Chapter Eleven #2
I wrote, Guitar on my pad, then set it to one side. Next was Dollhouse with furniture. Then: Buckets, various.
“Did I hear something about raccoons?” Liz said as she came up the stairs. “If they’re in the walls, we have a problem.”
“We found the dollhouse!” Anne told her. “And the little cakes!”
“Oh, how fun!” Liz exclaimed. “Remember how much Clark loved those tea parties?”
Clark sighed.
“What’s over there, Finley?” Liz glanced over at me. “Finding anything good?”
“There’s a guitar,” I said.
“Do you play?”
“No. But Colin does.”
I said this so easily. It was as if another mouth was forming the words. Anne turned, looking at me. “Who’s Colin?”
“My boyfriend,” I said. “I mean… ex.”
Anne gave me a sympathetic look. “This is recent?”
“Yesterday.”
She gasped. A true, sudden-intake-of-breath, hand-to-mouth expression of shock. “Oh my God! Are you okay?”
I blinked. “I—”
Immediately, she plopped down beside me, pulling me in for a hug. It was so unexpectedly kind, I felt myself start to get sobby. “It’s okay. I am here for you. How long were you together?”
“Two years,” I whispered into her collarbone.
“You poor thing!” She squeezed me tighter. “What happened?”
And then, somehow, I was telling her all of it.
There under the eaves, in the dusty dark.
New school. Idaho. The Frisbee Fam. StuCo.
All our plans, up until this week and his Disney cruise and the girl in the square from Speculator.
Anne increased the pressure of her hug each time the story worsened.
By the time I finished, she was holding on so tight, I could barely breathe.
“It’s going to be okay.” Finally, she pulled back, brushing some hair from my face. “He’ll come to his senses. You just have to be patient.”
I was surprised. Other than my wild, hoping heart, no one had suggested that all this might, in fact, be temporary. “You think?”
Slap! I looked over: This time it was Ben, with a rolled-up magazine, taking out a wasp.
“Yes,” she said, emphatically. “I know, in fact. Jonathan and I went through the same thing at the two-year mark. So did Mom and Dad.”
“It’s true,” Liz called out.
“So normal,” Anne assured me. “I read a whole book about it. It’s like a test.”
Well, I was good at those, at least. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “First there’s the infatuation, right? The wild crushing, all that. Next is the building of the connection. But that is always followed by one person having the natural instinct to pull away. It’s, like, a mastodon thing.”
“Mastodon?” Ben said. “You mean like the animal?”
“Primal,” Anne clarified. “He can’t help himself.”
“We’re not evolved from mastodons.” Ben again.
“Then,” Anne continued, ignoring this, “is the final phase: reconciliation. And by the time it happens, you’ve endured this hard thing, so you know you’re meant to be together.”
“It kind of makes sense,” I said.
“Of course it does!” She patted my hand. “Look. I know you’re upset—”
“I threw my phone in the lake,” I admitted.
“—but you just need to have faith.” She gave me a smile. “You’re playing this perfectly. Trust me.”
The thing was, I wanted to. Trust her, that is.
Just then, footsteps, climbing the stairs. A moment later, my mom popped up. “We need to talk about the books in the living room,” she told Liz. “Kasey’s wanting to keep everything.”
“Not everything!” Kasey protested from somewhere below us. “God!”
My mom sighed, then looked over, seeing me and Anne. “Finley? Are you okay?”
“She’s fine,” Anne told her, smoothing my hair again before getting to her feet. “She’s just being tested.”
“Anne?” Liz called out. “Do you want this trunk? It might make a good table, once it’s cleaned up.”
“Maybe. Let me see it.”
With that, she was crossing over to Liz, her feet thumping the wooden floor. I looked at my mom, still standing over me. She was peering at the buckets, her nose wrinkled.
“You good?” I asked.
Immediately, her face went guarded. “Of course. Why?”
My dad and I had agreed I would wait for her to come to me. This was, after all, what I’d always done, the dynamic between us long set. But then, somehow, I was saying, “It’s just… I saw some documents. From the printer.”
A beat as she processed this. Then, in real time, I saw her understand. Her eyes widened. “Finley,” she finally said, her voice a breath. “I—”
“Oh SHIT!” Clark yelled as there was an explosion of movement in the corner. “Found the squirrels.”
Anne shrieked, running to the stairs, Liz hustling behind her. “There are at least two,” Ben reported.
“Everyone, downstairs!” Liz yelled. “They might be rabid. Now!”
That got us moving. Quickly, I followed my mom down the steps. Clark cursed again. “Where’s that flashlight?”
“Got it,” Ben replied. A click. “Oh shit.”
“Okay,” Clark whispered. More movement, then several fast clicking noises. “Don’t make them angry.”
“Dude. They’re angry.”
That was the last I heard before I went through the door, onto the landing below. My mom was ahead of me, so I couldn’t see her face. It occurred to me that I’d shocked myself in that moment, revealing what I knew to her. I could only imagine how surprised she was.