of grapes. He shakes his head. “No, thanks.”

Sophie considers him for a moment. Caden wonders if she regrets bringing him here. He wonders if he regrets coming.

“Want to see my room?” she asks. She turns on her heels and is halfway up the squeaking staircase before Caden thinks to answer. He watches her feet disappear. He can’t believe this is the same girl he met by the pool, so cool and intimidating. Maybe it’s being in the house where she grew up, or maybe it’s seeing her with her mother. Either way, she seems, suddenly, vulnerable and young.

“Sure,” he says to the empty room, to the woman in a coma. “Why not?”

Aside from a small bathroom, Sophie’s is the only room upstairs. She leaves the grapes on top of a tall dresser and sinks onto her bed. It’s small, a twin, but the comforter is the same as the one she had at Arthur’s house: white with big purple flowers. She rests her head on the pile of pillows and folds her hands over her stomach.

She makes a pleasant humming sound. Caden tries to look anywhere but the bed. He starts with the walls. Concert posters, a painting of her name in pastel calligraphy, two small, framed prints of tropical birds. A parade of stuffed animals keeps watch from the windowsill, giraffes and dolphins and a spotted dog with floppy ears. The room feels like it hasn’t been touched since Sophie was a little girl.

There’s a rustling on the bed as she shifts her legs toward the wall. “Sit,” she says. “It’s much more comfortable than it looks.”

Caden sits on the edge of the bed, his back so straight it feels like his spine is stretching in ways he never thought possible. Sophie laughs. “Relax, Caden,” she says. “This isn’t the first time you’ve seen a girl’s bedroom, is it?”

Caden laughs. Too loud.

“Oh my God.” Sophie holds a hand to her chin. “Is it, really?”

“No,” Caden blurts. Technically, it isn’t. But close. “Sorry,” he says, trying at least to relax his shoulders. “It’s been a long couple of days, I guess.”

Sophie sits up and folds her legs, holding a pillow in her lap to cover the space where her dress could inch up. “Caden,” she says. “Thank you. For doing this with me. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be here, and I never would have done it without you.”

Caden shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “I wanted to get out of there, too…”

“I know,” she says. “But you didn’t have to take me with you. I mean, you hardly even know me.”

Caden’s skin feels hot. He feels uncomfortable pricks on the back of his neck and hopes he’s not sweating.

“But you knew I needed help,” Sophie says. “How did you do that?”

Caden stares at the purple tassels of the shag carpet at his feet. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I just…”

He stops talking when he feels her hand on his side. She’s playing with the bottom of his shirt, tugging it gently toward her. “What?” she asks.

He looks at her, her ponytail loose and messy and falling down her back. Her eye makeup is smudged in the creases, and her sundress is twisted so that a seam runs crooked down one side. She’s never looked more beautiful.

He takes her hand and tangles her long fingers inside his own. The veins in his wrist are throbbing and he hopes she can’t feel them, hopes she can’t hear his heart pounding in his chest. She scoots closer to him on the bed, and he leans in, kissing her sweetly on the lips. When he tries to pull away, to catch his breath, he feels her hand firm on the back of his neck. She falls easily back on the bed, and brings him on top of her.

He plants his hands on either side of her slim shoulders, trying not to crush her tiny frame. But her hands have moved to his back, strong and unrelenting, pulling him down, pressing his body against hers until there’s no space at all between them. He feels the tension leaving his arms as he falls into the kiss, longer and deeper.

Caden follows Sophie’s lead, moving the way her body seems to be asking his body to move, and tries not to think about what’s happening, how this, too, isn’t anything like what he’d imagined.

It’s better.

*   *   *

When he wakes, the sun has set, the full moon a dusky orange, glowing through the window.

He opens one eye and stares at Sophie’s sleeping profile, like he’s trying to memorize the features of her face. She’s tucked between him and the wall, lying on her side. He touches her arm and it’s a shock, all of it—the fact that her naked skin is so available for the touching. The fact that she’s asleep and he’s there. The fact that he is no longer a virgin.

“Mmm,” she mumbles into the pillow. She flattens her palm on his face. Her fingers are heavy and warm from the weight of the blankets. She traces his features sloppily. He smiles and she draws his lips with her thumb. “That’s better,” she says, as if it were a test.

Caden looks around her room, the stuffed animals and picture frames now darkened by shadows. There’s something comforting about being surrounded by memories, by who you were when you were small. He thinks of his own room, the secret boxes of toys he has stashed in the closet, unable to throw them away. The computer he’s spent countless hours hunched over, the keyboard worn and the letters as faded as the paper-thin camouflage blanket he’s slept with since he was a toddler.

“Sophie,” Caden says softly. He brushes a few strands of hair away from her eyes. She twitches and blinks.

“What time is it?” she asks, wrapping the blanket around her chest as she sits up against the wall. She stares at the room around her, adjusting to being in her own bed, adjusting to him beside her. She grins, her tongue poking adorably through the small gap in her teeth. “I’m starving.”

Sophie rummages around the floor for her clothes, pulling on her dress and scooping her hair into a low ponytail. Caden smiles. He imagines the two of them moving around the tiny kitchen downstairs, making a meal out of whatever they can find. He imagines staying up late, talking, asking each other all kinds of questions. Silly questions, like:
What’s your favorite amusement park ride?
But real questions, too, like:
Are you afraid? What comes next? What happens after the end?

He imagines that they spend the rest of the night, and all day tomorrow, in bed. Just the two of them. He imagines that as it happens, whatever is going to happen, he’s holding her, and she’s holding him. It’s quiet, and peaceful, and all he’s ever wanted.

He steps into his jeans and throws on his shirt, following Sophie downstairs. She stands barefoot in the doorway, the pale light from the living room glowing in her hair. She holds up a finger, gesturing for him to wait as she goes to check on her mother.

He hears the faint, staccato beeping of the machines, the wheezing and clicking that is keeping the woman alive. He watches as Sophie hovers over the adjustable bed, smoothing the sheets, caressing her mother’s hair, and worries, for a moment, that he’s made a horrible mistake. Without Arthur and his help, how long will Sophie’s mother survive?