Tumble & Fall (30 page)

“Leo’s friend,” Zan reminds her. “He was … helping me with something.”

Miranda nods. It looks for a moment like she’s going to ask more. Zan’s mind is racing. The last thing she wants to do is talk to her mother about Leo. But maybe it would be good. Maybe it’s only right, the night before they wait for the end, to finally get to the bottom of whatever it is that has always come between them. The strained conversations, the unspoken disappointments. Whatever it was that made Miranda so reluctant to accept that Zan wasn’t just like her.

And why had things gotten so much worse, once Leo started coming around? It was as if Miranda refused to believe that her daughter could possibly have fallen in love, or found somebody she wanted to spend all of her time with, somebody more important to her than anything else in the world. Even friends. Even school. Even her
passion
, especially considering that, aside from Leo, she hadn’t really found one yet.

And maybe Zan could finally admit that yes, there were times when she did feel like she may have missed out. Maybe she shouldn’t have lost touch with all of her friends. Maybe she should have spent more time figuring out who she wanted to be, so that when Leo was so suddenly, so unbelievably, gone, she would have been able to put herself back together again. Or at least she might have known where to start.

Miranda takes a slow sip of her tea, a damp cloud of peppermint wafting from the top of her mug. “Did you find it?”

Zan swallows. “Find what?”

Miranda runs both hands through her dark curls, shaking them at the roots. “Whatever you were looking for.”

Zan sets her glass down on the table, above the pale dents where Daniel had accidentally cut through the wood while working on some etchings. The way Miranda reacted you would have thought it was a priceless antique, and not some piece of left-behind furniture that came with the house when they moved in.

That’s it? She stares at the tiny cracks, not able to look up at her mother.
Did you find what you’re looking for?
This is their big heart-to-heart?

Zan sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “Sort of.”

She did find something. She found out how little she knew how to trust, even the one person who had never given her anything but reasons to do so. She found out how easily she could forget everything that ever mattered. She found out that she was right to love Leo as hard as she had. As hard as she still does, and always will.

It doesn’t much feel like it, but she found Joni, too. Or, she got close. Closer than any of them had been in seven years. She’s tempted to tell Miranda. At least it would be something. Something to make Zan feel important, worthwhile.

But she knows it wouldn’t do any good. It would be only out of spite, a way to say,
Remember Leo? Who was never good enough? Look what he did. Look what he did for me.
And somewhere, even though there’s a part of Zan that wants to make Miranda hurt, wants to make her feel the way she feels, she knows it wouldn’t be fair. Ever since Joni left, Miranda has been trying to forget her, forget the daughter who wouldn’t be boxed in. The daughter who was strong enough to choose the life that she wanted, instead of the one Miranda had decided would be hers.

Why remind her of all that now? Why remind her that somewhere, not so very far from where they are sitting, Joni is out there. Just a few phone calls away. Leo had found her. And who knows what happened, who knows if they ever really met, but considering that she hasn’t turned up, it’s safe to assume that still, even now, Joni doesn’t want to be found.

Miranda takes one final sip of her tea and stands, carefully tucking her chair back beneath the lip of the table. “I don’t know if your father told you, but we’ve planned a gathering at the beach tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night?” Zan asks with a bitter chuckle. Tomorrow night. Sunset. The asteroid. Leave it to Miranda to insist on planning even the end of the world.

“Yes.” Miranda brings her mug to the sink. “It’s important for everyone in the neighborhood to be together. To have a place to go, and not be alone. I realize you might not care about this community, but I do. We do. Your father will bring his new installation. We’ll have a picnic. It will be…”

Zan holds her breath. If her mother says
nice
, or
lovely
, or anything complimentary and meaningless, she is going to scream. Literally scream, until her body shakes in silent, empty spasms, until there is no sound in her left.

“I hope you’ll join us,” Miranda says instead. She rests her cup in the sink and passes through the kitchen to her bedroom, where Daniel has been asleep. He sleeps through everything. Miranda, on the other hand, is an insomniac. Zan has spent countless nights lying awake in bed, listening to her mother puttering in the kitchen, making tea, flipping through the pages of the local paper. Sleeplessness was the one thing they’d always had in common, though, naturally, it had never been discussed.

Zan sits in the quiet, listening to the relentless
plink plunk
of the dripping faucet behind her. She’s no longer hungry but roots around in the pantry anyway. She takes an open bag of trail mix back to the table and begins picking out the Brazil nuts, to be discarded into the trash. She smiles sadly, thinking of Gretchen, who finally found her soul mate. At least something worked out for someone, she thinks.

She stares at the old grandfather clock in the living room—11:53. In just a few minutes,
tomorrow
will be here. A sudden, cold fear shocks her inside, all the way down to the smallest bones in her feet. They’d had so many warnings. So much time to prepare. And where had it left them? Was anything better? The world was still ending, and nothing made sense. Nobody had been able to tell her why Leo had to die. Or where Joni was. Or why she and her mother could never have an actual conversation. These were the things she’d always imagined she’d know, somehow, before it was her turn to stop living.

She sits with a handful of sunflower seeds in her palm, a new, anxious tightening at the base of her throat. She hasn’t cried much since the news came, the news that nobody knew how to process. How do you think about the end of the world? Where do you file it away? It never seemed to settle anywhere near the place where the tears were hiding. Or maybe it was her. Maybe she’d run out of tears, having spent months and months crying for Leo, and for herself without him.

There’s a shuffle outside. At first, she thinks it’s an animal. The slow, steady crackle of dirt and gravel. Steps. But bigger than a skunk. Or raccoon. As they near the front door, Zan looks up. The handle, a rusted brass swirl, is turning. Nobody’s doors are ever locked on the island, and suddenly, Zan wonders why not.

She hops quickly to her feet and stands behind her chair, as if to use it as a weapon. The door creaks slowly open. In the dark, Zan can only make out the boots, tall black leather with glinting silver buckles.

“Hello?” a voice whispers. “Zan, is that you?”

Zan drops the handful of seeds and nuts in a scattered pile on the table. She runs to the living room and turns on the lamp by the couch. Standing in the door, her long dark hair tangled beneath the thin straps of her flowing dress, is her sister.

Joni, who wouldn’t be found, had found her.

CADEN

Caden asked to be dropped at the beach.

He couldn’t go home, not yet. It didn’t feel right to wake them up in the middle of the night, bombard Ramona and Carly with the news of where he’d been, and what he knew.

He slept on the beach, by the boulder, where he’d slept so many nights before. The steady thumping of the waves on the shore had lulled him quickly to sleep, and he woke as the first rays of misty sunlight glowed from behind the dunes.

Now, he takes a deep breath as he starts up the unpaved driveway. He still doesn’t feel ready, but he has no choice. He can’t put it off any longer.

The first thing he notices is the trash. Or, more accurately, the lack of trash scattered across the overgrown lawn, usually tumbled from the overturned rubber barrels, listing at one side of the house.

The barrels, now, stand tall, empty, and almost proud—if trash can be proud—at the bottom of the steps, complete with matching lids. Lids that Caden is pretty sure he’s never seen before in his life.

As he looks closer, he sees that the lawn, which he hadn’t before considered much of a lawn at all, is no longer overgrown. The grass has been cut back and actually glistens, green and healthy. Even the squat ceramic pots that usually serve as ashtrays have been cleaned out and planted with tiny pink and purple flowers.

Caden looks back at the road, and then up to the house, disoriented. The house is his house, there’s no doubt about that. The cracked asphalt on the flat roof is still cracked; the busted heating vent that sags near the basement is still both sagging and busted. But the overall vibe as he approaches the front door is definitely, substantially, better.

Carly must have been on some kind of home-improvement rampage, he figures, fueled by grief and denial. He shakes his head and starts up the back deck. The glare of the sun off the sliding glass doors is bright and blinding, and the piercing shrill of Ramona’s scream seems to reach him from everywhere at once.

There’s a discombobulated clatter as Caden turns to see his mother, falling from a rusted chaise lounge. She’s barefoot, in a red-gold nightgown that matches her hair, and her skin is sun-kissed and shiny. She runs to him across the plywood decking, throwing her arms around him and burying her head under his chin.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” she’s muttering, more to the air than to him. Caden wants to hug her back, but his arms are pinned to his sides, and he’s still trying to make sense of it all—the healthy yard, the flowers, the clean, fruity scent of shampoo in Ramona’s soft, wavy hair.

When she finally releases him, she pushes him back to study his face. He looks into her eyes and is shocked by what isn’t there: no heavy lids, no sick, glassy sheen, no red at the corners. Just the startling blue of her irises, and the subtle shine of real tears around them.

“Hi, Mom,” he says.

She shakes his elbows and the tears spill over onto the tops of her cheeks. She falls into his chest again, but this time he wrestles free and hugs her close, the sharp points of her shoulders tucked under his arms.

“I knew you’d come back,” she breathes. “I knew it.”

Caden runs his hands through his own hair, greasy and thick. He catches his reflection in the glass. It’s been days since he’s showered, and his clothes, though still stiff and new, hang on him in a way that looks unnatural.

He takes a deep breath, steadying himself for the wrath that is sure to come. For all Ramona knows, he’s been at some nonstop rave, high off of whatever he could get his hands on, with no plans to ever return.

But she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t accuse. She wipes her eyes carefully with the insides of two fingers and smiles.

“Are you hungry?” she asks. She pulls open the slider and Caden follows her into the house, his eyes splotchy from the sun. Even in the dark he can feel that it’s spotless, the kitchen counters glistening, no dirty dishes in the sink. “There are leftovers from dinner last night. The Lowes brought us over some more veggies. I made a stir-fry.”

“You cooked?”

Ramona pulls her hair back and ropes it into a bun. She smiles from behind the open fridge. “We’ve had a big week around here.”

“I can tell,” Caden says. Is she really not going to ask where he’s been? “Where’s Carly?”

“She’s at the Center, one of her meetings…” Ramona pulls out a Tupperware container and spoons the contents into a bowl. “I told her to skip it. Such a gorgeous day. But you know how she is…”

She moves quickly, sticking the bowl in the microwave and jabbing at some buttons. The yellow light flickers on as the tray inside vibrates and spins.

“Mom,” Caden starts. There must be a tell in his voice, a small signal that he has something serious to say. Before he can take another breath she’s rushing across the kitchen to his side.

“Caden, no.” She pushes him into one of the mismatched chairs at the dining room table and sits in another, gripping his forearms with both hands. “You don’t have to say anything, okay? We don’t have to do this. I know why you left.”

“You do?”

Ramona nods. She’s stopped looking him in the eye, staring instead at the insides of his wrists, the palms of his slender hands. “Of course,” she says. “I probably would have done the same. You didn’t deserve this. You never did, either of you, but especially not at a time like this. You were scared, and confused, and I wasn’t here for you at all. I was the one who ran away first, you know? Without ever getting off that couch, I left you both. And I’ll never forgive myself for that. Okay?”

“Mom…”

“I know that. And I know you can’t forgive me, either. There isn’t enough time. There would never be enough time. But the second night you didn’t come home, Carly was here with me, and something just snapped inside. I couldn’t keep doing it, Caden. I made you leave, and I had no idea if you were coming back, but I knew I had to change. No matter what happened, I knew I couldn’t spend whatever time we had left the way I’d been living. I know it sounds stupid, and, maybe not like very much, but…” She looks up at him and works on a smile, weak and careful and heartbreaking. “I haven’t had a drink in four days.”

Caden swallows and peels her fingers from around his wrists, holding them together in his palms. “It doesn’t sound stupid,” he says gently. “It’s really great, Mom.”

The smile gets stronger and she squeezes his fingers. She looks happier than he’s ever seen her look in his life.

“But you’re wrong,” he continues softly. “I didn’t leave because of you.”

Ramona turns her head and the makeshift bun falls out, long tangled strands of her hair falling to her elbows on the table. “You didn’t?”

Caden shakes his head. “Actually, I didn’t leave at all,” he says. “I was taken.”

“Taken?” Ramona asks. There’s a wild glint in her eyes all of a sudden, like she already knows, like somewhere, deep down, she’s always known it would happen someday. “What do you mean you were taken?”