Chapter Seventeen
How is it only noon?” I asked.
“Restaurant time,” Clark told me. “Like dog years, but faster.”
I yawned, covering my mouth with my hand. Despite the coffee I’d pounded, I could feel the past few days catching up with me. Like the hummingbird I’d seen that night in Kasey’s garden, trying to be still while still buzzing, buzzing.
In the end, my mom hadn’t put up much of a fight about me staying on.
As odd of a request it might have seemed to her—and she did seem momentarily speechless, initially—she’d save time by not having to drop me back home.
Plus Liz and Kasey had both been fine with it when she checked with them, as was my dad.
Now the screen door opened behind us and Kasey stuck her head out. “Good news. The truck got up to the house. Now we just have to get it back out.”
“Get the cardboard just in case,” Lana told her.
“On it. There are some boxes in the storeroom.”
“I’ll break them down,” Clark said, getting to his feet.
Beep. Kasey pulled her phone out of her pocket, glancing at it. “Okay, Liz says they are moving fast and I should get there ASAP,” she reported. “Also, don’t talk to her about the wedding.”
“Who?” Clark asked.
As if in response, a small blue car bumped around the building, pulling up in front of us. Anne was behind the wheel. Just like that, I remembered the bridesmaid drama from earlier.
“Hey,” Lana called out as she killed the engine. “What’s happening with the—”
“They don’t like the dresses,” Anne finished for her, not even fully out of the car yet.
She was in shorts and a baggy LAKE NORTH YACHT CLUB T-shirt, sneakers on her feet.
“With three weeks and two days to go. I sent them the links back at Christmas, asking for feedback. Got none. Why would they wait until now?”
“Because they’re bitches,” Lana told her. “Just like that wedding planner.”
“Lana,” Kasey said.
“And then,” Anne continued, “when I pointed out that I’d picked those dresses specifically to complement mine, they started talking about how maybe I should change too! With three weeks and two days to go!”
“How long?” Clark asked under his breath.
“Clark.” Kasey again.
“I can’t get another dress!” Anne continued, her voice rising in notches with each word. “I already gave up my venue and my flowers. What’s left?”
“Okay, stop.” Lana put a hand up. “Take a breath. You’re going to pass out.”
We all watched as she sucked in air. I did too, like it would help. Then we exhaled. I felt better. Anne burst into tears.
“Oh dear,” Kasey exclaimed as Ben, who’d been sitting on a nearby crate, disappeared inside. A moment later, he returned with a glass of water, packed with ice, which he handed to Anne. She took it, then stood there, still crying.
“No offense,” Lana said to her. “But weddings really seem to suck.”
“This one is supposed to be perfect!” Anne burbled. The glass dripped.
Bzzzzzz. Kasey looked at her phone. “Uh-oh. Liz says they’re trying to take the dollhouse. Unreal. I put the blue sticker on myself!”
“The dollhouse?” Anne demanded. Suddenly, she was not only somehow composed but enraged. “Nope. Not happening.”
She put down the glass with a clank on the dock, then stomped down the ramp. Lana gave me wide eyes before scrambling after her. I followed. We barely made it into Anne’s car before she pulled away.
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered as I yanked at my seat belt. After the briefest of pauses to check traffic, we shot across to the driveway and started bumping over roots. “It’s supposed to be our choice what stays and goes. They can’t just take everything!”
“Okay,” Lana said, grabbing the handle over her window, “I don’t think this is just about the dollhouse.”
“Why is everyone so awful?” Anne continued, over this. “Why?”
I had nothing, so I waited for Lana to respond. But she just held on tighter as we came over the last hill.
The box truck was in front. As Anne pulled up, two guys in shorts were taking a red overstuffed couch up a ramp into the open back of it.
“The love seat!” she exclaimed, jerking to a stop. She opened her door. “WAIT!”
Liz came hurrying down the stairs, holding up her hands. “It’s okay! There’s a mouse nest in it!”
“Can you stop?” Anne asked the movers anyway as she got out. “Please?”
The guy on the end of the love seat already in the truck, whose T-shirt was ringed with sweat, sighed. “If y’all are going to be like this with everything, we’ll be here till September.”
But they did pause long enough for Liz to show Anne the nest herself. As Lana and I got out, Kasey pulled up in the truck beside us, Ben and Clark hopping out from the bed.
“Is that the piano bench?” Anne asked, coming back down the ramp. I turned: It was. “You guys! No!”
“Did someone call Jonathan?” Kasey asked quietly.
“On it,” Lana replied, putting her phone to her ear.
“Come inside and have some lemonade,” Liz urged her daughter. “I’ll show you everything we’re keeping.”
“The dollhouse better be there,” Anne grumbled.
“It is.”
As they climbed the stairs, disappearing inside, Clark snorted. “I love pissed-off Anne.”
Just then, two more guys came out carrying the living room couch, a box marked GLASSWARE on top of it. I looked at Lana, remembering the nights I’d found her there. I wondered if the beds in my room were next. Probably should check.
On my way in, I passed a guy in a backward baseball cap and earbuds, carrying the table that had held the old phone. Angela and Janine were in the kitchen, packing up utensils and pots.
“Wait!” Kasey hurried over, taking a frying pan out of a box. “This is mom’s cast iron. Talk about history. We’re talking thousands of pancakes.”
“Did you make a decision about all these gardening books?” Liz hollered from the living room.
As Kasey tucked the skillet under one arm and headed that way, I went to my room.
Both beds were still there, although the bureau was gone.
My suitcase, which Liz had brought back from the Egg earlier, now sat on the end of the bed.
No blue sticker, but I considered slapping one on anyway. I was, after all, staying.
A few hours later, the pace had noticeably slowed.
All the big stuff—furniture, most of the boxed items, the appliances—had been loaded up and carted away.
In the end, the truck did make it down the driveway, though not without incident: At one moment, it tilted so wildly after hitting a root that Kasey, who’d walked down to oversee things, swore it was going over.
By five, those of us who remained—me, Lana, Clark, Ben and Anne—were on the porch, surrounded by the items that had made the cut: dollhouse, the table and chairs where we sat, and photo albums.
“Good Lord,” Lana turned the one in her lap to show us a picture. “Look at Kasey.”
“Nice hair. I can top it, though.” Ben held up his own book. “Check out Clark in acid-washed jeans.”
“I was six,” Clark pointed out.
“Still wore them.” Lana pulled out her phone, snapping a picture of it. “And now it’s forever.”
I bent closer, taking in both the jeans and the woman standing beside him, who had long red hair and glasses. “That’s your mom?” I asked Clark.
“Yep,” he replied. “Also in acid wash, for what it’s worth.”
“Finley, is this your dad with Cat, rocking a mohawk?” Ben asked.
“What?”
He moved his chair closer so we were elbow to elbow, then pulled the album so it was between us. This made it a little hard to focus, honestly, even though the hair in the shot was impressive. Definitely not my dad. “Nope.”
“That’s high school. Her punk phase. See the Motorhead T-shirt?” Lana pointed out. “I told you. None of these are in chronological order. It’s like whoever did them was trying to be confusing.”
“It was Mom,” said Anne, who had a white book with a yellowed cover that said OUR WEDDING in her own lap. “She threw a bunch of these together for Grandmother when she went into assisted living. Before, they were all in shoeboxes. That was confusing.”
“Maybe this is your dad?” Ben asked me.
I looked: again, no. Instead, it was a tall boy in a football jersey, my mom beside him holding a bouquet of flowers. HOMECOMING COURT, said the sash she was wearing. “They met in college,” I told him. “I haven’t seen a picture of him yet, to be honest.”
“Might not be one,” Lana mused, flipping a page. “Once she left, she didn’t come back. Right, Anne?”
My cousin looked up at me. A beat. “Pretty much. I mean, from what I’ve heard.”
It was so weird. No matter how many pieces of my mom’s puzzle I was handed—rebel years, adolescent royalty—there was still that one big gap in her history.
Clark nodded at the album in Anne’s lap. “Crazy that you’re going to have one of those soon.”
“I know!” She smiled, looking down at it. “This wedding is going to be very well documented. Hopefully our pictures will live up to our how-we-met story.”
“It’s a good one?” I asked.
Lana sighed. “Here we go. She loves to tell it.”
“We met right down the street!” Anne told me. “Jonathan was staying at the Tides with his family and they came to the Station to ride the go-karts. I took his ticket.”
“And his heart,” Lana added dramatically.
“It’s true! Then we got engaged two summers later. He slipped the ring in a ticket. ‘Let’s be all in on this ride,’ he said. Isn’t that just the sweetest?”
“It’s pretty cute,” I agreed.
“My original plan was to get married on the porch. Like Grandmother and the Judge, and my mom and dad. And Kasey to do the flowers.” She paused, looking down at the album. “But it didn’t work out, unfortunately.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“The driveway. And no AC. Jonathan has a lot of fragile, older relatives,” she explained. “And as far as the flowers, his grandmother does them for every family wedding. It’s their tradition.”
Uh-oh. Just the moonakis plant had been emotional. But an entire event?
“Where are you in all this, though?” Lana had clearly been thinking the same thing. “What do you get to pick?”