One More Day (20 page)

Carrie's father hadn't told her he was leaving permanently; her mother had simply announced they were getting a divorce one morning before school, after her father had already been gone a week. Danielle had declared it as she'd been walking down the hall, like it was nothing, like she was telling her daughter there was leftover meat loaf in the refrigerator for dinner.

“Are you sure?” Carrie had put down her orange juice and asked dumbly, as if Danielle could have misinterpreted what her husband had said, as if he'd been so drunk he'd slurred his words.

“Yes, honey,” she said.

“And it's…definite?”

Danielle blinked at her, as if not sure what her child was asking. Did Carrie think she'd have a chance at rebuttal? That he could be persuaded by a cogent argument?

“Yes, I'm afraid so. It's been a long time coming, Carrie. I'm sure you felt the tension between us over the years.”

“I heard the tension. Anyone could.”

“Well, yes. I suppose.”

“So the house will be quieter.”

“Yes, the house will be quieter.”

“Better for doing homework.”

Danielle smiled. “I'm glad you see the positive side. I'll be out job hunting today, but I hope to be back in plenty of time for dinner.”

“Okay,” Carrie said, and her mother kissed her on the forehead.

By the time Ethan arrived to drive her to school, Carrie had already wiped away the few tears she had shed and was making calculations of whether she could afford to pay for her own books at college, assuming she got a scholarship.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ethan said. “So you're telling me that good ole Robb and Danielle didn't sit you down at dinner, all serious, and tell you they both still loved you and it wasn't your fault and this way you'd get twice as many presents at Christmas?”

“No.”

“Your father wasn't even here?”

“No, he's in Minneapolis trying to get a new job.”

“Well, you know what this means.” He sighed.

“Yes. It means he's going to move to Minneapolis with a new woman who doesn't consider him an item on her to-do list.”

“Your mother told you that?”

“No, I overheard him yelling that a couple of weeks ago. Drunk, slurring his words. And that means we're going to be broke, because even if he gets a job and pays back his debts, his money is going to be split between her and us.”

“You're wrong,” Ethan said, shoving a Pop-Tart in his mouth. He usually ate one cold in the morning and the other one he warmed on the defroster of his car and ate it before he went into school. “Your father blames your mother, you see? That's why he made her tell you. Because it's her fault.”

“Ethan,” she said with a sigh, “if my father is moving to Minneapolis with another woman who doesn't care that he gambles and drinks, then how is that my mother's fault?”

“Carrie,” he said. “You really need to read John Updike.”

“My parents are getting a divorce, and you're assigning summer reading?”

“It's not summer.”

“Winter then. Winter reading.”

“Novels illuminate the inner life. It's a way to understand adults, since we have so few clues as to why they behave the idiotic way they do. Everybody goes on and on about the teenage mind and how it's not fully developed, and then you look at what adults do. I'll take my half-assed brain anytime. At least I have reasons for doing everything I do. Why do you think your parents got married, anyway? Was your mother pregnant?”

“No,” she said. “I did the math the last time they had a huge argument. They had a good four-month overlap.”

“Maybe they lied to you about their anniversary. Have you ever seen their marriage certificate?”

His blue eyes, so light they almost looked like water, were open wider than usual, as they always were when he tried to make a point. Ethan spent his whole life trying to be edgy and dark, but his ocean-like coloring betrayed him. He was a soft guy trying to be a hard-ass.

“Ethan.”

“We could go down to county records and bribe someone for it.”

“My parents did not invent their anniversary.”

“Okay, okay. I still maintain that he blames her though, instead of the other way around,” he said. They walked to the front door where Carrie's backpack sat on a bench near the hat tree and umbrella stand.

“See this, right here? This foyer? Empty except for your stuff? None of his? This is why you need to read those novels. It means something, like it's all waiting for your father's umbrella and that weird beret he wears in the rain sometimes. This is a sad metaphor of a room.”

“It's not weird to wear a hat in the rain. It's a reason to wear a hat. Since you like your reasons.”

“Men don't wear hats in the rain, because they don't give a shit about their hair,” he said.

“Some men do,” she'd said, and their conversation had continued on and on over nothing, as it always had, as he'd lifted the backpack onto her shoulders and let it down gently, one strap and then the other, as if they were going on a long, arduous climb.

The night before, John had only come in for a few minutes. He brought Danielle's bags inside, carried them up to the guest room. Then he said he had to go to a charity dinner in the city with clients, and it would run late, so he would be staying overnight at a hotel. He delivered that news perfunctorily yet sheepishly. Carrie knew the whole thing was a lie, and judging from the look on her mother's face, she knew it too.

As he walked toward the front door, Carrie reached for his sleeve.

“Don't,” he said quietly.

“John, how does this look?”

“To your mother?”

“No,” she said, “to the police.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't be naive. They have the suspect they've been looking for, but they still think I'm involved! That's why Nolan was here! They'll take any opportunity to twist this into something I did! And if you leave me—”

“I'm not leaving you, Carrie. I'm just…” He trailed off, looked at his hand, then quietly opened the door. “Pictures of you? On his phone?”

“I don't know him, John!”

He sighed, shook his head.

“Admit it, John,” she said. “You're just overreacting to every tiny piece of information that comes along. You're using it as an excuse now. You don't know what you're doing. You have no idea what you're doing.”

He turned back toward her for one second, his large eyes conveying not warmth but distance, as if he didn't need any more information, didn't need to take any more in.

“Well, do you know what you're doing, Carrie? Have you ever?”

Carrie heard the click of her mother's suitcase upstairs.

“Did you tell her?”

“What?”

“On the way home, did you tell her about, about—”

“Jesus, Carrie,” he said, shaking his head as he stood in the door. “How big of an asshole do you think I am?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe I should ask Lyndsey how big of an asshole you are.”

“I did not stalk her,” he said evenly. “I only followed her when she was drunk.”

“And she was drunk all the time?”

“Don't change the subject, Carrie. My parents already know my secret. But yours belongs to you. It's not my place to tell Danielle.”

She shivered. It was the same thing Father Paul had said. Of all the things she owned and tended and cared for, this was the most unique. This was the thing that defined her, not house, not car, not clothes. Her secrets.

The rest of the evening was spent in a charade of settling her mother in, offering to cook dinner but her mother insisting on doing it herself and then proceeding to clean up, ending with Carrie saying she was tired, even though she hadn't done any of the work. And she was tired—that much was true. Just watching her mother scurry, wiping up each crumb right after it fell, just being around her sometimes exhausted her. Her mother who always half ran up the stairs, who never let dishes drain by themselves. Danielle was always in motion, and it made Carrie more tired, not less.

But that hadn't kept Carrie from waking up early, well before six, and going down to make coffee only to discover, with disappointment, that Danielle was up first and had made a pot of coffee and a tray of muffins.

“So what do we need to do today, kiddo?”

“Nothing really.”

“Surely there's something you need for the funeral on Tuesday?”

“No.”

Danielle sighed. So John was right. She'd hoped he'd been exaggerating, but apparently not.

“How about a new dress? Shoes?”

Carrie shrugged. She couldn't think of anything more depressing than picking out something to wear to her son's funeral. She remembered Libby telling her once that she had bought two black dresses—one short-sleeved, one long-sleeved—and kept them in her closet for year-round funerals. At the time, she'd thought that was a little too organized, like something her mother would do. Now she saw the wisdom of it. The dress would already be there. She should have done that months ago too.

“Maybe something pretty and new, not black but in Ben's favorite color? Wasn't blue his favorite color, sweetheart?”

“Blue,” she said softly, thinking of his blue tennis shoes.

“We could do a whole blue theme then. Napkins and tablecloths. I could call your caterer and arrange that, make a few tweaks.”

“Okay.”

“And you ordered the flowers already? What colors?”

“I just said not red.”

“Okay, well, I'll call them back and order tones of blue, maybe lavender. See? We have plenty to do. Do you have a file in the office?”

Carrie nodded. “It's all in the master bedroom, the photo boards, everything. I did the boards on blue,” she said, a little brightness coming back into her voice. At least she'd done one thing right. One thing that didn't have to be undone.

“Okay then. Should we hit the mall first or make the calls?”

Danielle looked at her watch. Carrie knew that movement by heart: the flick of the arm, the downward glance. Her mother's career had depended on that watch, which she wore constantly, even on the beach in Florida. If she ever took it off, there would be tan lines around the square chain links.

Danielle didn't wait for an answer; Carrie was sure she had probably made up her own mind. The mall would be crowded soon; Danielle knew her daughter didn't like being in crowded places anymore. Not where people might recognize her and whisper. Sitting there at her kitchen counter, Carrie watched her mother wiping up invisible crumbs, rinsing out coffee cups. Always doing something. Wasn't that the problem with them both? If only Carrie had done less, maybe she'd have noticed more—more about the guy at the Y who always seemed to be on his phone. That had to be him. His dark glasses, his shaggy hair that was sometimes, maybe, pulled into a small, low bun. How she thought he must be another parent because he was always taking pictures with that white phone. Why hadn't she told anyone? Why hadn't she paid more attention? Why had she been so busy running errands and signing Ben up for classes and drinking coffee that she hadn't opened up to what could be happening around her?

“Mom,” she said suddenly. “I have to tell you something.”

“What's that?” Danielle continued scouring the sink.

“Stop,” Carrie said. “Stop cleaning.”

Danielle turned around. Her face was always light bronze, and the wrinkles around her eyes had gotten deep. But now her brow furrowed too; she looked frightened, Carrie thought. And was that what all this cleaning and the constant doing was for? To keep out the worst possibilities?

“I, uh…don't know where to begin.”

Danielle put down the sponge carefully but kept her fingers on it, as if for ballast.

“Is this about…Ben?” She said the words as softly as she could, as if they could barely make it out of her mouth.

Carrie's heart fluttered.
Dear God, what did her mother think? John, the detectives, not her own mother too!

“No, Mom,” she said. “It's about me.”

“Darling, I know about the funeral planning. John told me. And I just want you to know, I understand. I do. I explained it to him too. It's…something I would have done. Honestly.”

Carrie smiled. Of course she did. Her mother would understand that.

“Mom, I… There's no easy way to say this.”

“Then just say it, honey.”

“I had a baby in high school,” she blurted out.

“What did you say?”

“Please don't make me say it again.”

Carrie's eyes filled with tears. She felt something pulling deep within her, sinew and muscle twisting, as if her body remembered giving birth. How it had hurt, with nothing to ease the pain but the whiskey Ethan had forced her to drink.

“The day before Thanksgiving break, you stayed home from school with cramps,” Danielle said suddenly. “I had the open house on Lincolnwood.”

Carrie sniffed, nodded. “It was the night before,” she said. “I told you I was sleeping over at Monica's.”

“You never stayed home from school with cramps,” Danielle said.

“No.”

Danielle blinked, thinking back, searching the sky. “I'm sorry, honey. I knew something was off that day. I did. I can picture the look on your face right now. But I…how did I miss…your stomach, the weight gain? Was I that oblivious?”

“I was skinny. I wore sweatshirts. You were busy.”

“No,” Danielle said. “I mean, yes, I was, but I…was so afraid of the teenage years. I was so relieved that you were like a little adult, I can't even tell you. And I was so sad, after Dad left.”

“You didn't seem sad.”

“I hid it, I suppose. So you took the baby to…what was that place called on all the billboards? Something Cradle? You and Ethan?”

Carrie burst into tears.

“He said he did—that was the plan—but he didn't. I didn't find out for years, but he, he—”

“Oh dear God, Carrie,” Danielle said. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

Carrie nodded and sniffed, and Danielle folded her into her arms.

“He wanted me to have an abortion,” she cried. “But I couldn't. And I couldn't lose the scholarship.”

“Oh, Carrie. So this is what you've been shouldering all this time.” Danielle rocked her daughter back and forth gently, a rhythm that seemed to live in her limbs. “I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry you had to go through that alone. Does John know? Is that what's going on?”

“He…only knows part,” she said softly. “I couldn't tell him the rest because I don't think he'd trust me ever again.”

Carrie started to cry as she leaned into her mother. Danielle was thin but she was steely, which was its own brand of comfort. A doer, not a dreamer. A fixer, not a hugger. But this was not something Danielle could fix.

“Before we go to the mall, honey,” she said with a sigh, “I think we need to go to a church.”