Untethered (17 page)

M
organ wasn't at tutoring the following Monday, either. This time, Allie's text was frantic. Char skipped the convertible and raced over in her sedan to find the teenager standing at the edge of the parking lot, in tears.

“I'll drive today,” Char said. There was probably a value in Allie's learning to handle herself behind the wheel while upset, but that lesson could wait.

Allie nodded, and sank low in the passenger seat. “I know she's not sick. I'm certain of it.”

“Did you ask the staff?”

“They still won't tell. I've called the Crews three times and there's no answer.”

Char unbuckled and put her hand on the door handle.

“Where are you going?” Allie asked.

“To see if they'll tell me.”

Allie sat straighter. “Seriously?”

Char took her hand off the door and reached for her seat belt. She and Bradley hadn't spoken for Allie since she was in middle
school. If the girl had an issue with a grade or a sport, she spoke to the teacher or coach herself. She would “die,” she told them, if they made a call or visit to plead her case for her. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

“Don't be,” Allie said. “Go for it.”

And now Char was the one to ask, “Seriously?”

“Desperate times, CC.”

Allie smiled, and it provided all the energy Char needed to jog through the parking lot, up the stairs, and into the center.

She didn't get any further than Allie had. “I'm sorry,” the tutoring program coordinator said. “But like I told your daughter, we can't give any information out about our participants. That goes for both sides,” she added, as though this would cheer Char up. “If Morgan's family were in here asking about Allie, we wouldn't tell them anything, either.”

“Sorry, Al,” Char said when she returned to the car.

She winced as she buckled her seat belt, waiting for the sigh that showed she had pushed too far with the nickname. There were rules about teenage-adult interactions, and one of them seemed to be that during an argument or period of distance, the mere fact that the teen used the adult's nickname did not mean the adult was free to use the teen's. Colleen tended to barge ahead on matters like these, thrusting her stake in closer each time, pushing Sydney into making up on Colleen's schedule. Char didn't dare.

“Well, thanks for trying.” Allie put her elbow on the armrest and dropped her head into her hand. “I'm so worried about her.”

“I know you are.” Taking a chance, Char put a hand on Allie's back and rubbed it in slow circles. “And I think that's pretty wonderful. The way you are with her, the way you worry about her, the way you care about her.”

“You do?”

Char laughed. “You know I do.”

“Yeah,” Allie said.

She didn't say,
My mom doesn't think it's all that wonderful—she thinks it's a waste of time
, and Char didn't know if she was even thinking it. But she did know that this was one of those times when, if Allie were making a comparison, it would be Char who came out on top. Not that she was competing with Lindy, Char told herself as she pulled out of the lot.

“There's a joke in there,” Will had said after he reminded Char about the story of their mother not paying attention when he was in the school play. “Something about Lindy being Allie's whale and you being”—he snapped his fingers—“what was his name? Ahab?”

He searched around the room as though the punch line were hiding in a plant in the corner, or on top of the wooden hutch beside the table. But he gave up, shaking his head. “If I were an English major, I'd have it.”

“If you were an English major,” Char said, “you'd have read the book. And you'd know that Ahab is actually trying to
kill
the whale.”

Will lifted a hand off the table and turned it, palm to the ceiling, as he arched his brows.

“You're terrible,” she told him.

She wasn't trying to defeat Lindy. It wasn't a competition. But she would be lying if she said it didn't feel a little bit good, after the months of strain between her and Allie, to think that on this one matter—on any matter—Allie might consider Char to be the winner.

At the next traffic light, Char turned left instead of right.

“Where are we going?” Allie asked.

“To check on Morgan,” Char said.

“Really?”

Char smiled at the excitement in Allie's voice.

“You're the best, CC.”

Char smiled wider. It wasn't a competition. Of course it wasn't.

But it was still nice to win a round.

•   •   •

D
ave Crew answered the door. Char was certain she detected a frown when he saw who was there.

“Sorry to show up unannounced,” Char said. “We called, but no one answered, so . . .” She waited for him to invite them in, or to call Sarah, but he remained in the doorway, the door open only enough for him to stand in the opening. “I'm surprised to see you home this early,” Char said. “I was expecting to see Sarah.”

“She's not here,” he said. “So, I'm holding down the fort with Stevie.”

Char didn't miss the fact that he mentioned only his son and not his daughter. Neither did Allie, who was bouncing on her toes beside Char, plainly not interested in waiting for a long exchange of pleasantries.

“What about Morgan?” Allie asked. “Is she okay? They wouldn't tell me at tutoring. But she's never been gone for two weeks in a row.” She looked over Dave's shoulder as though she might see the ten-year-old standing behind him.

“Oh, she's perfectly fine,” he said. “I'm sorry you were worried.” He pressed his lips together. “I can't believe we forgot about tutoring,” he said quietly, and Char didn't know if he was talking to them or to himself.

“Can I see her?” Allie asked, looking again over his shoulder.

Char wondered when the girl would push past him, or run right over him, and storm her way into the house calling Morgan's name.

“Oh, no, sorry,” he said. “She's not here, either. She's with her mother. They're visiting relatives, out of town. That's where they've been. Why Morgan hasn't been at tutoring.”

“She's taking all that time off school?” Allie asked.

Dave's shoulders went rigid and his mouth flattened into a horizontal line. Char touched a hand to Allie's arm. The Crews were aware of Morgan's academic difficulties. They didn't need a fifteen-year-old questioning their decision to take her out of school. “Allie,” she whispered. Allie regarded her, and Char gave a quick head shake.
Don't go there
.

Dave flashed a smile at Allie and said, “Don't worry. You won't be stuck having to catch her up on everything when she gets back. Sarah put her into a dance class, and it's on Monday afternoons. We thought it might be good for her to do something active. So, her days of frustrating you at tutoring are over.”

He said something after that but Char was no longer listening. Beside her, Allie looked like she had been sucker punched. She was staring at Dave, her mouth open, face white. She teetered away from Char, who reached out and grabbed the girl's arm, pulling her upright again.

Allie moved her lips twice before sound came out. “She's . . . not . . . ?” She covered her mouth with a hand and Char wondered if the girl was about to be sick.

“Are you going to . . . ?” she asked, pointing Allie to the garden. Dave had dropped a bomb, but he didn't deserve to have the girl throw up on his front step.

Allie shook her head and moved her hand from her mouth. “I'm fine. I just . . .” She looked at Dave as though he had spoken in a foreign language and she was trying to translate it into English. “I just . . . don't . . . under—she . . . what?”

“It's quite a shock for me, too,” Char said to Dave. “I talked to Sarah the week after break and she didn't say anything about this. So I think Allie's having a hard time—”

“Yes, I'm sorry,” Dave said. “Obviously, we forgot all about tutoring. About Allie. Our mistake.” Turning to Allie, he said, “I'm really very sorry about that. And I want to thank you, on behalf of myself and Sarah and Morgan, for your time this year. You've been a tremendous blessing in Morgan's life.”

“Can we come back when she gets home?” Allie asked. “To say good-bye?”

“I'm sure she has plans to mail you an elaborate card or a poem or something,” Dave said. He moved his hand on the door and, more to himself than to Allie, said, “We really should have had her do that before she left.”

“Great,” Allie said, “but can we—”

“I'd really rather you didn't,” he said. “It will only make it more difficult for Morgan. Good-byes aren't something she's good at. I know it's not what you would like, but I think the best thing for her is to just make a clean break of it. I'm sorry.”

Allie started to protest, and Dave looked to Char for help.

You've got to be kidding me,
she wanted to yell at him.
You “forget” about tutoring, about the girl who's dedicated hours every week to your daughter, you drop this bombshell on her that she's not going to see Morgan ever again and can't even say good-bye to her, and you expect me to calm her down? To usher her quietly to the car without another word?

But yelling at him would accomplish nothing, other than to guarantee he would never again answer a call from her or Allie. If she could only speak with Sarah, she was sure she could get them to see how unfair this was to Allie. To have them agree to one last visit, no matter how brief, so the girls could say a proper good-bye.
If she wanted to leave an opening for that, though, she needed to cooperate with him now.

Char moved her hand from Allie's arm to the back of her head and ran it down the girl's hair before nudging her toward the driveway. “We understand,” she said, speaking to both Dave and Allie. “We want to do what's best for Morgan.”

Allie made a noise, but Char nudged her again, and before the girl could say more, Dave said, “Thank you, both of you,” and closed the door.

Allie walked directly to the passenger side. By the time Char was in and buckled, the girl was crying.

“I'm so sorry.” She put a hand on Allie's knee. “But I'm sure we can—”

Allie held up a palm, moved her leg away from Char's hand, and turned to the window.

“Okay,” Char said.

When they got home, Allie ran up to her room and closed the door.

Char knocked later. “Do you want any dinner?”

“No, thanks.”

Later, Char was walking past Allie's door, carrying a load of clean towels to the linen closet, when she heard a cell phone ring.

“Oh my God!” Allie yelled. “Effing telemarketer! Stop calling me!”

Char waited for the sound of a cell phone shattering against the bedroom wall, but it didn't come.

T
he following evening, Allie was late getting home from soccer tryouts. Maggie, a friend on the team, lived in the neighborhood and had been driving her each night. Allie usually walked in the door shortly after six.

At six fifteen, Char texted,
Where are you?

Despite Bradley's strict “answer every text from an adult” rule, there was no response.

At six thirty, she texted again:
A? I would like an answer + ETA, pls.

At six forty-five, she was wavering between fury and panic, and wasn't sure which to choose. She called Maggie's mother to ask if she knew where the girls were.

“Maggie's been home since a little after six,” the woman said. “I assumed she dropped Allie on the way. Let me go ask her.” Moments later, she was back. “Charlotte? Maggie says Allie wasn't at soccer today.”

Char chose panic.

She texted Allie again, her trembling fingers creating a jumble of typos.
No sccre? Whre yuo! I'n vry wirred.

Still no response.

Out of force of habit, she hit number one on her speed-dial list. “This is Bradley Hawthorn. Sorry I missed your call. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

For the past four months, the sound of his voice had soothed her, but now it only made her more afraid. He would not, in fact, get back to her. Nor would he walk through the front door any minute, put his hands on her shoulders, and tell her there was no need to worry, Allie was just fine. And he wouldn't be there to ream the girl out when she finally did walk through the door—please God—with a gym bag full of excuses:
My phone died. I got a ride with someone else and we stopped for food on the way. We didn't think we'd be that long.

Char dialed Colleen, who offered to come over.

“No,” Char said. “Thanks. But it's all me now. For the big, scary stuff, too. I can't have you or my brother holding my hand every time something goes wrong. I have to deal with this on my own.” She walked to the living room window for the fifth time and peered out. “I can't believe she skipped soccer tryouts today and didn't tell me. That's not like her.”

“Skipped?” Colleen said. “She told Sydney she wasn't going out for the team at all.”

“What?”
Char thought about last week and Allie's clean-eating-to-make-varsity excuse for declining Char's ice cream invitation

“I assumed you knew,” Colleen said. “In fact, I was planning to ask you about it at lunch on Thursday.” For almost two years, they had had a standing weekly lunch on the CMU campus. Char didn't have enough of a break between classes to get to one of the cafeterias
and back, so Colleen brought lunch and they ate in Char's broom closet of an office.

“What the hell is going on with that kid?” Char said. She paced in front of the living room window, looking out every few seconds. It was the first time she had actually wanted to see Wes's car pull up. “First these burnout kids, then her grades start sliding, and now she quits soccer before tryouts are over?

“I let her talk me out of putting her in group therapy. You know, for bereaved teens. It was right after school on Tuesdays, so she'd have to miss soccer. She was coping fine, she said, so why make her risk her spot on the team for this waste-of-time therapy? And I went along with it. Meanwhile, she was ditching soccer anyway, and spending Tuesday afternoons doing who knows what with those kids.

“Plus, her grades! Bradley would've grounded her until she got herself back to the top of the Dean's List, but I bought her my-dad-just-died-what-do-you-want-from-me line and let her keep going out at night. I didn't even ask if her homework was done—I didn't want to give her that pressure. She told me these kids were helping her get over the grief, and I wanted her to have that help.

“What about
my
grief? I lost my husband! I haven't once asked her to help me get over that. And I'd never ask that. I'm the adult here, and she's the child. I get it. But is it too much to expect that she would at least spare me from having to deal with this kind of anxiety when I already have enough on my plate? Now I've also got to spend an evening texting her and begging her to answer, calling all her teammates to see if they know where she is, pacing in my living room, wondering where she is and whether she's okay?

“I've heard things about that Justin. So help me God, if he has laid a finger on that child . . .” Char shook her head, refusing to
imagine the possibilities. Her chest felt like it might explode and she put a hand on it. She held the phone away and took several deep breaths.
I'm having trouble breathing
would bring Colleen over in a second.

Maybe she should stop venting. Maybe she was doing herself more harm than good by saying all of this out loud. But she had already initiated a crack in the dam. For months, she had been holding back her frustration, using all her strength to keep words like this from spilling over. Now that she had let some escape, there didn't seem to be a way to keep it all from spewing out. She pressed her hand into her chest and massaged as she lifted the phone back to her mouth.

“And I let her go out with him anyway,” she continued. “I thought about confronting her about it. I talked to Will for a long time about whether I should, and I decided not to. I didn't want to jump in and make all these rules for her in her own home, you know? Her dad had just died, and she's never really done anything wrong, and it didn't seem like the right time to come down hard. Plus, she gave me this line about how Kate and Wes and Justin were such good friends to her. So much more helpful than . . .” She stopped, not wanting to implicate Sydney. “How they were so helpful to her grieving process. And I bought it. I took her word for it, and I went easy on her. And what do I get in return?

“Consideration? Affection? Oh, no! She's got all these reasons why she can't spend even half an hour chatting with me before dinner, or going for ice cream. ‘I've got homework.' ‘I'm watching my sugar intake because of tryouts.' But she can spend hours upon hours with these kids, and she can go get ice cream with them and pizza.

“Maybe
I
want company! Did she ever think of that? Maybe
I'm
lonely! Maybe my brother and all my friends—except you—are a thousand miles away! Maybe there's nothing for me here, if she's going to just run past me on her way to her room and on her way out the door.

“Maybe it'd be better for me to be in D.C., or in South Carolina, where people want to spend time with me, help me with
my
grieving process. Maybe that would be better for me than hanging around here for the sake of a kid who does her best to avoid me and, when she can't, looks me right in the eye and lies to me!”

Char stopped her pacing, crossed to the couch, and flopped down. She was debating whether she should wait for Colleen to speak, or launch into another round of venting, when the front door opened and Allie called, “I'm home!”