Wanderlost (21 page)

“I guess.” I shrug again.

She tilts her head to the side. “Can I ask you something? And you have to be honest.”

I hide my snort. If only she knew how far my honesty streak extended today. Which I'll tell her, of course. But for now, I really need to know what she has to ask.

She gathers a breath and asks in a small voice, “Do you think I'll be an okay politician? I don't have much to go on in terms of how I'd conduct myself in a crisis except this experience with you, and I feel like I totally screwed things up. And I just keep thinking, how can I do right by my constituents if I can't even do right by my sister?”

My emotions tumble over one another. Somehow it's still all about her. How do I get her to see things from my perspective
?

I say quietly, “You're not a bad sister.” This day has kicked my ass already, so what do I have to lose? I might as well lay it all on the line. “You don't . . . you don't exactly make it easy for a girl to stand out. But that's not really your fault. Let's just say you shine pretty brightly, so of course I wanted to be just like you, and it used to really bother me that I never measured up.”

Her eyes are wide, but, duh. Of course she's always known I idolized her. I force myself to stare into the screen. “The thing is, I don't really feel like that anymore. It's more like, I don't know. I guess . . . I guess I just want you to say that who I am is good enough for you. Even if that's not your clone.”

She's quiet for a long time as her eyes study the keyboard.
When she looks back up, they're glistening. Of course, that makes tears stream down my face. Seriously, at what point do I need to worry about dehydration from excessive crying?

“Oh, Bree. How could you think you're not?” she finally says. She swipes at her nose with a tissue. “But to be fair, I probably don't spend enough time recognizing it. I have to be honest, it feels pretty good to be put up on a pedestal by your little sister, you know? I don't know, maybe unconsciously or something, I thought if I paid too much attention to all the reasons you were cool in your own way, you wouldn't look up to me as much. I swear, I didn't realize that until just this second. You probably don't have me all that high up there at the moment, huh?”

This is hard. Never having been disappointed by my sister has meant never having to tell her she let me down, but the truth is, I feel like she did. I didn't do a good job explaining why it was important for me to come clean to Sam, but she didn't do a great job listening either. And if I want to be a grown-up, that means saying the hard stuff, right?

“I don't know, I guess I just feel like . . .”

I have a hard time finishing my thought. Elizabeth waits for a second, then prompts me. “Well, don't hold back
now
. Geez.”

I glance over at the framed certificates on the manager's wall, then back at her. Gathering a deep breath, I talk fast. “Fine. I wish you'd trust me to make my own decisions and make the right ones for me, even if it might not be the way you would handle things.”

“Even if those decisions might mean I don't have a job this fall?” She practically whispers the words.

“Yeah.” I can't look her in the face, knowing I've probably already ruined that for her. Though it's not like she isn't going to find out for herself soon when the fallout from my talk with Sam happens, so I might as well rip the Band-Aid off with Elizabeth too. Argh. This being-mature stuff is craptastic.

“About that . . .”

I fill her in on the events at the embassy.

“Oh” is all she has to say. Her eyes drop to her lap.

“Oh? That's all?”

“I mean, it's done now, isn't it?” she answers. “I think it's just going to take me a little bit to process what this means. I know I got myself into this mess, so I have to be willing to accept the consequences, but I guess . . .” She's quiet for a second. “I don't know, after all this time and everything going so well, I really thought this plan could work.”

Now it's my turn to say “Oh.” I follow up with, “But, um, I mean . . . well, I was just hoping maybe you'd understand why I felt like I had to do it. Do you at all?”

“I don't know yet. I guess, maybe.” She tries out a tiny smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

I wasn't expecting jumping jacks and cartwheels, for sure, but I thought she'd be at least a little reassuring. Especially with the way the call started and how honest we were being with each other.

Are we gonna be okay after this?

I'm about to speak again when there's some kind of
disturbance behind her. I see Elizabeth's eyes widen and her hand reach up to close her laptop, but a split second after it goes dark, it gets bright again, and Mom's face fills the screen at a sideways angle as she leans across a horrified Elizabeth.

“Aubree? Is that you? I didn't know you had access to a computer, honey. How are you? How are the mosquitos? Did you get the bug spray I sent?” She squints and moves her face closer, like that will also bring the objects on the other side of the screen—namely, me—closer.

“Aubree?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Out the window behind you? Is that—? Aubree, why is there a yacht with an enormous French flag passing behind your head?”

“This is unbelievable.
I mean that. I really
cannot
believe this,” my mom says for about the twentieth time in as many minutes. Dad is over her shoulder pacing back and forth while Elizabeth is on the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. I don't know which of us my parents are more furious with.

“I can't
believe
your sister got you into all of this, Bree. I can't
believe
you went along with it.
I can't
believe
I thought you were in Maine this whole! Entire! Time!” Mom takes a deep breath and puts her hands on either side of the laptop as she leans over and hangs her head. “Who the hell got all my cookies?”

Behind her Elizabeth covers her mouth with her hand but is smart enough not to laugh out loud. Mom straightens. “I'll tell you right now, Aubree, you are on the next flight home. The very next one.”

I sit up straight in the hotel manager's chair. “That's not fair, Mom. I can't just walk out on my job. I have six senior
citizens depending on me.”

Mom exchanges a look with my dad. “Are you hearing this, Mark? She can't even remember to water the fern in her bedroom once a week and now she's in charge of six senior citizens.”

I remember Mr. Fenton and it hits me like a punch to the gut. “Five, I mean,” I murmur, and a tear slips down my face.

Elizabeth looks up and bites her lip. “Mom, she's almost eighteen. You can't ground her like she's a ten-year-old.”

“Like hell I can't. She's living under my roof, isn't she?” Mom has a hand on her hip and has turned to face Elizabeth, who stands too and put both hands on
her
hips. She's always been way less afraid to stand up to our mom than I have. Then again, of the two of us, she's had
way
more practice asserting her independence.

“Give her a break,” she says now. “Bree's been doing an amazing job. You should hear all the stuff she's done with them—you'd be so impressed. I know for a fact I couldn't have handled things any better.”

Whatever Elizabeth is feeling toward me after our talk, it means a lot—a whole lot—that she's standing up for me with Mom and Dad. If there's one thing that unites a divided sisterhood, it's forming a solid front against the parental units. I give her a grateful smile and she returns it.

“Mom, I don't know how things are going to play out from here,” I say, “but I want to do whatever the tour wants. If they think I should stay and finish the rest of the itinerary, I'm
going to. It's only fair to them and it's the responsible thing to do.”

My father stops pacing and studies me with a thoughtful expression. He comes and stands next to Mom, putting his arm around her and squeezing before saying, “I think she's right, Nancy.”

My mom deflates. Dad looks at me and says, “I guess our baby's growing up.”

I half smile, half whimper. I miss him so much right now. He's wearing his Indians T-shirt, which means there's a game tonight. If I were there in my living room I could curl up in his arms and he'd stroke my hair while I cried and then we'd watch baseball. But I'm not and I can't. Instead I whisper, “Guess so, Dad,” and put my fingertip to the screen so he can touch it with his.

My mom sniffles too and nudges my dad out of the way. “I can see I'm outvoted, but I'm really not sure about this, Aubree. It makes me crazy to think of you all the way over there by yourself. Do you need anything? Do you have enough sunscreen?”

In spite of how miserable I am, I have to laugh. My mom will never, ever stop taking care of me, no matter how old I get or how far away I am. At the moment, that's a really reassuring thought.

The conversation loosens up from there. Elizabeth says, “Now that we have that straightened out, tell Mom and Dad that thing about the girl in the tower in the German castle.
Oh, and tell them about how small the gazebo from
The Sound of Music
is in real life!”

I know that's probably not the end of the discussion about all this—or even close to the end—but for now I dry my tears and tell my family a little about my adventures. At one point, Elizabeth winks at me when I catch her eye while Mom is asking a question, and it makes me feel as though, even if things aren't perfect between us at the moment, we'll figure it out.

I feel a small weight lift off my shoulders. Even if Sam never forgives me, at least my family will. I'll always be the baby, but maybe I don't have to take my role quite so literally.

There's only one more set of people I need to confess to.

I make myself comfortable on a bench outside and wait for someone to return, whether the seniors or Sam. As it turns out, no one does for two hours. Just as I'm getting ready to give up, the bus pulls up in front and my group piles off.

I greet them as they come down the stairs. When everyone is clustered outside the bus, I say, “Do you think we could find a place in the lobby to talk?”

Emma looks at the expression on my face. “Is this about Mr. Fenton?” she asks.

“No. This is about me.”

I wait until everyone is gathered in a grouping of chairs to one side of the lobby. I look at the trusting faces peering at me and I almost lose my nerve. I started this trip asking WWED, but today it isn't about what Elizabeth would do. Besides, I
think I might be better off from now on asking WWMFD: What Would Mr. Fenton Do? Or better yet, What Would Aubree Do?

Aubree would do this:

“I need to tell you all something and I want you to know that it's really hard for me to say to you when you've all been nothing but kind to me.”

I look at each face. Emma with her tiny frame that completely out-hiked me in Cinque Terre, and Mary with her not-so-tiny frame that she didn't let hold her back from skinny-dipping with style. Hank and Maisy, back to sitting on top of each other again. I guess the death-of-a-tourmate grace period has ended. I save Dolores for last because she's the hardest to face. I feel like we formed a bond back on that beach, but that doesn't trump the fact that she has her grandson to defend.

This sucks. If the skinny-dipping day in Cinque Terre is going down in history as a top-ten day, then surely today must be a bottom-ten day. But I have to do this. I have to.

“The truth is that I've been lying to you about who I am. My older sister, Elizabeth, is the one who was supposed to lead this tour, and I'm Aubree. I'm here in her place, but I couldn't be honest about who I was because we didn't want anyone to know Elizabeth couldn't fulfill her job duties. I was trying to help her, but helping someone shouldn't mean hurting others, and I realize that now.”

I spit it out in one breath and then hold my next one. No one so much as blinks. Are their hearing aids turned off?

“Um, did you all hear what I said?”

“We did, honey. It's just that we already knew.”

My mouth drops open. “How did you—”

I can't even finish I'm so shocked.

“Well, it turns out our Mr. Fenton, may he rest in peace, is a total lightweight when he drinks, as he did a wee bit of last night, and the people he confided in are old biddy gossips,” Hank says with a grin.

“Who are you calling old biddies, you . . . you . . . Texan, you?” Mary swings her pocketbook in his direction.

Um, what is going on here? Why are they joking around with one another and not screaming at me?

Emma watches me carefully. “It's true, Sweetpea. After his third bourbon, Mr. Fenton was confessing to crimes he committed when he was seven.”

“Crimes?” I gape at her.

“Oh, just breaking the neighbor's window with a baseball. Nothing major. But then he got to you and we couldn't shut him up,” Mary adds.

“So he told you—”

“Everything,” Emma says.

“And you told—”

“All of us,” answers Hank. He's smiling too.

“I don't understand. Why aren't any of you angry?”

“What's the point in that? Are you sorry?” This from Emma.

I nod, confused.

“Were you trying to hurt us?” Mary.

I shake my head. This is so strange.

“Was your heart in the right place?” I can't believe this is Dolores talking!

I nod again, slowly this time. But it was
her
mom
and
her
grandson and their company I messed with. Why isn't she angry?

“Don't see what the problem is, then,” says Mary. “C'mon, ladies. I don't know about you, but I'm beat. It's been one hell of a day.” She grabs Dolores and Emma by the hand and pulls them in the direction of the elevator. Hank and Maisy remain cuddling, so I turn to them.

“I—I don't know how to apologize enough, I—”

Hank looks up from gazing into Maisy's eyes. “Did you say something, darlin'?”

But as I turn from them, he tips his hat and winks at me.

Never have I been more aware that I am
not
wise to the ways of the world. But I'm also not complaining about that just now.

After more time on the bench outside, I finally give up on waiting for Sam and head upstairs. Mary was right. It has been a hell of a long day, in every sense of the word, and all I want is to crawl between my sheets.

I'm just drifting off to sleep when the phone by my bedside rings.

“Sam?” I hope against hope I'll hear his voice calling me
Dimple on the other end of the line.

There's a pause and then a sigh. “No, Aubree, this is Teresa Bellamy.” Oh. I can't get a read on her tone. Is she furious with me? How much does she know? She called me Aubree. I sit up in bed and clutch the phone, my heart pounding.

“Um, hi. Hi. Before you say anything, I just want to say how completely sorry I am. I never meant for any of this to happen. I . . .” I trail off, unsure what to say next.

Teresa's voice is kind, but resigned. “I'm sure you are. I've spoken with Sam and he's brought me up-to-date on the situation. I appreciate how hard you've worked these past few weeks, but I'm afraid I can't let you continue as guide for the remainder of the tour. You understand this, I suspect?”

I murmur a “Yes” while my heart sinks into my stomach. I expected as much, but I wasn't really prepared for it.

“Good,” she answers. “I heard you and Mr. Fenton had gotten quite close and I'm very sorry for your loss. I know you've had a difficult day, so we'll save any further discussion about this other issue for when you're back in the States, alright? I've arranged for a ticket on the eleven o'clock train to Amsterdam tomorrow and the front desk will have it printed and waiting first thing in the morning. By the time you get to the Netherlands, I'll have sorted out the date change on your flight as well, so please call in when you arrive there.”

I'm numb, nodding, until I realize she can't see that. “Okay,” I murmur.

“Get some sleep now, Aubree. We'll talk more tomorrow.”

The line goes dead and I stare at the phone in my hand for a second before replacing it in the cradle.

That could have gone so much worse. She could have screamed at me, demanded I be brought up on charges of fraud (okay, I'm not entirely sure about that, but still. It could have gone much, much worse).

She sounded as deflated as I felt. I wonder what Sam's version of events was, how much he told her about us. Anything? Everything?

My day ends the same way it began (minus the boy next to me, which is a definite key difference): curled up in bed, staring out the window, going over and over things in my mind.