25. Brodie
“I’m sorry if I pushed.” It was driving me nuts watching Clint pace, and not being able to help. It was worse knowing it was because Dee just ran away.
Clint raked his fingers through his hair and let out a long sigh. “No. I would have done the same.”
“Do you want me to start calling people?” Aubrey asked. “Get everyone looking for her? Or do you want to just put out a whisper to keep an eye out for her?”
Clint had his phone out. “I’m going to start with her friends’ parents, but yeah, it wouldn’t hurt to have other people keeping an eye out too.”
“Do you want me to go out and look while the two of you make calls?” I liked Dee. She was a smart kid. This was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone, but Dee was still a ten-year-old who was frustrated and hiding. And I knew what it felt like to believe no one understood. “Would she go far?”
“I don’t know.” Clint’s expression changed, and he diverted his attention to the phone by his ear, asking the person who had picked up on the other end if Dee was there, and then to call him if she showed up. “When I got divorced she ran away and I found her in her playhouse in the back yard.”
“I”ll circle the house a few times, just to make sure.” I did that, checked back with Clint, and then went out for a wider circuit around the block.
When I returned again, Aubrey and Clint were focused on her phone.
“There’s a mini-you here.” Evie’s voice came from the speaker.
“My sister? At the hardware store?” Aubrey looked confused.
Evie huffed. “Why did you call me? No. Dee. At the motel in the main lobby.”
What?
“She came to hang out with Kurt,” Evie said. “Said something about Dad doesn’t know you’re my friend and I don’t want to talk about horses and stupid ballet.”
If I was relieved, Clint had to be overjoyed. “I’ll be?—”
“No.” Evie cut him off. “She said if I called you and told you where she was, she’d never speak to me again.”
“So the first thing you did was call him?” Aubrey asked.
“No. I called Aubrey. How was I supposed to know you’d be with the same people you’ve spent every free moment for the last few weeks with?” Evie teased. “Besides, I’m more worried about her safety and Clint’s sanity than anything else.”
When I was younger, the sense of community here was potent, and always made me feel like I was on the outside. I hadn’t been the only one. Evie had told me more than once that she felt the same way, and I knew Aubrey and Deacon had too.
It seemed while I was gone, they made their own community, and I couldn’t help but like being a part of that.
“You’re the best,” Aubrey said.
“I know,” Evie replied.
Clint still looked anxious, but now he wasn’t pulling out his hair. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Maybe give it an hour or two. We’re discussing if chainsaws or flamethrowers make better weapons on bots, and she’s got some good insight.”
Clint frowned. “I— what? You’re not?—”
Evie made a grunt. “It’s not like I’m giving her a chainsaw or a flamethrower. This is all purely academic.”
I didn’t see a problem with that, but Clint looked uncertain.
“At least she’s learning it from a trusted source?” I offered.
Clint rolled his eyes. “Thank you. I’ll be there in a bit.”
Aubrey hung up, but the tension in the room didn’t evaporate.
“I don’t know what to do.” Clint sank into the nearest seat. “I don’t know how to reassure her, or how to make her listen, or how to get her to talk to me.”
“Let us go get her.” Why did I say that? It wasn’t as though I had any more insight than Clint.
The way he looked at me with skepticism made me believe he had the same thought.
“Brodie’s right,” Aubrey said. “If she’s worried we’re leaving, we can promise that we’re not…” She furrowed her brow and looked at me. “Unless you are.” Her voice went quiet.
I’d told her I was only here until Sylvie’s wedding was over. Only until my sabbatical was up. And even though I’d come here intending to find a new place, I didn’t expect to.
The pair of realizations hit me hard. I’d wanted this to be home again. Actual home. But I hadn’t thought I’d really find that. I had, though. I liked the people here. I liked the friends I’d rediscovered. The loves. Even if I had to move into that motel, I wasn’t going anywhere. “No. I’m staying in Haddarville. I can’t imagine going anywhere else.”
Aubrey’s smile was bright, and even the corners of Clint’s mouth tugged up.
“See?” Aubrey turned to Clint again. “Plus, even kids with cool parents sometimes want to talk to someone they’re not related to. Dee just had her mom dump her on your doorstep, and she thinks the world of you, Clint. She’s not going to want to disappoint a second parent by telling you something she thinks you don’t want to hear.”
Clint leaned in to rest his elbows on his knees. “She tells me things I don’t want to hear all the time.”
“Not really.” I was too familiar with this myself. “You made it safe to say if she doesn’t like the food or the music.”
“But she knows I never stopped loving performing.” Clint dropped his face into his hands. “Fuck.” His voice was muffled, but the shout was loud enough to be jarring anyway. He looked at us again. “Okay. Bring her home. Make sure she knows—if it comes up—that I love her whether or not she wants to dance.”
An hour or so later, Aubrey and I headed to the motel. The moment we walked into the lobby, and Dee saw us from the waiting room, she scowled. “Why are you here?” She demanded.
“Brodie is staying here,” Aubrey said.
I wouldn’t do that. This kid deserved the truth as much as possible. Everyone did. “We came to talk to you.”
Evie and Elaina exchanged looks, and Kurt sank onto the carpet with a huff. “Do I have to go play in the other room?” He asked.
I didn’t see why. “You can stay. We’re all friends hanging out.” Now I was overstepping with two kids who weren’t mine. But that was another thing I wanted when I was younger—most of my life—was for the adults to understand what I was trying to say.
Kurt looked to his mom anyway.
Elaina shrugged. “I have to finalize the schedule for next week, and I need to be in back for that. Do me a favor and holler if anyone comes in?”
“Absolutely,” Evie said.
Dee climbed to her feet. “I’m going to help Elaina.”
“We’ll be here when you come back,” I said.
She fixed me with a glare. “If you’re going to go away, just go away. Don’t pretend. Don’t save it until you’re ready to talk about it.” She used air quotes like a pro.
A bit disconcerting.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Aubrey said. “This is my home. I’m not leaving my friends. The people I love are here, and that includes you, Dee.”
“Regina said she loved me, and she left.”
Kurt hopped to his feet. “I’m gonna go help Mom.” He ran from the room.
Poor kid.
Evie watched the whole exchange quietly.
Dee crossed her arms and flopped onto a sofa in the waiting room of the lobby. “You scared my real friend away.”
“Here’s the thing, Dee.” I wasn’t sure I should be this honest, but I was going to anyway.
“What?” She rolled her eyes.
“Some people are just liars.”
If she scowled any harder, her face would collapse in on itself.
“But most people aren’t,” I said. “When they promise something, they mean it at the time.” I wanted to be careful with my phrasing so she understood. “They don’t stop to think about what might stop them from keeping that promise in the future.”
“So you are both leaving me.” Hurt wove into Dee’s reply.
Aubrey shook her head. “No.”
“I won’t say I promise,” I added. “But I will tell you that right now, I don’t want to leave Haddarville. I like it here. I want to live here longer than you probably will, and I think Aubrey feels the same.”
Aubrey nodded. “Exactly.”
Some of the tension seemed to slip away from Dee’s posture, but she stayed slouched. “What if someone makes you leave?”
“That’s what happened at my last place. Someone made me leave.” My work situation wasn’t quite the same, but it was close enough to all of this to be disconcerting.
“Haddarville’s kind of like the Island of Misfit Toys,” Evie said softly.
Dee uncrossed her arms. “I like that place. I never understood why they don’t just put water in the water gun instead of jelly.”
Okay, we’d talk about this in terms of an old Christmas movie. “When someone is one way, and you tell them to act another way, it changes what people see, but it doesn’t change who that person is. If the squirt gun wants to use jelly, why make it use water?”
“That’s officially one of the weirdest analogies I’ve ever heard,” Evie said.
Aubrey shrugged. “It’s a good point though.”
“Kind of like how Dad likes both men and women?” Dee asked.
Not what I was going for, but it was a fair comparison.
“Yes,” Aubrey said.
“Or like Bree’s pretty art.” Dee pointed at the ink decorating Aubrey’s arms. “Or B’s brain.”
Dee was observant, and what she saw hit me hard, drawing on the deeper meaning in this conversation. She grew quiet, and scooted deeper into her chair, to pull her knees to her chest. “So what if you’re the squirt gun and you like jelly, and chocolate muffins, and extra cheese on your pizza, but it makes everyone else happier if you’re filled with water?”
Now the analogy was going off the rails. It was also reminding me more and more of the life I was leaving behind. The decisions that hadn’t been mine, and the product that I’d let slip away from me.
“You don’t make anyone’s life better by squirting—” Evie frowned. “Sorry, I need a different comparison.”
Aubrey hid her smirk behind her hand.
“You don’t make anyone’s life better by eating carrots when you’d rather be having chocolate cake,” Evie said.
Dee tilted her chin forward to rest on her knees, watching us. “Then why is Regina leaving?”
This didn’t seem like the time to ask why Mom had become Regina.
“It’s not because of anything you did.” Aubrey knelt on the ground next to Dee.
“But how do you know?”
“Because I know you and I know Regina, and I know that you could be the most perfect person in the whole wide world, and she still would have taken this job.”
“Because she’s meant to squirt jelly?” Dee asked.
Evie ducked her head, but not before I saw her face contort with a choked back laugh.
Aubrey managed to keep a straight face. “Something like that.”
Dee’s shoulders sank. “But what if I don’t want to dance?”
“Then don’t.” It was easy to say, and I wished someone had a conversation like this with me when I was her age. Wished someone had said just be you.
Clint used to. So did Aubrey. Not until we were teenagers, but I loved them for it.
“What if I say I don’t want to dance, and Dad leaves me too?” Dee sounded so tiny. So scared.
“He won’t,” I said.
Aubrey rested a hand on Dee’s knee. “I know Brodie said adults can’t make a lot of promises, but that’s one we can make. Your dad will never choose to leave you. If you don’t want to dance—if you want to make robots or design clothes or sing or draw or spend the rest of your life doing math or anything else—he’ll love you and be there for you.”
Dee made a gagging sound. “Math is gross.”
“Math has its place.” Evie sighed.
“Math is so gross.” Aubrey leaned closer to Dee and spoke in a stage whisper.
Evie stuck her tongue out. “And you’re. So. Blond.”
Aubrey grinned. “Yup.”
“Your dad is worried, Dee,” I said. “Because he does love you. Come with us to tell him you’re all right?”
She climbed to her feet as if her limbs weighed a ton. “Okay.”
Aubrey, Dee, and I wished Evie goodbye and Evie promised to tell Kurt and Elaina where we’d gone.
We left Evie behind, and the three of us walked back to Clint’s.
Everything we’d discussed was obvious from the outside. Saying those things to Dee was easy. Logical.
But I’d almost fallen into the same trap a second time. I didn’t want to farm. I didn’t want to sell product. I wanted to keep inventing. Designing without having to surrender what I created.
How was I going to do that, and still share it with the world?