Authors: Sarah Dessen

What Happens to Goodbye (42 page)

BOOK: What Happens to Goodbye

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I looked at my mom. “What did she say?”

“Mclean come,” she translated, ruffling Maddie’s hair as Connor took off in the other direction. “Let’s let Mclean get settled, okay? We’ll see her before you go to bed.”

Maddie looked at me. “Do you need help, though?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” She smiled, and then they were gone, the sound of their footsteps padding on the carpet gradually getting more and more distant. How long was that hallway anyway? Honestly.

After checking out the view for a fewinutes, I went back downstairs, where I now had the main floor all to myself. I walked to the overstuffed red couch, sinking into it, then, after a few minutes of feeling moronic, figured out how to turn on their flat-screen TV that hung over the fireplace. I channel surfed for little bit, then flicked it off again and just sat there, listening to the ocean outside.

After a moment, I slid my phone out of my pocket, turning it on. I had three messages.

“Mclean, it’s your father. We need to talk. I’ll have my phone with me all night in the kitchen this evening. Call me.”

No question this time: it was a demand. I moved on to the next one.

“Mclean? It’s Deb. Look, I’m really sorry about that whole
Ume.com
thing today. I wasn’t trying to . . . I didn’t know, I guess is what I mean to say. I’ll be around if you want to talk tonight. Okay. Bye.”

I swallowed, then hit SAVE. A beep, and then Riley’s voice.

“Hey, Mclean. It’s Riley. Just checking in. . . . That was kind of intense earlier, huh? Deb’s a nervous wreck. She thinks you’re mad at her. So maybe call her or something, if you get a chance. Hope you’re doing okay.”

Kind of intense,
I thought, hitting the END button and putting my phone down beside me. That was one way to put it. I had no idea how long they’d been looking at that page on Ume, if they’d really read any of my other profiles or just looked at the pictures. I could hardly remember what was on them, now that I actually thought about it. Wondering was enough to get me off the couch and down to the garage, so I could get my laptop and find out.

I flicked on the light by the door, then walked over to the SUV and grabbed my bag from the front seat. I was just shutting the door when I looked over, across the empty bay beside Peter’s car. There was another vehicle parked on the other end, next to a rack filled with hanging beach chairs and pool toys. It had a cover over it, but there was something familiar enough to make me come closer and lift its edge. Sure enough, it was Super Shitty.

Oh my God,
I thought, pulling the cover off completely to reveal the dinged red hood, dusty windshield, and worn steering wheel. I’d thought for sure that my mom had sold it, or junked it entirely. But here it was, amazingly, pretty much how I’d left it. I reached down to the driver’s-side handle, trying it, and with a creak, it swung right open. I slid behind the wheel, the familiar seat wheezing a bit beneath me, and looked up at the rearview mirror. A Gert—one of the rope and beaded bracelets we’d always bought at the surf shop in North Reddemane—was tied around it.

I reached up, touching the row of red beads dotted with shells. I couldn’t remember my last trip to North Reddemane, or how long it had been. I was trying to figure it out when, in the rearview, I saw the storage rack stretched against the garage wall behind me. It was lined with rubber bins, and from where I sat, I could see at least three of them were labeled MCLEAN.

I turned, dropping my hand, and looked again. My mom had mentioned they’d been storing stuff here, because of all the extra space, but I’d had no idea she’d meant anything of mine. I started to push myself out of the seat, then reached back up to pull the Gert loose and take it with me.

Upon closer inspection, the shel looked like Dave’s dad had been at it: bin after bin, clearly marked. I squatted down, pulling out the first MCLEAN I’d seen, and pried open the top. Inside, there were clothes: old jeans, T-shirts, a couple of coats. As I quickly picked through them, I realized they were a mix of everything I’d left stashed at my mom’s house when I was there for vacations and weekends, culled from all our various moves. Scuffed cheerleading shoes that belonged to Eliza Sweet, the pretty pink polo shirts Beth Sweet had favored. The farther down I dug, the older the things got, until I was down to my Mclean clothes, like layers of the earth being excavated.

The second box was heavier, and when I got it open I saw why: it was full of books. Novels from my bookshelf, notebooks scrawled with my doodlings and my signatures, some photo albums and a couple of yearbooks. I picked up the one on top, which had the words WESTCOTT HIGH SCHOOL embossed across the cover. I didn’t open it, or anything else, instead just putting the lid back and moving on.

The last box was so light that when I first yanked it out, I thought it must be empty. Inside, however, I found a quilt, recognizing it after a moment as the one my mom had given me the day my dad and I had left for Montford Falls. I knew I’d taken it then, and so must have dumped it off with the clothes and books at some other point and not realized it. Unlike the one on our couch, it still felt new, stiff, unused, the squares neatly stitched, not missing any threads. I put it back, pushing the box in with the others.

It was so weird to find a part of my past here, in this place that was no part of me at all. Tucked away in a bottom floor, underground, like Dave’s storm cellar. I got to my feet, sliding the Gert into my pocket, and covered Super Shitty again before picking up my bag and heading back upstairs.

My mom was still busy with the twins as I sat down at the massive kitchen island on one of about ten matching leather bar stools and booted up my computer. As it whirred through its familiar setup, I let myself, for the first time in hours, think about Dave. It had just been too hard, too entirely shameful, to think of his expression—a mix of surprise, studiousness, and disappointment—as he’d looked at that list of profiles with everyone else. A clean slate, he’d said about that moment when I knocked him down. Real. He knew better now.

I opened my browser, clicking over to
Ume.com
and typing my e-mail into the search box. Within ten seconds, the same list they’d seen was in front of me: Liz Sweet, the newest and most sparse, on top, all the way down to Mclean, the one I’d had back home in Tyler all those years ago. I was just clicking on it when I heard the chime of a doorbell from behind me.

I got up, walking over to the stairs. “Mom?” I called, but there was no answer, which, in a house this big, was not exactly surprising.

The doorbell sounded again, so I went down and peered out the window to see a tall, pretty, blonde woman in jeans and a cable-knit sweater standing on the welcome mat, carrying a shopping bag. A toddler around Maddie and Connor’s age, with brown curly hair, was on her hip. When I opened the door, she smiled.

“You must be Mclean. I’m Heidi,” she said, sticking out her free hand. Once we shook, she handed me the bag. “This is for you.”

I raised my eyebrows, opening it. “Bathing suits,” she explained. Sure enough, I saw a swatch of black, and another of pink. “I wasn’t sure what you wold like, so I just pulled a couple. If you hate them all, we have tons more at the store.”

“Store? ”

“Clementine’s?” she said as the little girl leaned her head on her shoulder, looking at me. “It’s my boutique, on the boardwalk.”

“Oh,” I said, “right. We were there earlier.”

“So I heard.” She smiled, looking down at the baby. “Thisbe here and I can’t stand the idea of anyone being in the vicinity of a heated pool and hot tub with no bathing suit. It just goes against everything we believe in.”

“Right,” I said. “Well . . . thanks.”

“Sure.” She leaned a bit to the right, looking past me. “Plus . . . it was an excuse to get over here and see Katherine, and not have to wait until the party tomorrow. I mean, it’s been ages! Is she around?”

Party?
I thought. Out loud I said, “She’s upstairs. Giving the twins a bath.”

“Great. I’ll just run up super-quick and say hello, okay?” I stepped back as she came in, bouncing the baby and making her laugh as she ran up the stairs. I heard her take the next flight, followed by a burst of shrieking and laughing as she and my mom were reunited.

I went back over to the computer, sliding into my seat again. Above me, I could hear my mom and Heidi chattering, their voices quick and light, and as I scanned all my alter egos I realized that my mom had one now, too. Katie Sweet was gone, but Katherine Hamilton was a queen in a palace by the sea, with new friends and new paint on the walls, a new life. The only things out of place were that car, covered up and buried deep, and me.

My phone rang, and I glanced down, seeing my dad’s number. As soon as I picked up, he started talking.

“You don’t walk away from me like that,” he began. No hello, no niceties. “And you answer when I call you. Do you know how worried I’ve been?”

“I’m fine,” I said, surprised at the little flame of irritation, so new, I felt hearing his voice. “You know I’m with Mom.”

“I know that you and I have things to discuss, and that I wanted them discussed before you left,” he said.

“What’s to discuss? ” I asked him. “We’re moving to Hawaii, apparently.”

“I may have a job opportunity in Hawaii,” he corrected me. “No one is talking about you having to come as well.”

“What’s the alternative? Moving back to Tyler? You know I can’t do that.”

He was quiet for a moment. In the background, I could hear voices, Leo and Jason most likely, shouting orders to each other. “I just want us to talk about this. Without arguing. When I’m not up to my ears in the dinner rush.”

“You called me,” I pointed out.

“Watch it,” he said, his voice a warning.

I got quiet fast.

“I’m going to call you first thing tomorrow, when we’ve both had a night to clear our heads. No decisions until then. Okay? ”

“Okay.” I looked out at the ocean. “No decisions.”

We hung up, and I closed my browser, folding all those Sweet girls back away. Then I walked up the stairs, following the sound of my mom’s and Heidi’s voices. I passed one bedroom after another, it seemed, the new-smelling carpet plush beneath my feet, before finally coming up on them, behind a half-closed door.

“. . . to be honest, I really didn’t think it through,” my mom was saying. “And with Peter not here, it’s that much more complicated. I think it was too much to take on, even though I thought it was what I really wanted to do.”

“You’ll be fine,” Heidi told my mom. “The house is finished, you survived the trip. Now all you have to do is just sit back and try to relax.”

“Easier said than done,” my mom said. Then she was quiet for a moment. All I could hear was splashing, the kids babbling. Then she said, “It was always a lot of fun in the past. But we’ve only been here a couple of hours and I’m already . . . I don’t know. Not feeling good about the whole thing.”

“Things will look better tomorrow, after you get some sleep,” Heidi said.

“Probably,” my mom agreed, although she hardly sounded convinced. “I just hope it wasn’t a mistake.”

“Why would it be a mistake?”

“Just because I didn’t realize . . .” she trailed off again. “Everything’s different now. I didn’t think it would be. But it is.”

I stepped back from the door, surprised at the sudden, stabbing hurt that rose up in my chest, flushing my face.
Oh my God,
I thought. Through all the moves, and all the distance, there had been one constant: my mom wanted me with her. For better or worse—and mostly worse—I never doubted that for a second. But what if I’d been wrong? What if this new life was just that, brand-new, like this gorgeous house, and she wanted to keep it fresh, no baggage? Katie Sweet had to deal with a moody, distant firstborn child. But Katherine Hamilton didn’t.

I turned, walking down that wide hallway, toward a foreign staircase in a house I didn’t know. I felt scared suddenly, like nothing was familiar, not even me. I grabbed my computer, stuffing it in my bag and taking the steps two at a time to the garage. I had a lump in my throat as I pushed open the garage door, cutting behind Peter’s massive SUV, over to Super Shitty. I pulled the cover off and threw my bag in the passenger seat, then realized I no longer had a key. I sat there a second, then, on a hunch, reached down beneath the floor mat, rooting around. A moment later, I felt the ridges on my finger, and pulled out my spare. Waiting for me, all this time.

The engine cranked, amazingly, and as it warmed up, I popped the trunk and got out. It wasn’t easy fitting all three bins in the small cargo space, but I managed. Then I found the garage door button, hit it, and climbed back in.

The street was dark, no cars in sight as I pulled out into the road. I had no idea where I was, but I knew how to get where I was going. I put on my blinker and turned right, toward North Reddemane.

Fifteen