Between Friends (14 page)

“I’m not going to discuss having another baby when we can’t control the one we have!”

“She’s not a baby!” I yelled back, matching his volume, tired of being on the receiving end. “They grow up, Benny, they grow up and they lie and they test you and they do things that make you crazy. That’s what they do. That’s not a reason to turn into a dictator, and it’s not a reason to not have another one.”

“Well, I think it is.” He clenched his hands, looking for something to do with them, his face red and mottled.

I should have been terrified for him. He looked like someone about to have a heart attack, or a stroke. But instead, I was terrified
of
him.

“I’m not going to stay here when you’re this angry, and I’m not going to expose Letty to it, either,” I said, my voice trembling.

“If you walk out that door, Ali, don’t be so sure that it’s going to be open when you decide to come back.”

I shook all the way over to Cora’s.

She knew she had a huge stupid grin on her face, but she just didn’t care. The very worst day of her life was so completely the best day ever now. She and her mom had flown to Arizona to visit her grandparents when she was, like, seven, and then her whole class flew to Washington, D.C., last year for their eighth-grade class trip, but she’d never been in one of these little planes before.

The only thing she could compare it to was when they’d go to Busch Gardens and go on the roller coasters. Not because it was so scary, but because she felt so light in the middle, like she was filled with helium, and she couldn’t stop grinning.

“How you doing?” Aunt Cora called over to her, and all she could do was grin and nod her head, peering down through the windows to look at the water below.

“Put your hands on,” Aunt Cora said, tilting her head toward the steering wheel thing in front of Letty. It was going up and down and turning the same way hers was.

She laughed and shook her head. “No way. I’ll crash us,” she said.

“No, you won’t. I’ll have control the whole time. Come on, it’s fun.”

Letty touched the wheel with her fingers and pulled them back quickly when it moved, laughing. Aunt Cora laughed, too.

“Okay,” she said, more to herself than to Aunt Cora, and she lightly wrapped her hands around the sides. And she knew that she wasn’t flying the plane, but oh, man, it almost felt like she was. She gripped it a little firmer, and it was like she could feel everything around them, like her whole body was set up to do this one thing.

“Want to go up a little?” Aunt Cora asked, and she nodded, not looking at her.

She knew Aunt Cora was in control, but now that she was touching the wheel she felt like she’d better watch where they were going.

“Okay, just pull back a little, like this,” Aunt Cora said, pulling the wheel toward her, real slow and smooth.

She pushed it away again, and they leveled out.

“Really?” Letty asked, breathless.

Aunt Cora nodded. “Yeah, go on, I’m right here, I won’t let it go too far.”

So she pulled it a little toward her; it was harder than she thought, but she didn’t want to give it too much and jerk them up into the sun or anything, so she just kept steady, and there it came, and they were going up!

She laughed out loud, screaming a little, and Aunt Cora was laughing along with her again, and she had never, ever, not once in her life, not with Seth, or her mom and dad, or Emily, ever felt so exactly perfect in her whole life.

She couldn’t stop talking about it on the way home, and Aunt Cora was all happy and acting like she knew just how it felt. When they got back to the house, Aunt Cora said she was really tired and wanted to lie down, but Letty was so hyped up that she wanted to do something, and she figured it would be nice if she cleaned the pool as a surprise.

So when Aunt Cora closed her door, she found the stuff in the garage and got to work, and just as she was finishing up and thinking about diving in, she heard a car out front.

What if her dad had changed his mind and come to get her? She went out the patio screen door and walked around the side of the house to peer at the driveway.

It wasn’t her dad, it was her mom, and she watched her sit in the car, her head on the steering wheel, for a minute before she approached, looking down the street to make sure her dad wasn’t right behind.

Her mom jumped when she got to the window, like she’d scared her, and then she rolled the window down. She was crying, but she was mad at the same time.

“Go inside, Letty,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Okay,” Letty said, and all the good feelings from the flying just drained away. She went inside and curled up on the bed in the guest room.

Her mom didn’t come in for a long time.

Letty woke me by sitting gingerly on the edge of my bed. I had no idea how long I had slept, but the room was gloomy and my thoughts muddled, so I had clearly been out longer than I would have preferred.

“Hey,” she whispered.

I sat up and ran my hands through my hair, hoping that I didn’t look like pure hell in front of her.

“Hey, yourself,” I said. “Sorry I conked out on you. Are you starving?”

She shook her head. “Mom’s here.”

“She is? Is everything okay?”

“She’s in the pool. She told me to not bother you.”

“She’s in the pool? It’s filthy.”

“I cleaned it. The chemicals were way off, so it’s still really cloudy, but it should be okay by tomorrow. I turned on the pump and everything.”

“How do you know how to do all that?”

She shrugged, a proud little tight smile on her face. “It’s one of my chores. Dad showed me how to do it all.”

“Nice job, thanks, Letty. So, how long has she been here?”

“Maybe an hour, but she was crying when she got here.”

That woke me up.

“All right, why don’t you give us a few minutes, and then change into your suit; we’ll all go for a swim, and maybe we’ll walk down to the beach for sunset?”

“Okay.” She stood and walked toward the door but paused for a moment, turning back to me with a troubled look on her face. “Aunt Cora? Did you tell her?”

I’d been thinking about Ali and Benny, and it took me a moment to remember what Letty was talking about. But I recalled Seth soon enough and shook my head.

“No, I didn’t tell her. Don’t worry, this isn’t about you. I know it must seem like it, but it’s not.”

I’d meant the words to comfort her, but it was clear from the look on her face that I had only worried her further. She turned away, and I heard the guest room door close a moment later. When I got out to the pool, Ali was on a green rubber float, her eyes closed. I slipped into the cool, cloudy water, my nose filling with the odor of the chemicals Letty had so recently dumped into the water.

I swam out to the float as Ali opened her eyes.

“What’s going on?” I asked, skipping the niceties.

“Oh, Cora, I had no idea.” Her voice was bleak.

“What?” I insisted.

She glanced toward the house.

“She’s in the guest room. I told her to give us a few minutes.”

“I think I just left Benny.”

I gripped the edge of the float, staring at her in shock. This I had not ever expected. It simply wasn’t possible.

“No,” I said. “Get over here.”

I swam, one-armed, for the steps, dragging the float behind me. She stared at the screen overhead and let me pull her to the edge without protest. I got out and wrapped myself in a towel and then held one out for her, but she didn’t move. She simply looked at the colorful beach towel hanging from my hands, her face slack, as if she had no idea what it might be for.

“Come on, Ali. Get out of the pool.”

She clumsily flopped off the float and walked into the cocoon of the towel, finally settling it around her waist and sitting on the edge of a lounge chair. I dragged a patio chair over and sat in front of her, staring at her until she finally looked at me.

“Now. What do you mean you left him?”

“I mean, well, I don’t know that I
left
him, for good. But I’m not going back until he gets some help.”

“What happened?”

“He scared me, Cora.”

I gaped at her. I couldn’t imagine Benny frightening anyone, but once she told me the whole story I was a little afraid of him myself, and Ali had always been more afraid of confrontation than I was.

She looked past me, out toward the areca palms that shaded the patio, crowding closer every year, their copper and green fronds pressing against the screen, desperate to get in and take over the pool.

“So, I left.”

I reached out and took her hand in mine. “You did the right thing, Ali. I’m so sorry, but listen, Benny loves you, and you love him, and he’ll get help, okay?”

She nodded, but she looked miserable. I felt terrible for her, and I also felt sorry for Benny. But I certainly wasn’t going to admit it.

“Hey, Ali, Benny’s a bit of an anachronism, don’t you think? I think he sort of sees the world in a really idealistic way. It’s no wonder he became a cop; he wants everything to be in order, to make sense. And when something like this happens, something that doesn’t make any sense to him, the death of a boy who was just like him, I bet it freaks him out. Moving back to being a street cop is probably going to be really good for him. He hasn’t had an outlet for this . . . what? Moral outrage?”

Ali gave a small laugh, but she was listening.

“I’d be willing to bet that he just needs some action in his life, a way to feel like he’s really helping. Benny’s not a naturally angry guy, and he loves you so much. It’ll calm down, you’ll see.”

“Mom?” Letty’s voice came from a crack in the sliding glass door, sounding young and scared.

Ali said, “In a minute, Let,” at the same time I said, “It’s okay, come on out.”

I don’t know that I was louder than Ali, but Letty wasn’t about to sit in the house any longer, and she rumbled the slider open as soon as the “okay” was out of my mouth, approaching her mother cautiously.

“Hey, punkin,” Ali said, patting the lounge.

Letty looked at me quickly.

“Sit down,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile.

She lowered herself onto the edge of the lounge slowly, looking between us as if certain she was about to be set upon and interrogated.

“What’s going on?” Letty asked.

“Everything’s fine,” Ali said. “We’re going to stay here for a few days, give us all a break from each other.”

Letty looked back and forth between us in panic. “What do you mean? What’s Dad doing?”

“Don’t worry, Letty,” Ali said, but it was clear that Letty was going to worry. “Everything is going to stay the same, Dad’s going to go to work, you’re going to go to school, I’m going to run the store. We’re just going to stay with Cora for a bit . . . if that’s okay?” Ali looked at me as if suddenly aware that she’d never asked if they could stay, as if she had to.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s going to be fun.”

“You’re still grounded,” Ali told Letty, who appeared even more confused.

“Why can’t we go home?” she asked. “Did Dad . . . did he tell us to leave?”

“No, not at all,” Ali reassured her. “Your dad is under a lot of stress at work, and we both think it’s a good idea if he can get into the routine of this new job without worrying about us.”

None of us were fooled by Ali’s light tone, and Letty kept that worried furrow between her young eyes for the rest of the weekend, despite my attempts to snap her out of it.

Ali took Letty to school on Monday, and I picked her up, taking her to the airfield to cheer her up. She wasn’t the only one who needed the distraction. Dr. MacKinnon had called with my appointment with the vascular surgeon to have my graft put in place, and I was in sore need of something to take my mind off it.