Chapter Nineteen
The next day at the Egg, a fuse blew in the kitchen, taking out both the grill and half of the stovetop.
At the same time, a huge extended family of twenty-three that was renting a nearby house showed up and insisted on all being seated together.
We’d barely gotten that under control when Lana and I collided hard at the food window.
Neither of us was hurt, but I knew I’d feel it the next day.
“Sometimes I hate this job,” Lana grumbled as we limped home. “I’ve got to find something else before it kills me.”
“Something else?” I stepped gingerly over a tree root. “Like what?”
“There’s a few options,” she said. “Retail. Office work. Even fast food wouldn’t be bad, other than the hairnet.”
“If anyone could make a hairnet work, it’s you,” I told her.
“True,” she agreed. I laughed. “The Egg is such good money this year, though. By August I should have enough to finally get out of my mom’s and the couch surfing and get my own place. Even if it’s just a room somewhere.”
Just as we reached the yard of the Woods, I heard a car coming up behind us.
I turned, expecting Kasey or someone else in the truck, but it was my mom.
She’d returned late the night before and been asleep when I’d left that morning.
Now, phone to her ear, she just waved as she rolled by before parking next to Liz’s van, facing the water.
“So she did come back,” Lana observed as the car idled, my mom still talking. “Clark owes me five bucks.”
“You guys bet on her?”
“I did,” she said pointedly. “He thought she’d use the diagnosis to get out of returning for the sale. Which was stupid of him. I mean, you’re here.”
“I don’t think that’s why. She’s never exactly had a problem leaving me.” My mom was getting out of the car now. I watched as she went to one of the back doors, pulling out her bag.
“Well.” She paused. “She’s here now. Right?”
Yes. But only to do something final so she could leave again. Maybe this was a picky detail and I was splitting hairs. I doubted it, though.
“Cat, this is delicious.” Liz dabbed her mouth with a bright yellow paper napkin. “Although I still can’t believe I’m eating it so close to the wedding.”
“I can’t believe you brought a Cluck Trunk,” Kasey said. “Remember how we used to have them every Sunday? The Judge loved them.”
My mom made a face. It was clear she hadn’t thought of this when she picked up a huge cardboard carton from Chicks to provide us all an early dinner.
I was surprised, too, but for different reasons.
The rare times we’d done carryout, it was sushi or expensive salads, not fried chicken and biscuits with all the fixings.
I had to admit, though, the mashed potatoes were amazing.
It was just me, my mom, and my aunts at the table. Lana, taken down by the cumulative effects of her hangover and our collision, was asleep in our room. The boys were at Bly Supply, restocking everything we’d run out of in the rush that morning.
“I was driving right by a Chicks,” my mom said now, balling up her own napkin and dropping it to the plate in front of her. “It just seemed easier than coming up with something later.”
I knew this was supposed to be an offhand explanation, but even it felt different. Since when did she think ahead to feeding a crowd?
“We’ll need the sustenance.” Liz sat back, sighing. “From all I’ve heard about it, the sale should be huge. Trav said some of his clients had friends in antiques coming in just for it.”
“Hopefully they’ll wait until nine.” My mom got to her feet, picking up her plate. “We were very clear about early birds.”
“They won’t,” Kasey told her.
“She’s right,” Liz said, nodding. “Around here that’s a suggestion, not a mandate.”
My mom said nothing to this as she turned and went with her plate into the kitchen. Liz glanced after her, then muttered to Kasey, “A Cluck Trunk? Of all things?”
“I know.” Kasey picked out another biscuit from the box. “So strange.”
I got up, taking the remains of my own dinner to the kitchen. At the same time, I heard the front door bang shut. My mom had gone outside, where I could now see her, walking toward the water. Once I’d tossed my plate, I followed.
I found her standing where the hill sloped toward the dock, her hands on her hips as she studied the water. “Hey,” I said. “Thanks for dinner.”
In response, she nodded, silent.
“You okay?” I asked after a moment. “I’m sure the tests were a lot.”
“The tests were fine.” She sighed. “It’s all this that’s painful.”
It was so weird: All this time, I’d been wanting to find out more about her reasons for feeling the way she did about the lake. Now I kind of wished I’d stayed inside. But it’s funny how a moment can push you forward.
“Why did you stay away for so long?” Well, I was in it now. I thought of what Ben had said about the hurricane. All I could do was ride it out. “Everyone here only talks around it.”
“Because they don’t know.” She still had her gaze locked on the water, not looking at me. “The short version is that my father was no saint. Everyone else, especially my sisters, saw him differently. It made a lot of things complicated for me.”
Your grandpa sure had a temper. Among other failings, Kate had said. But you know about that from your mom, I’m sure.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “That must have been hard. To keep you away all this time.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Another first. I’d never seen my mother cry before.
“Cat?”
Kasey was coming down the steps. My mom cleared her throat, and like magic was fully composed again. “Yes?”
“William from the lawyer’s office is on the phone. He’s got a few questions about the contracts.”
“Right. Coming.”
Before she left, though, she glanced at me. As if I was the one who needed to be checked on.
After she headed up to the house, I heard clicking overhead.
A pair of hummingbirds. By now I recognized their language, as well as the telltale buzzing as they passed by.
I watched them, rising and falling in the air as they zipped toward the cabin.
Kasey was out front, bent over a clump of pink flowers to the left of the steps.
“They’re hungry,” she said when I walked over. She had her head tipped back, looking up. “Even though I just filled the feeders yesterday.”
“I’d never seen one close up until now,” I said.
“Pretty cool, huh?” She smiled at me. “In some cultures, they symbolize ancestors. Others, warriors. I like to think they’re both.”
“Warrior ancestors?”
“What kind would be better?” She bent down, pulling a couple of drooping blooms from one of the plants. “I like the idea that one of them might be Mom, dive-bombing me because she disapproves of my mulch choice or how I’m pruning her roses.”
“Sounds like she had strong opinions.”
“Yep. I get it, though.” She grabbed a couple more flowers. “I mean, there’s a reason why we use the word ‘cultivate’ with plants. Really taking care of them is a process, not just about digging a hole and filling it in.”
“My stepmom grows sunflowers and tomatoes,” I told her.
“Both great,” she replied. “You gotta love an annual. Seed, sprout, plant, flower, done. Perennials take a bit more. But they give more, too. Year after year, if you treat them right.”
“Is that what these are?” I asked, nodding at the big bushy hydrangeas I’d noticed the first night I’d come over with Ben.
She looked over her shoulder. “Yep. In fact, that whole clump started from a single plant Mom put in when Aunt Charlotte passed. The first year they did nothing and she figured they were goners. But the following summer that one popped with blooms. It hasn’t stopped since.”
That made me smile. At least until I remembered the whole Tides-razing-the-land part. “I bet you’re sad about leaving them. When you move.”
“Of course. It stinks.” She squatted, poking her finger behind some daisies.
A beat later, a little green frog hopped out, bouncing off into the grass.
“Then again, nature is pretty resilient. If stuff can’t grow here, it will still find a way to do it.
Just might take a little time. Like that hydrangea. ”
Bzzzzzzz. We both looked up. More hummingbirds. Kasey yanked at a fluffy green plant, pulling it loose with a shower of dirt.
“What about the warrior ancestors, though?” I asked her. “What happens to them?”
“Oh, they’ll be fine,” she said. “They’ll just follow the flowers.”
It was a little after two a.m. when I opened my eyes. Not to a shame reel, as it turned out. But I did find myself wondering if I’d made an appearance—via Visceral Pantylines—in Ben’s.
I’d turned in early, while Lana was still out.
I’d heard her return, though; our door creaked and the bathroom faucet’s gurgle was jarringly noisy.
Really, it was impossible to do anything at the Woods without someone else knowing about it.
No wonder my mom and Liz had to sneak around when they were teenagers.
Thinking this, I rolled over to face the Bone Breaking window, which was slightly open. Just over a week ago, the idea of my mom slipping out to meet a boy had been impossible to imagine. As likely, really, as me doing the same. I wasn’t that kind of person either. Was I?
I walked over to the window, trying to keep my footsteps silent. Liz hadn’t been kidding. The drop to the ground below was just enough to do damage if you just went for it. Then, as Lana shifted behind me, sighing, I saw the crate.
It was wooden, and clearly ancient. Ivy had grown up around it and wound through the slats. I took another look at Lana before pushing the window the rest of the way open. Despite the house’s constant creaks and thumps, it didn’t make a sound.
I paused, considering possible outcomes. I could I fall and break a bone of my own, rousing my mom and Lana with my subsequent screams of agony. Or successfully make the jump, only to get to the Egg to find no Ben but maybe a serial killer. Shame-reel material, for sure.
Or there was the third option, which was just staying there and doing nothing.
The crate barely budged as my feet hit. Then I was hopping off, starting past the house to the driveway.
I heard the music first. A quiet melody, growing more audible as I rounded the building.
Ben was sitting on the dock, holding his guitar.
For a moment I watched him from a dark spot just past the thrown light of the Egg’s back door.
Then I called out, “Hey. Is that Visceral Pantylines you’re playing? ”
He looked up, squinting in my direction. “Good ear,” he said. “You’re a fan?”
“Just their old stuff.”
I came up the ramp. It was so quiet, I was acutely aware of each slap of my shoes. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” I said.
“Whereas I was positive you’d show up.”
“Really?”
“No.” He played a few more chords. “In fact, I was working on a new shame reel just now. Me, in the middle of the night, waiting for a girl who never comes. You appeared just as I was about to splice it in with my highlights.”
“Whereas I,” I told him, “considered the fact that I might go to the trouble of climbing out the window, then walking all the way over here, only to be ghosted.”
“We are really not optimists,” he observed.
A car passed by on the road, the sound sudden, then gone. “Now that you are here,” Ben continued, “again I am thinking I should have planned something. I mean, other than discussing worst-case scenarios.”
“You do have a guitar.”
“True.” He strummed for a second. “Although that’s kind of a one-person activity.”
“I could watch you adoringly, like those girls at the Pavilion,” I suggested.
He flushed: I could see it, even in the half dark. “You can’t let that go, can you?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just fascinated. What does that feel like, being that admired?”
“Like you don’t know,” he replied.
Now I felt my face redden. Good Lord, we were so awkward.
“What I mean,” he added, “is that you just got out of a serious relationship. By definition, that means someone was really, really into you.”
“ ‘Was,’ ” I repeated, “being the operative word.”
“Still happened.” He strummed again for a moment. “Two years is lot of admiring looks.”
True. In fact, my awe of Colin had been constant, like a fuel that fired us. The more I thought about it, though, I realized I didn’t recall that many times his eyes were on me the same way.
Suddenly, a light snapped on, bright. Like a reflex, we both leaned back into the dark of the overhang, bumping arms in the process. When I looked up, Clark was framed in the screen of an upstairs window.
“Dude, it’s like three in the morning,” he complained, rubbing a hand over his face. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
“Insanely light sleeper,” Ben said into my ear. His breath was warm. “Nobody,” he called up, his voice several notches louder. “Sorry.”
Clark muttered something, then turned the light off again. After a moment Ben said, still whispering, “Did not mean to offend by calling you ‘nobody,’ by the way.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be officially presented,” I replied. “Also, I’m not sure how we’d explain my being here. Unless we wanted to get into the whole shame-reel thing.”
“Doubtful he’d have the patience for that. He’s really crabby when he gets woken up.” He glanced at the window again. “More likely he’d just make an assumption, then tell everyone that first thing tomorrow morning at work.”
Clark had been both eager and thorough detailing Cardoon’s infatuation with Lana at the Pavilion. And my relationships had been the subject of enough conversation already. Not that this was a relationship. We were just sitting on a loading dock. Together.
“I think we made the wise choice,” I told him. “From what I hear, it’s all about controlling the narrative anyway.”
“You think that’s what this is?”
“We’ve got grapes, toothpaste, and shame,” I told him. “What else could it be?”
There was another bump, this time from somewhere off to the side of the building. We both turned, so I couldn’t see his face. But I did wonder how he was looking at me.