dead-end street in North Topsail? Surround our house? Who would protect me then?
I could hear Delia and Uncle Marcus talking quietly, but not what they were saying. After about a mile, we pulled to the side of the road behind a black Audi.
Delia turned around and reached for my hand. “I’m getting out here,” she said. “Call if you need me. You stay tough.”
“Okay,” I whispered, thinking that I wasn’t the tough one in the car. Delia was, and I owed my puny twelve-month sentence to her. She’d gotten a bunch of charges against me dismissed or reduced. I had mandatory counseling ahead of me, where I guess I was supposed to figure out why I did what I did so I never did it again. The fire had been a one-time deal. No question there. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about the whole frickin’ mess. I wasn’t sure what I needed, but I knew it had to be some kind of total overhaul, not a few sessions with a shrink. Then I had three hundred hours of community service. No college for me for a while. Restitution to the families, but Mom was managing that by taking money out of my inheritance from Daddy. How did you pay families for their dead kids?
You’d think after a year in prison, we’d have a lot to talk about, but it was quiet in the car. Sometimes there’s so much to say that you don’t know where to begin.
I’d seen my mother and Uncle Marcus a couple of times a month while I was in prison. Each time, they sat closer together on their side of the table. I knew Uncle Marcus had loved my mother for a long time and I was glad she’d stopped with the ice-queen routine. They were probably lovers by now, but I didn’t want to go there. It was strange enough that my mother was dating my father’s brother.
“How’s Andy?” I asked. I saw my brother about once a month, enough to know he’d grown at least an inch this year, which only made him about five-one. He was filling out a little more, though. He was swimming with the Special Olympics team in Wilmington now and he had a girlfriend named Kimmie. I hadn’t met her, but I was nervous about anyone who could possibly hurt my brother, who had fetal alcohol syndrome.
“Actually,” Mom said, “he had a stomach bug all night.”
“Oh, no.” I hated to think of him sick.
“I hope we don’t all catch it now,” Uncle Marcus said. “Especially you, Mags. Nice homecoming that’d be.”
“Is he home alone?” I asked.
“I left him at Sara’s,” Mom said. “We’ll have to stop there and pick him up.”
Could that be any more bizarre? Sara babysitting Andy while Mom picked me up? Mom’s words just hung there in the car. “You and Sara are friends again?” I asked finally.
Mom sighed. “It’s a little better between us,” she said, “though I wouldn’t use the word ‘friends’ to describe our relationship. I couldn’t find anyone else this morning and he was really so sick I didn’t want to leave him alone. Sara wasn’t thrilled about it, but she said yes.”
Mom looked older than I remembered. I hadn’t noticed it during her visits, but now I could see that the skin above her eyes sagged a little. She’d cut her dark hair short, though, and it looked good. Actually kind of cool. Our hair was the same color, but mine was much thicker and wilder, like Daddy’s had been. I had it in a long ponytail, which is how I wore it the whole year in prison.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be the same between Sara and me,” Mom said. “I’ve let it go, though. My end of it.” I knew she meant the part about Sara having an affair with my father while he was married to Mom. It turned out that my father was also Keith’s father. Surprise, surprise. Andy didn’t know that, though.
“But she’s still upset,” Mom said. “You know.”
Yeah, I knew. Upset about Keith getting burned in the fire. I didn’t blame her. I cried every time I thought about how I’d hurt him. “I won’t go in when we stop there. Okay?” I didn’t want to see Sara and I sure didn’t want to see Keith.
“That’s fine.” Mom sounded relieved, or maybe it was just my imagination.
We drove over the swing bridge that crossed the Intracoastal Waterway.
“Oh, the ocean!” I said, looking toward the horizon. The water was a blue-gray, the sky a bit overcast, but it was beautiful. I’d never take living on the island for granted again.
We were practically the only car on the bridge. Although I usually liked September on Topsail, when most of the tourists were gone and it felt more like home, the lack of cars—of people—suddenly made me realize I would stand out. If the summer crowds had still been there, I could blend in with them. Now, I would know everyone and everyone would know me. I felt sick thinking about the girl I’d been a year ago. The girl who hid out in the Sea Tender and who did crazy things for love. Who led a secret life.
“Mom?” I said.
She rested her hand on mine. “What, sweetie?”
“I’m going to drive you nuts at first,” I said. “I mean, I’m going to tell you everything that I think, okay? I need someone to tell me if I start thinking like a crazy person again.”
“You can tell me anything you like,” she said.
“Remember—” Uncle Marcus looked at me in the rearview mirror “—you’ll have a counselor, too, Mags. You can be completely open with her.”
We pulled into the trailer park and I scrunched down in the seat when Uncle Marcus stopped in front of the Westons’ faded gold double-wide.
“I’ll stay here with Mags,” Uncle Marcus said.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Mom said as she got out of the car.
Uncle Marcus turned in his seat to smile at me. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. His brown hair was really short. Shorter than I’d ever seen it, and he had amazing blue eyes that I’d loved my whole life. He was one of the best people I knew. I could always trust him to be in my corner no matter how I screwed up, and that thought made my eyes prickle.
I bit my lip. “I hope so,” I said.
“Here he comes.”
I sat up to see my brother fly down the steps from the trailer’s small deck and run across the sand. He pulled open the back door and flung himself toward me. I caught him, laughing.
“You’re free!” he said.
“Yup, Panda Bear,” I said. He seemed so much bigger. I brushed his thick hair off his forehead. “Now you’re stuck with me.”
Mom got back in the car, this time in the front passenger seat. “Everything okay with Sara?” Uncle Marcus asked her.
“She wasn’t there,” Mom said.
“She had to go to the store,” Andy said.
“I left a note, thanking her,” Mom said.
No one said it, but I knew why Sara wasn’t there: she didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see her.
Chapter
