Walk Me Home (29 page)

“No, that crashed. But there’s an Internet café. And the library has computers. So I can check my e-mail, and they’ll never know.”

She glanced at Jen’s shocked face again, then back at the concrete. “OK,” Teddy said. “It’s a deal.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

“I love you, Teddy.”

“Hey, you gonna be OK?”

“I guess. I have to be. What choice do I have?”

“It’s not a real emergency? Because I can hear something’s wrong.”

“Nope. Not a real emergency.”

“Well. If it ever is, I’m your guy.”

“I know that, Teddy. I know you are. That’s why I love you.”

“Take care, Carly.”

“Bye, Teddy.”

She hung up the phone gently. Cradled it back into position. As if it were tender. Easily wounded. As though it were the phone receiver that needed love and protection. Not her.

She looked up at Jen, who scooted her bike closer.

“Mom would kill you if she knew you were talking to Teddy.”

“I know. Don’t tell her.”

“You OK?”

“No.”

“How’s your back?”

“Bad.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

Carly sighed. Leaned forward. Jen lifted the back of Carly’s shirt. Carly heard Jen’s breath suck in. A deep gasp.

“It’s all scraped up, and it’s got your shirt all bloody. And it’s getting really bruised really fast.”

“Don’t tell Mom.”

“About Teddy?”

“About anything.”

“Oh. Um…I’m sorry, Carly. I already told her you got hurt. I called her at work and told her. She wants us to come there. Not go home. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you wouldn’t want me to tell her. Why wouldn’t you want me to tell her?”

“I just think it might make things even worse with Wade.”

“But
I
told on him.
You
didn’t. I’ll tell him it was me. She’ll tell him it was me.”

“I guess.”

“Come on. Let’s go over to Mom’s work.”

Carly pedaled behind Jen, trying to keep up. But the pain on every push overwhelmed her. Was she in a lot more pain now than on the ride into town? Or had she really managed to keep that down, where it couldn’t get in her way?

That’s when she looked down at her left wrist. It had swelled to two or three times its normal size. She could see the perfect prints of Wade’s fingers in a fresh purple bruise.

Carly’s mom towed her into the break room in the back of the Stop-n-Shop Market. By the elbow. Jen tumbled along behind.

“I’m sorry, Lara,” she said to the only other employee in the room. “I know she’s not supposed to be in here…”

“It’s OK,” Lara said. “Do what you gotta do.”

“It’s her back,” Jen said.

“And what about this? This is nothing?”

She held Carly’s left arm up for Jen to see.

“Oh. I didn’t know that part.”

Carly felt herself turned around. The back of her shirt lifted. Again.

“Shit,” her mom whispered on a long exhale.

Carly heard Lara suck in her breath. Pretty much the way Jen had.

“Carly.” Her mom spun her back around and grabbed her hard by both shoulders. It hurt. Her shoulders and her back. Both. “Listen up. Do I need to be taking you to a hospital?”

Carly shook her head.

Her mom’s eyes snapped shut.

“My eyes are closed, Carly. I can’t see you. I can’t see you nod your head or shake it. So you have to talk to me. You want to stop talking to me again a minute later, fine. But right now, talk to me. Do we need to get you to an emergency room or an urgent care place?”

“No,” Carly said.

“You sure?”

“No.”

Carly’s mom opened her eyes.

“You’re not sure?”

“I think it’ll be OK, but I’m not sure.”

“Then I’ll ask you again tomorrow. OK?” Carly nodded.

“Shit. Lost her again.”

“You need to go home, Jocelyn?” Lara asked. “Take care of this? We’ll get by.”

“That’s not fair to you and Tom.”

“We’ll manage. Really.”

“I can’t afford that, though.”

“Jocelyn. I think this might be more important.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, of course. You’re right. This is more important.”

“They just keep going around and around in a circle,” Jen said.

They lay close together on a twin bed in the corner of the tiny house. Behind a standing screen. Both the screen and the bed were on loan from Wade Two. The fold-out couch hadn’t panned out because it wouldn’t fit behind a screen.

Carly didn’t know how long they’d been listening to the fight in the bedroom. Twenty minutes maybe.

“Why don’t they just stop if they can’t say anything new?”

“Because she’s not going to leave him over this,” Carly said. “So she has to make it into something she doesn’t have to leave him over. And she’s not there yet.”

“Did you do what he said? Bait him about being unemployed?”

“He started it.”

“Geez, Carly. Are you trying to get killed?”

“
He
was baiting
me
. Until I couldn’t take it anymore. Just like he says I did to him. But when
I
lost
my
temper, all I did was talk.”

“I know he was lying about how you just fell back. I saw him push you.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“Yeah. But she kept saying it might be hard to tell the two apart. You know. Just by looking.”

“Great. See? What did I tell you? She’s not going to leave him over this.”

After another half hour of muffled shouting and a few moments of ghostly quiet, Carly’s mom stomped into the room, pulled aside the blind, and turned on the lamp by their bed.

Carly winced and covered her eyes.

“I’m considering this half your fault, Carly. I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, talking to him like that about his job situation. Don’t you know a man doesn’t feel like a man when he’s not working? When somebody else has to provide? This is at least half on you, girl. But I made it real clear he’s never to lay a hand on you again. And if he does, we’re out of here.”

“We know,” Jen said. “We heard every word of it.”

“You keep out of this, Jen. But I know you, Carly. And I know you’d use that as a way to get what you want. So here’s the deal. You never say a word to Wade again. Ever. About anything. Got that? You break that rule, you’re on your own. You keep your mouth shut, I’ll protect you. OK?”

Carly said nothing.

“A nod will do.”

Carly nodded. Barely.

“Right. Should’ve known. Keeping her mouth shut is what Carly does best.”

She stomped away again.

“Turn off the light, Jen, OK? It’s in my eyes.”

“OK, Carly. You want some aspirin?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Funny Mom didn’t think of that.”

“Not really,” Carly said. “I don’t think it’s so funny. Mom thinks about men. And not too much else.”

NEW MEXICO

April 30

Carly woke suddenly. Sat up in the dark. She looked over to find Jen already awake. Sitting on the edge of the narrow twin bed.

Something had gone crash in the bedroom.

“How long have they been fighting?” Carly asked.

“I think it’s a new record. I can’t believe you slept through it.”

“Can you tell what it’s about?”

“Not really. All I’ve got so far is Mom thinks Wade’s a bastard, and he thinks he’s totally justified. I still can’t really tell
why
she thinks he’s bastard.”

“Was it ever in doubt?”

Jen didn’t answer. Or laugh. Or even smile.

“What time’s it? Do you know?”

“Last time I went in the kitchen it was one thirty. So maybe two.”

Carly sat up on the edge of the bed next to her sister and listened.

The bedroom door flew open, banging against the wall. Both girls scooted straight backward on the bed. They couldn’t see through
the screen, so they had no idea what was hurtling in their direction. But they could hear.

The screen flew away and fell to the floor with a startling bang.

Their mother stood over the bed.

“Get dressed, girls, and get your things together as fast as you can. We’re leaving.”

“No,” Wade said. “I don’t think you are.”

They all three looked up to see him standing with his back to the door, that look of eerie calm in his eye. Carly could see just enough of his face in the spill of light from the bedroom to ice every inch of her torso.

Nothing moved, and no one spoke for a long time. Or at least it seemed long. Carly looked at her mother’s face and saw fear. She tried to remember if she had ever seen her mother visibly afraid of anything. Nothing came to mind.

“Is that a threat, Wade? Are you telling me you’re going to do something bad to me or my girls if we try to walk out that door?”

Time slowed to a crawl, leaving Carly unable to tell if five seconds or five minutes had passed. Probably five very slow seconds.

“Jocelyn,” Wade said. “Baby. This is me, baby. This is us. Don’t walk out on us. After all we’ve been for each other? I can’t believe you’d walk away. We just need to talk is all.”

“We been at it for hours, Wade.”

“Yelling. Gimme an hour talking. Lemme remind you what we mean to each other. Then—I swear—you wanna walk out that door, I won’t stand in your way.”

Another time freeze.

Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, Carly thought. She almost said it out loud. But she stopped herself because it might set him off. She could feel the frozen energy of Jen just inches from her right shoulder.

Carly watched the air go out of her mom. Watched her grow smaller and less rigid. She slumped down onto the couch.

“Talk, then.”

“Not in front of them.”

“Then where’d you have in mind?”

“We’ll go for a drive. Like we used to. Remember how we used to go out for a drive and just talk?”

Nothing moved for a long minute. This time Carly counted off the seconds. So time couldn’t play any tricks on her. She counted to fifty-seven.

Their mom rose to her feet.

“Girls, I’m going for a drive with Wade. Be back in an hour. While I’m gone, you gather up all your stuff. Get it ready to go. I know we don’t have boxes and nothing much in the way of suitcases, so use some kitchen trash bags, or just stack it all together so it’s easy to take out to the car. OK?”

“Sure, Mom,” Jen said.

“OK,” Carly said.

Wade and their mom walked out the door.

“God, that’s so depressing,” Jen said. “I can’t believe that’s all our stuff. What happened to all the stuff we used to have?”

“A lot got left in Tulare. And I think Wade threw stuff away. I heard him tell Mom once that when we leave stuff around, he throws it away and we never know the difference.”

“Geez. Thank God we’re getting out of here.”

“Maybe,” Carly said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“She wouldn’t be having us get our stuff ready if we weren’t going.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m so sleepy I can’t stand it. I’m going back to bed.”

“Yeah, go ahead. What time’s it, anyway? It feels like more than an hour already.”

“I don’t know. Look in the kitchen.”

Carly squinted at the clock above the stove. It was nearly four thirty.

Carly sat bolt upright in bed. Light poured through the front windows. The screen still lay flat on the floor. The bedroom door hung open. Carly could see that the bedroom was empty.

She shook Jen by the shoulder. Hard.

“Huh? What?”

“Jen, wake up.”

Jen sat up blinking. “What? What time is it?”

“I don’t know. But it’s light. And they’re still not back.”

Nothing happened for a long time. Neither spoke. Carly didn’t know about Jen, but she needed time for possibilities to click together in her brain.

Jen spoke first. “You don’t think they just took off and left us, do you?”

“No. Mom wouldn’t do that. Would she?”

“I don’t think so. But then, where are they?”

“I don’t know, Jen.”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do we go to school?”

“I’m not going. Not unless they show up between now and then.”

They didn’t.

It was after noon. They sat at the table, eating peanut butter sandwiches. Well, Carly was eating her sandwich. Jen was mostly playing with hers. Peeling the top slice of bread back and watching the way the peanut butter separated. Over and over.

Jen hadn’t been talking much. So when she spoke up suddenly, it made Carly jump.

“What are we going to do if they never come back?”

“I don’t think we should talk about that yet.”

“OK,” Jen said. “I’m sorry, Carly.”

“Maybe we should call the hospitals. Or the highway patrol or something. See if there’ve been any accidents. Maybe they’re in the hospital and can’t get back.”

Jen had taken to biting her right thumbnail. She went at it again the minute she’d finished talking.

“They’d call us from the hospital, though. Wouldn’t they?”

“If they could,” Jen said.

“I thought about calling. But it scares me. Because let’s say we call. And it turns out there was an accident. We’re letting them know we’re underage and we’re here alone without them. They might come over and put us in a home or something.”