I refused to loosen my grip on her until she whispered in my ear, “I promise I’m coming back.”
I felt silly, then, for acting like a baby, clinging to her. My grandmother’s hands clamped on my shoulders the second I let my mother go. And we both watched my mother wave goodbye from the passenger’s seat of Uncle Eddy’s Buick.
What a sad picture I must have made. Sophie Topper Quinn . . . unwanted.
* * *
And now she’s back. Is she here to keep her promise?
I climb out of the Jeep and walk toward the café. She glances up from a menu when I’m a few feet away from the entrance. This time there is instant recognition when she sees me. Half rising from the booth, she touches the window as if she can reach me through the glass. Emotions flicker across her face, one stampeding into another. Fear. Pain. Need.
I stop and take a step back.
No.
Self-preservation finally kicks in. I can’t handle another person needing anything from me. I’ll have nothing left if I give another piece of myself away. Why did I come here? She left. She walked away. My father stayed. Every day. Every night I had a nightmare in those weeks after she left. Every dinner was at 1800 hours, whether either of us liked it or not.
She was wrong. When she married my father, she did marry the Marines, for better and often for worse. She quit on us.
To hell with her and her needs.
Her mouth forms my name when I climb back into the Jeep. As I reverse out of the parking space, she runs for the café’s front door. Then she is a speck in my rearview and I’m regretting my trip to Spring Lake and wondering what this secret is going to cost me.
She broke our family when she broke her promise to return.
And I feel like I’ve betrayed my father by going there to meet her.
Chapter Sixteen
I’m sitting on a bus with forty-three other seniors and juniors. We outnumber the chaperones eight to one. We’re on our way to DC, where we’ll tour Capitol Hill, the National Mall, and stare at the White House through the security gates.
Two weeks have passed since I saw my mother in Spring Lake, and little has changed except that my father seems to notice me now from time to time. I almost feel guilty that his garden remains a brown wasteland, but no way in hell am I going to admit what I did. I haven’t bumped into my mother or Uncle Eddy again, and I’m glad. What would I say?
For now, I’m lucky Mr. Horowitz chose to take the seat next to me. At least I was able to get some sleep during the long drive. Lately the nightmares won’t go away. I trace a drop of condensation on the window. Come home, Carey.
“How’s your friend?”
I turn to Mr. Horowitz, wondering if he can read minds.
He adds, “The one in the pictures on your camera.”
George, then, not Carey.
George is coughing more these days, but he says not to worry. They haven’t figured out the right combination of medications to give him. He’s like a kid’s chemistry set, and the doctors keep mixing things up to see what kind of reaction they can set off.
I shrug, not wanting to get into it. “He’s okay.”
“Good, good,” Horowitz says, nodding cheerfully.
I’m trying to decide if I’m still pissed at him. I never planned to go on this trip, but he conned me into it by feeding my ego. We need pictures, Miss Quinn. Your work is so beautiful, Miss Quinn, so full of honesty. He loved the pictures I took at the dance, despite the missing shots of the king and queen. I feel cheap for caving to flattery, but honestly, it’s not like a lot of people are nice to me these days. And when George heard about the trip, he asked me for a favor I couldn’t refuse.
“I think you mentioned you met him at the VA Hospital?” asks Mr. Horowitz.
His curiosity surprises me, and I’m slow to answer. “Yeah. George does a lot of volunteer work for the Veterans History Project. I help out a few days a week.”
Horowitz looks confused, and I explain what the project is. Excited, I turn on my ever-present camera to show him pictures of George, Don, and the others I’ve met at the VA. I haven’t told anyone yet, not even George, but Boston University has accepted me into their photojournalism program. It doesn’t seem right to plan my future until I know whether Carey will have one too.
“You wouldn’t believe what some of these people have been through,” I finish.
He considers me with a new awareness like I’ve said something he didn’t expect. “You sound pretty passionate about working with the military.”
It takes a moment for that arrow to plant itself in my chest. I stiffen. “You mean I shouldn’t care, after how I treated Carey?”
Horowitz blushes to the matted roots of his curly hair. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, and I think it’s true. He’s one of those teachers who care about their students. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s heard the gossip about me and judged me for it like the others.
“You don’t know me,” I say.
The conversation ends when I turn back to the window. Discomfort moves in and takes over the two inches of space between us, but I still prefer this seat to the one beside Jamie.
* * *
The bus pulls into the hotel parking lot, and we wait for the driver to unlock the huge undercarriage so we can claim bags. Shivering and shuddering from the cold, I hang back until the crowd disappears into the hotel lobby before I grab my small duffel.
I felt silly, then, for acting like a baby, clinging to her. My grandmother’s hands clamped on my shoulders the second I let my mother go. And we both watched my mother wave goodbye from the passenger’s seat of Uncle Eddy’s Buick.
What a sad picture I must have made. Sophie Topper Quinn . . . unwanted.
* * *
And now she’s back. Is she here to keep her promise?
I climb out of the Jeep and walk toward the café. She glances up from a menu when I’m a few feet away from the entrance. This time there is instant recognition when she sees me. Half rising from the booth, she touches the window as if she can reach me through the glass. Emotions flicker across her face, one stampeding into another. Fear. Pain. Need.
I stop and take a step back.
No.
Self-preservation finally kicks in. I can’t handle another person needing anything from me. I’ll have nothing left if I give another piece of myself away. Why did I come here? She left. She walked away. My father stayed. Every day. Every night I had a nightmare in those weeks after she left. Every dinner was at 1800 hours, whether either of us liked it or not.
She was wrong. When she married my father, she did marry the Marines, for better and often for worse. She quit on us.
To hell with her and her needs.
Her mouth forms my name when I climb back into the Jeep. As I reverse out of the parking space, she runs for the café’s front door. Then she is a speck in my rearview and I’m regretting my trip to Spring Lake and wondering what this secret is going to cost me.
She broke our family when she broke her promise to return.
And I feel like I’ve betrayed my father by going there to meet her.
Chapter Sixteen
I’m sitting on a bus with forty-three other seniors and juniors. We outnumber the chaperones eight to one. We’re on our way to DC, where we’ll tour Capitol Hill, the National Mall, and stare at the White House through the security gates.
Two weeks have passed since I saw my mother in Spring Lake, and little has changed except that my father seems to notice me now from time to time. I almost feel guilty that his garden remains a brown wasteland, but no way in hell am I going to admit what I did. I haven’t bumped into my mother or Uncle Eddy again, and I’m glad. What would I say?
For now, I’m lucky Mr. Horowitz chose to take the seat next to me. At least I was able to get some sleep during the long drive. Lately the nightmares won’t go away. I trace a drop of condensation on the window. Come home, Carey.
“How’s your friend?”
I turn to Mr. Horowitz, wondering if he can read minds.
He adds, “The one in the pictures on your camera.”
George, then, not Carey.
George is coughing more these days, but he says not to worry. They haven’t figured out the right combination of medications to give him. He’s like a kid’s chemistry set, and the doctors keep mixing things up to see what kind of reaction they can set off.
I shrug, not wanting to get into it. “He’s okay.”
“Good, good,” Horowitz says, nodding cheerfully.
I’m trying to decide if I’m still pissed at him. I never planned to go on this trip, but he conned me into it by feeding my ego. We need pictures, Miss Quinn. Your work is so beautiful, Miss Quinn, so full of honesty. He loved the pictures I took at the dance, despite the missing shots of the king and queen. I feel cheap for caving to flattery, but honestly, it’s not like a lot of people are nice to me these days. And when George heard about the trip, he asked me for a favor I couldn’t refuse.
“I think you mentioned you met him at the VA Hospital?” asks Mr. Horowitz.
His curiosity surprises me, and I’m slow to answer. “Yeah. George does a lot of volunteer work for the Veterans History Project. I help out a few days a week.”
Horowitz looks confused, and I explain what the project is. Excited, I turn on my ever-present camera to show him pictures of George, Don, and the others I’ve met at the VA. I haven’t told anyone yet, not even George, but Boston University has accepted me into their photojournalism program. It doesn’t seem right to plan my future until I know whether Carey will have one too.
“You wouldn’t believe what some of these people have been through,” I finish.
He considers me with a new awareness like I’ve said something he didn’t expect. “You sound pretty passionate about working with the military.”
It takes a moment for that arrow to plant itself in my chest. I stiffen. “You mean I shouldn’t care, after how I treated Carey?”
Horowitz blushes to the matted roots of his curly hair. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, and I think it’s true. He’s one of those teachers who care about their students. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s heard the gossip about me and judged me for it like the others.
“You don’t know me,” I say.
The conversation ends when I turn back to the window. Discomfort moves in and takes over the two inches of space between us, but I still prefer this seat to the one beside Jamie.
* * *
The bus pulls into the hotel parking lot, and we wait for the driver to unlock the huge undercarriage so we can claim bags. Shivering and shuddering from the cold, I hang back until the crowd disappears into the hotel lobby before I grab my small duffel.
