Table for five (34 page)

C
ameron paced up and down the platform at the train station. He’d felt totally weird all day, ever since getting up super-early and telling his uncle, “I’m going to the city to pick up my girlfriend at the Amtrak station.” Not so long ago, he couldn’t imagine getting in his mother’s car and driving to Portland by himself. He couldn’t imagine declaring to anyone that Becky Pilchuk was his girlfriend. Yet he’d done both and the world hadn’t come to an end, so that was something.

Sean had seemed distracted when he agreed to let Cameron have the car. Cameron was pretty sure his uncle and Lily Robinson were getting it on. He’d had his suspicions ever since the Colonial tournament. That night, Red had treated him and his sisters to a feast of prime rib, baked potatoes and hot fudge sundaes in the hotel’s fancy restaurant. They had been surrounded by the best golfers in the country and Cameron had acted like a total gawk, but he couldn’t help himself. When Phil Mickelson complimented him on the job he’d done caddying for Sean, Cameron had felt ten feet tall. He
asked each player for the same greeting with his autograph—
To Becky.

When they got back to the RV that night, Lily and Sean were seated at the table, not talking but just looking at each other, a half-empty box of Devil Dogs between them. Lily’s hair was loose and her glasses lay on the table in front of her. There was a different energy around them, and Cameron knew. He wasn’t sure how, but it was perfectly clear to him that they were together now. A couple.

It made Cameron feel funny, but in a good way, a way he had not felt since he was little and his parents were still kind to each other. Seeing his uncle and Lily like that made the earth feel solid under his feet. After they returned home, he expected them to open up about it, but so far they hadn’t. Cameron couldn’t understand that. After what had happened to his parents, he didn’t see any reason to hold off on something you wanted.

Still, he felt awkward and unaccountably nervous as he waited for Becky to get off the train. At the same time, he felt curiously adult, knowing Becky’s father had approved of his plan to pick her up at the station. And there was, as always, that undercurrent of sadness that rode with him every moment like a low-grade fever. His own mom and dad were missing this. They’d never meet Becky, never see him dressed up for a formal dance or win the state golf championship. They’d never see him make something of his life, never be there to help him decide on a college, or to celebrate with him or criticize him. He missed them so much that sometimes he felt like putting his fist through a wall.

There were all these warning notices about security and passengers-only all over the station, but he ignored them and everybody seemed to ignore him as he went down a set of stairs and up another, emerging on the platform. The macadam
surface of the platform was marked off in diamond-shaped segments with ridges to prevent people from slipping. He stood on one segment and thought about his father. Dr. Sachs said he should do this often, should think about his parents in a concrete and deliberate fashion. In his mind, he should wrap up each thought and store it away in a special place.

Even the bad ones? Cameron had asked.

Even the bad ones.

Cameron looked down at his shoes. He thought about the fight he’d had with his father that last day.
I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.

Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.

It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up.

And this was supposed to help? he wondered, and moved to another square. When other kids’ dads were teaching them to ride a two-wheeler, Cameron’s father taught him to drive an electric golf cart. He’d been so little he couldn’t reach the pedals while sitting, so he stood like a streetcar conductor. His first time out, he ran right over a ball washer, leaving the nylon bristles like roadkill in his wake. Dad hadn’t gotten mad, though. He’d laughed and showed Cameron how to putt that day, and ever since, Cameron had sunk his putts with incredible accuracy.

You’re a natural, Dad used to say. Don’t let it fool you. Knowing you have talent only makes you lazy. The truth is, you have to work twice as hard.

Cameron’s father had lived his life that way, working hard, focusing, never falling back on talent alone. Now, Uncle Sean, there was an example of talent alone. It was erratic, winning him the Masters one year and losing him his PGA card the next. He’d changed, though. He was a different sort of golfer now, in control of his game.

Cameron didn’t know which brother he resembled more. A little of both, probably. But mostly, he was himself. He stepped to another square.

A woman pushing a kid in a stroller came out of the elevator. The kid was about Ashley’s age, with a grubby face and a smile that told the world he was happy for no particular reason. Dad used to sit on the floor with Ashley, stacking up blocks so she could knock them down, pretending to throw a tantrum when she did. That used to make her giggle uncontrollably, and Dad just loved that.

Had he known? Cameron had asked himself the question over and over again.

If Dad knew, it hadn’t mattered in the way he’d loved her, that was for sure. And somehow, Cameron knew in his heart that his father’s love for the baby wouldn’t change even if he knew the truth.

It meant the end of his parents’ love for each other, though admittedly that was probably gone well before Ashley came along. His father had fooled around before his mother did—with Jane. He didn’t even bother to hide it. Cameron’s mother took things a step further and had another man’s baby. By then, of course, the whole family was in pieces. Sometimes you go with the wrong person and do the wrong thing because you’re not thinking. Maybe that was what his mom had done.

It seemed like a lousy thing to do, but now they had Ashley. And Ashley was…simply a gift. An undeserved gift to this whole screwed-up family.

Stepping into another square, he saw the toddler in the stroller looking at him and he winked. He started a game of peekaboo behind his hands, but the mother didn’t see, and she wheeled the stroller away. Cameron tried to get his mind off his family, but reminders were everywhere—a magazine rack with a headline about a celebrity custody battle. A flyer ad
vertising divorce for $99. His stomach churned with the fear that Ashley was at risk. If she was taken away, the whole family would collapse, he just knew it. They had survived losing his parents, just barely. But losing the baby…

He wondered how to get advice from a lawyer without letting on that there was a problem. Could he just go to some guy’s office and say, “This is a purely hypothetical situation, but if a kid is being raised by her uncle because her parents are deceased, and then it turns out he’s not her biological uncle after all, will that change who gets to raise the kid?”

If that was the law, then the law was wrong, he thought. As soon as he turned eighteen, he’d vote out the fools who had legislated it.

Cameron stood up very straight. The noise and bustle of the station seemed to fade into the background as one clear, perfect thought took hold. In less than two years, he would be a legal adult.

And he was Ashley’s blood relative. He would be her guardian. No one would take her away from him, ever.
Ever.

For the first time in weeks, a peculiar calm spread through him. Ashley was going to stay where she belonged.

The train hissed and groaned its way into the station, and Cameron’s nerves thrummed with anticipation. He was amazed at how many people seemed to be on the train and how long it took them to get off. This was worse than on an airplane, when everybody in front of you took forever to get their stuff out of the overhead compartment. There was a family of six from Mexico, looking bewildered but cautiously pleased, emerging from a silver passenger car and blinking at the light. A man alone in a suit that looked clean and pressed even though he had probably spent hours sitting on board stepped down, his perfectly shined shoes gleaming. There was a woman in a tie-dyed dress carrying a birdcage, and a
pair of backpackers who were maybe college-age. For the first time since the accident, Cameron could picture himself like that someday, striking out toward a future.

Last April, he hadn’t thought much about the future at all. He’d drifted from day to day, goofing off with people he called friends. Now he knew what a true friend was—someone who cared enough about you to make you want to be a better person, and these days he actually cared about that. Being better. Doing his best in school, because it mattered. He grudgingly conceded that school was important. He wanted to go to college, see the world, be with someone special, look after his sisters.

The moment he spotted Becky squeezing through the train-car door with an overstuffed duffel bag, the churning eased. He could tell by the way she was scanning the platform that she hadn’t spotted him yet. He was about to run toward her, but he hesitated a moment. She looked…different. Way different. Something had happened to her over the summer, something indefinable but very real. He felt a little intimidated by the tall girl walking toward the exit like a supermodel, her hair a silky flutter behind her. Then she spotted him and smiled, her teeth a dazzling flash of white in her tanned face. That was the Becky he knew, shining through.

He hurried toward her, weaving in and out of the milling crowd. Now what? He wondered if he should grab her and give her a hug, maybe even kiss her. Instead, he just stood there like an idiot.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.” She was blushing beneath the tan. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“That’s okay. Can I give you a hand with that?” He grabbed her duffel bag and headed for the exit. Stupid, he thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He kept sneaking glances at her and noticed her doing the same. There was more blushing on both sides. His ears were so hot, he was sure the flames were visible.

He noticed that her hair was almost white-blond from the sun. Neither of them seemed to know what to say, where to put their hands or their feet or their thoughts or their yearning.

“My car’s over here,” he said, leading the way.
My car.
Not my mom’s car, but mine. It finally felt like a good fit. He opened the hatchback and put her bags in. And at some point, for some reason, he stopped thinking about what to do or what to say next. He turned to face her and put his hands on her shoulders. She felt just right. Perfect.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, and leaned down and kissed her, simple as that. She tasted sweet and her lips were warm, and he felt a wave of happiness as pure and clean as anything he’d felt since the accident.

She pulled back and looked up at him with shining eyes. “I’ve missed you, too.”

He took both her hands in his. “I didn’t kiss you goodbye,” he said. “I thought about that all summer. I should have done that. I wish I had.”

“You kissed me hello. That’s better, anyway.”

A fresh wind through his bedroom window awakened Cameron. He knew it would rain soon. He had a powerful sense of the weather, feeling the damp in the atmosphere and the wind like a phantom breath on the back of his neck.

He slipped out of bed and went downstairs, shushing the dog as she greeted him with ecstatic whining and thumps of her tail. He opened the door to the damp morning, letting the dog scamper out in front of him. Dark-bellied clouds hung low over the neighborhood and a breeze kicked up, turning over the leaves to show their pale undersides.

It was weird to be the first one up. He was usually the late sleeper in the family, especially after staying out so late the night before. With Becky.

He couldn’t stop a smile from unfurling, didn’t even try to stop it. He shivered in the morning air and watched Babe sniffing the periphery of the backyard. He automatically checked his cell phone. Too early to call her. He was desperate to hear her voice even though he knew what she’d say. She’d ask him if he’d had a talk with his uncle yet. That was Becky, straightforward and matter-of-fact. When he’d told her his dilemma about Ashley, and the solution he envisioned, she said the longer he put it off, the harder it would be.

He noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Charlie coming toward him. She had on their mother’s long blue nightgown, which she’d worn to bed every single night since last April. The thing was getting ratty from overuse and it was way too long, but no one would ever tell Charlie that. She held the hem up with both hands while she walked and just for a second, a weird, dreamy moment, Cameron blurred his eyes and turned the figure coming toward him into his mother.
There you are, honey. I’ve been looking all over for you.

Then the vision was gone and it was just Charlie again, looking small and maybe a little lost. “What are you doing up so early?” he asked her.

Babe came bounding up to snuffle and greet her, then took off again, skimming across the dew-wet grass with her nose low to the ground.

Charlie shrugged. “My eyes just popped open.”

The dog circled back, bowing playfully. Cameron found a fuzzy green tennis ball nestled in the grass. Picking it up with two fingers, he shook off the dew and lobbed the ball to the far
end of the yard. Babe streaked off after it and brought it back, dropping it at his feet and looking up with eyes full of hope.

“Yuck, it’s all slimy,” Charlie observed.

“Washes right off,” he said, throwing the ball again and wiping his hand on his shorts.

“Why’re you up so early?” she asked.

“Thinking about things.”

“What things?”

“Ashley,” he said simply. He and Charlie rarely mentioned the matter. Now, seeing her worried frown, he thought that might be a mistake. Thunder growled in the distance. She moved closer to Cameron. Her tiny flip-flops slapped against her heels. She seemed really little to him, little and scared. He took her hand in his.