Untethered (10 page)

I
t was Thursday, the day after Lindy left town, when Allie started lying.

She wanted to go out with a group of kids from school that weekend, she told Char.

“Kids I know?” Char asked. It was the first question Bradley always asked.

“Mostly.”

They had just finished dinner—turkey tetrazzini and salad courtesy of Colleen, who wouldn't take “Our freezer is full. I think we're all set for meals for a while” for an answer. Allie rose and carried her dishes to the kitchen. Following, Char opened the dishwasher and started loading.

“Who are the ones I don't know, and would we—would I—approve?” Bradley's second question.

“Kate. Wesley. Justin. You know Kate.”

Char did, but she didn't particularly like her. Most of the time, from what she could tell, Allie and Sydney didn't really like her, either. Kate was one of those always-on, overly dramatic girls who
seemed to focus half of her energy on gossip—reporting it, exaggerating it, sometimes inventing it.

The other half, she spent on assuring she would have a starring role in the gossip. “The party was so wild!” “Half the science class skipped!” “Skinny-dipping—the whole group!” She liked to be able to follow all of these with “And I was there!”

They were standing side by side at the counter now, loading dishes into the washer. Char, a plate in her hand, turned to face Allie.

“I thought you and Sydney had sort of cooled a little on Kate. Last time you mentioned her, she had quit field hockey and started hanging out with kind of a bad crowd. Wasn't that her?”

Allie lifted their glasses and stepped around Char to the sink. Her back to Char, she turned on the tap and took too long rinsing. “She's . . . better now.”

“Hmm. And the guys? Are they in your grade? I don't remember those names. I'd approve?”

Allie rinsed the glasses a second time. “They're seniors. But yes, you'd approve.”

Char wanted to cackle at the lie. No way would she approve of the fake-ID-owning, casino-going, college-partying Justin, whom Allie and Sydney had been whispering about on Sunday, and Allie knew it. But given how Char had learned these things about him, she could hardly call the teenager on it. And anyway, no matter what the boys had done before, Char was certain they wouldn't be doing it tonight. Allie would never go along with it. “So, is this a double date?” Char asked.

“No,” Allie said, “everyone's just friends.”

And that was lie number two. Kate and Wesley had been “a thing” since before Christmas. Again, though, Char's source—
eavesdropping while Allie and Sydney chatted in the backseat of Char's car after school one day—wasn't one she could trot out. And it was possible that the Kate-Wesley romance had ended.

“Where are you thinking of going?” Char asked.

Allie seemed to take a long time to think about her answer. She rinsed the glasses a third time. “A movie. So, can I?”

“Sure,” Char said.

•   •   •

A
llie told Char that Kate and the boys needed to pick her up at nine to make it to the movie on time. Char asked her to have them come a little before then, so she could meet them. Bradley insisted on meeting anyone Allie went out with, girl or boy, and certainly if she was going to be driving with them.

At eight fifty-five, a car pulled into the driveway and honked, and Allie looked at Char, imploring. The two times Allie had been out with a boy, Bradley warned her that if her date wasn't prepared to walk up to the door and into the house and shake hands with her father, he wasn't prepared to take his daughter out.

“Your dad would want—” Char began.

“But Kate's with them,” Allie said, “and you know her. And I told you, it's not a date.”

“I'll walk out with you and say hi through the car window,” Char said, compromising. Allie smiled her relief and Char felt instantly guilty at being disloyal to Bradley.

Outside, Char cringed at the rap music pulsing from the car in her driveway. Kate, in the front passenger seat, put down her window. “Hi, Mrs. Hawthorn!” she sang, before turning to the boy beside her. “Wes! Music!”

“What? Oh, right.” He turned the volume down a negligible amount and lifted his cell phone from the console.

“Hi, Kate,” Char said.

Leaning down to window level, she peered inside. The stench of cigarette smoke was so strong it brought tears to her eyes and she instantly regretted saying Allie could go. There didn't appear to be any lit cigarettes, but even if there was no secondhand smoke for Allie to breathe on the drive, the idea of her riding around in a moving ashtray made Char feel ill.

She told herself to calm down. One night wasn't going to irreparably harm the girl. Forcing herself to smile, she glanced from Wes in the front to the boy she assumed was Justin in the back. Both wore the Mount Pleasant teenage boy's winter uniform of jeans, plaid shirt, and work boots. If not for the fact that Wes had dark hair and Justin's was blond, it would be difficult to tell them apart.

“Hi, boys. I'm Allie's stepmom.”

Wes raised his chin. “Hey,” he said, without looking up from his phone. Justin, who was slouched in the backseat, raised a hand in greeting before leaning over to push the back door open for Allie.

“So, to the movie and straight back, right?” Char asked.

She directed her question to Wes, since he was the driver, but he was clicking at his phone and appeared not to have heard her. Char peered into the back, but Justin was now on his phone, too. She opened her mouth to try again, but before she could speak, Allie spoke from the back.

“Yes, straight back. See you at midnight.” She smiled in the strained way of a person pleading for the conversation to be over.

Char felt her chest tighten. She had heard Allie say the movie didn't start until nine thirty, but she hadn't put together the entire
equation—that it wouldn't let out until two hours later, and the girl wouldn't be home until twelve. Allie's curfew was eleven. Char couldn't believe she had said yes to this, or that Allie had asked her to.

She should tell the girl to get out of the car and march right back into the house, she thought. That's what Bradley would have done. Char took a step toward the back of the car, and Allie's window. She would send the other kids on their way and have a talk with her stepdaughter. Remind her about the rules of the house, and how they hadn't changed just because its population had.

When she got to Allie's window, the girl was leaning toward Justin, laughing at something on his phone. Justin, laughing too, nudged Allie with his shoulder, and Char could see Allie's face flush with the contact. Noticing the figure outside her window, Allie sat up and lowered it. Still laughing, she said, “What is it, CC?”

“I think you should . . .” Char began, but she couldn't go through with it. The girl had just lost her father. It was a wonder she was up for socializing at all. Char should be jumping for joy that Allie was going out to a movie with friends, even ones with a less than pristine reputation.

“I think you should . . . uh, have enough money,” she said, “but I thought I'd check. My purse is just inside, if you need me to give you more.”

“I'm good. But thanks.”

Char was debating what to say next when Kate sang, “Bye, Mrs. Hawthorn! Have a nice night,” and the car started rolling backward. Allie raised her window, holding a hand up to Char for a second before turning back to Justin and his phone. The car eased out of the driveway, then gunned forward and raced down the street.

W
hen pacing around the living room didn't make Allie reappear instantly, Char ordered herself to do something productive. She had edits due on a novel the following week, and notes to prepare for her Thursday CMU lecture. In her pre-Bradley life, nothing had calmed her like work. She could open a manuscript or long magazine article, red pencil in hand, cup of tea nearby, and lose herself for hours, forgetting whatever cares she had before she turned the first page.

Not that she had all that many cares back then. She had friends, but they were as married to their jobs as she was—a prerequisite, it seemed, for being young and living in D.C. There were boyfriends, but she had realized fairly early with each that he wasn't “the one,” and had never thought it worthwhile to keep someone around after that. She had never needed company that badly.

She stopped her pacing and put the kettle on. When her tea was ready, she carried it into Bradley's office, sat at his desk, and opened her laptop. These days, her red pencils resided in the drawer next to Bradley's mechanical ones, put out of business by the “track
changes” software she now used to make edits. She knew some editors who still printed everything and marked up the pages by hand, and she could see the appeal. There was something so satisfying about holding a marking pencil, feeling the pressure of its tip against the page, seeing the colorful trail of corrections it left behind.

Sliding the drawer open, she eyed the neat row of pencils and considered how tonight, when she was eager to occupy her brain with as many extra tasks as possible, it might be a good idea to resort to her old ways. But her clients didn't want a stack of papers in the mail, or the postage expense, and she wasn't sure she had enough printer ink to print out the novel she was planning to work on.

Plus, she reminded herself, she didn't need to find extra distraction. The work itself had always been enough—the words, the story, whether fact or fiction. In the case of the manuscript she was working on tonight, the plot, the character arcs, the tension, would fill every space in her brain, leaving her no room to worry about teenagers and movies and secondhand smoke.

The protagonist, a corporate spy, was about to make off with a file that would bring a company's ethical transgressions to light, sending its stock into a nosedive. If only the spy could make it down the elevator and through the lobby without detection. Char slid the drawer closed, reached for her laptop, and clicked open the manuscript.

A fast-paced tale about corporate spying would keep her from obsessing about what Allie was doing, she told herself. Whether it was, in fact, a movie theater they were headed for, and not the casino or some wild frat party. Whether she would be home by midnight as promised. Or whether, despite the promises the girl had made, she was actually—

Char lifted her cell phone from the corner of the desk and pressed speed dial number three. Bradley was number one, and she had no plans to replace him. Will had offered to call the phone carrier and request a compassionate release from Bradley's portion of their contract, but after hearing that Allie had been calling to hear her father's outgoing message, too, Char had put Will off. Allie was number two. Will was three and Colleen, four.

As Char waited for her brother to pick up, she wondered how she would reshuffle the numbers when she and Allie finally weaned themselves from calling Bradley's number. Should Allie be number one, even though she might be gone soon? She was still debating the proper speed dial order when Will answered. In a rush, she told him what had happened with Allie, Kate, the boys, and the ashtray on wheels.

“Should I have made her get out of the car?” she asked.

“So,” he said, “this is you, burying yourself in your work so you won't spend the next few hours worrying about her?”

“Don't answer a question with another question.”

“Am I allowed to answer insanity with insanity? Come on, Char. It's a movie. She's not marrying the guy.”

“Maybe it's a movie. Maybe it's drinks at the casino. Maybe it's a wild party at one of the frats—”

“Or maybe it's a movie,” he said. “Maybe she didn't change from straight-A, responsible, honest kid to partying, drinking, gambling liar in two short weeks. Maybe what you think you heard her and Sydney saying about this Justin kid is different from what they actually said. Which, I believe, is one of the reasons your wise husband encouraged you to break your human wiretap habit. Hearing part of the story is almost never a good thing, especially when it comes to teenagers.

“Or maybe she did lie. But so what? There isn't a teenager on the planet who doesn't bend the truth a little now and then. If that's what happened tonight, I'm guessing it's because she thought if she told you the truth about these guys, you'd flip out. Sort of hard to blame her, since . . .” He cleared his throat dramatically.

“You're no help,” she said.

He laughed. “I'm sorry. Let's hang up, and then you can call me again. I'll freak out and tell you to dial nine-one-one. Is that what you're looking for?”

“I'm looking for—”

“You seem to be looking for reasons to drive yourself crazy. And congratulations, by the way, because I think you've accomplished it. Let it go. At least until it's after midnight and she's still not home.”

Char checked the clock on her laptop. It was ten. “That's two hours from now!”

“Think of all the work you can get done in two hours.”

Char regarded the open manuscript on her computer and frowned. “I'm not sure I'm in the right frame of mind to read about secrecy and lies.”

“Then work on something else. Or watch TV. Or read a book. Stop obsessing.”

“I'm going to just ask her,” Char said. “When she gets home. I'm going to just come right out and confront her about it. Tell her what I know about Justin—”

“What you
think
you know,” Will said, “but in fact do not know, to any degree of certainty, about Justin.”

“And ask her,” Char continued, “to level with me. Was this a date? Is she expecting to go on more dates? Because if that's the case, he's going to have to get out of the car and ring the bell. And
look me in the eye, and call me by name. That's what Bradley would have made him do. Isn't that what I should do? And who knows what Lindy would require.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Will asked. “Confront her like that? Question her friends? Lay down the law? Because it doesn't sound like you. Like how you've been with her all this time.”

“God, no,” she said. “It's not what I want.”

When a situation called for an iron fist, Bradley had never been afraid to slam his down. Char's role was more that of advisor:
Are you sure you want to do that?
Bradley was 100 percent master:
No way in hell are you doing that.

There was a certain level of politeness in a step relationship. Char was as involved in Allie's life as Bradley was—more, sometimes, because of his work schedule. But there was no promotion from the position of Very Involved Stepparent—it was as high a title as she could ever achieve. Because of that, there was a certain line she had never crossed. Allie hadn't crossed it, either.

Char didn't bark out orders—she made requests. Allie didn't mutter under her breath—she complied with Char's wishes, usually with a “Sure thing, CC” tacked on. One of the stepparenting books Char had read advised that a stepmom's role should be that of “gracious host.”

You might politely request that your guest please clear her own dishes from the table, thank you very much, but you certainly wouldn't command it. And if she didn't follow through, you would simply do it yourself, and go about your day. No lecture, no loud sigh of disappointment. And in return, no “You're so mean!” No slammed doors. No silent treatment.

It certainly wasn't that Char had shirked all responsibility for
Allie while Bradley was alive. She hadn't gotten too involved in the first year, but as time went on and she began to spend more time alone with her stepdaughter, she figured out how to walk the fine line of being the adult without acting like the parent. She had no problem enforcing Bradley's “No TV until homework is finished” rule in the afternoons before he got home from work. Or reminding the child to brush her teeth before bed, or that she still had chores to finish so her request to go out with friends had better wait until those were done. And on occasions when Allie had been rude to her stepmom and her father wasn't there to chastise her for it, Char had no trouble telling the girl she didn't appreciate the comment, or gesture, or glare, and asking for an apology.

But there was a difference between all of that—“parenting light,” Char described it to Will—and how Bradley interacted with Allie. Reminding a child about rules set by a parent was one thing. So, even, was taking the additional step of enforcing those rules in the parent's absence. Any babysitter would do that, and any child would understand it.

Devising the rules, on the other hand, was both the exclusive privilege and burden of the parent. Char wasn't sure any child would understand it if someone else tried to take over the task.

“I get that things have changed,” Char said. “I'm the only adult in the house now. I'm responsible for her. At the same time, though, the house I'm referring to was Allie's before it was mine. Who am I to sit her down and tell her how things are going to be in her own home?

“I get that she's fifteen and I'm forty-five, but still. It seems disrespectful to me. And I wouldn't blame her if she took it that way.” She groaned. “Is that a total cop-out, though? I mean, I called you because I'm worried about her.”

“Misplaced worry,” Will said, dragging out the first word, “is no reason to do something rash. We're talking about a good kid here, who's never done anything wrong. And look, even if your worry isn't misplaced, and she messes up a bit, so what? The girl's father just died, and now she has to figure out where she wants to live—in her hometown, with everything familiar to her but no bio parent, or on the other side of the country, with her mom, but without any of her friends, or you.

“I mean, my God. If the worst thing the kid does in reaction to everything she's going through is to spend a weekend or two, or even the last part of a semester, reeking of cigarettes and going to a few parties she shouldn't go to with some kids who aren't on the honor roll, you should probably consider yourself lucky.”

“Lucky?”
Char said. “I wouldn't call that lucky, if she—”

Will sighed. “In the words of my niece, ‘OMG.' Fine. If you don't think you should give her any leeway here, then don't. Confront her when she gets home. Tell her there's a new sheriff in town, and lay down the new law. Tell her she's not seeing the kid again. Tell her—”

“No,” Char said. “You're right. I'm overreacting. She's never done anything irresponsible before, and like you said, even if she does act out a bit, in reaction to everything she's dealing with, it's understandable. There's no reason to make any changes right now.”

“Good,” Will said. “Look, you're good with her. You have an instinct. Don't forget that.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That makes me feel less incompet—”

“Don't say it,” he interrupted. “Not one negative word. That's my sister you're talking about.”

Char smiled and pressed her chin into the phone, as though the
plastic rectangle were her brother's cheek. “It's late. I've kept you long enough. Thanks again, Will.”

“Anytime,” he said. “So, you've now got ninety minutes. And inquiring minds want to know: are you going to work or pace?”

“Work,” she said.

Which she tried for five minutes after they hung up. Then she paced.