Bittersweet Homecoming (20 page)

“Eh, wasn’t paying attention,” he says meekly. “Got myself in the hand pretty good.”

There’s such a lack of urgency from either of them, I’m appalled.

The woman brings the reading glasses hanging by a chain around her neck up to the bridge of her nose. “Let’s take a look.”

“Shouldn’t you take him back to a room or something?” My voice has become high-pitched. “He’ll probably need a tetanus shot.”

“Mary, you remember my oldest—Abigail—don’t you?” my dad drawls.

The woman regards me. “Sure do. You’re the writer, right?”

I nod tightly.

“Then why don’t you take a seat in the waiting room and leave the health care to me.”

I’m filled with a kind of indignation, but I bite my tongue and do what she says.

As I wait for my dad to return, I fiddle with my phone. It’s probably a good thing Charlotte doesn’t have a cell phone, otherwise I would have gotten myself into more trouble. I’m tempted to call Roundtree’s regardless, but it’s too early for her shift and I really shouldn’t be making any phone calls in a hospital waiting room, even if it’s only Grand Marais. I text Emily to let her know what’s going on and ask her to relay the message to Kambria. It’s horrible, but I’m actually thankful for the accident. It gives me more time to mentally process what’s happened over the past twenty-four hours. I need to break up with Kambria. Properly. And I need to find a way to make this up to Charlotte.

I’m no closer to coming to a resolution when my dad finally re-emerges, his injured hand heavily swaddled in bandages. He’s given a prescription for painkillers that I’m sure he’ll never take and directions from the doctor to take it easy, whose advice he’ll disregard. As evidence of his hardheaded stubbornness, as soon as we leave the clinic, he wants me to drive him back to Mrs. Bernstein’s so he can get his work truck and tools. When I protest him doing anything more strenuous than using a remote control, he reminds me that God gave him two hands and that he only needs one of them to drive his truck.

He does, however, let me bring his tools back to the hardware store so he can go straight home from Mrs. Bernstein’s house and rest. My trip back through town has me driving past the neon signage of Roundtree’s Bar & Grill. A few cars dot the parking lot at this hour, but none of them are Charlotte’s green Jeep.

I slam my hand against the steering wheel. “Damn it.”

With a sharp tug on the wheel, I’m turning my car around and driving down the street where Charlotte lives.

I raise my closed fist, but the door to the ranch-style home lurches open before I can knock. Charlotte stands in the threshold, hair looking wild and unbrushed, and her eyes angry and red. I can hear Bessie Smith blasting in the background, lambasting a man who’s done her wrong.

“Don’t you know when to stop?” she snarls. She balls up her fists at her sides. If she had hit me, I wouldn’t have been surprised. And I would have definitely deserved it.

I hold up my hands to surrender. “I need to explain.”

Her body practically shakes with anger. “Explain?” she spits out. “Like how you have a girlfriend? How you cheated on some poor, unsuspecting girl with another unsuspecting girl? I don’t see what else there is to explain.” She grabs the edge of the front door, and I can tell she’s going to slam it shut in my face.

I shove my foot forward so when she does throw the door closed, it bounces off of my shoe and re-opens. She clearly isn’t happy I’ve forced the door back open, but I need to make her hear me.

“I have a girlfriend.” I brush my tongue over dry lips. “Her name is Kambria.”

Technically I broke up with Kambria, but if she didn’t get my voicemails, I suppose that means we’re still together. When a tree falls in an empty forest, I guess it doesn’t make a sound.

Charlotte’s eyes narrow. “I don’t need the details.”

“Maybe not, but I still need to explain myself.”

“Let me save you the trouble. You’re only explaining so you can feel better about yourself—so you don’t feel so guilty about leading on two women. But nothing you can say right now is going to make me feel any better.” Charlotte crosses her arms across her chest. “So why don’t you do something noble for once and just go?”

I drop my eyes to the concrete. She’s absolutely right.

“Where’s Amelia?” I ask.

“She’s at my parents’ house,” Charlotte says dully. “I needed time to work this out by myself, so my mom picked her up.”

“Did you tell her—.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she interrupts. “Go back to your girlfriend, Abby,” she tells me. “Go back to California where you belong.”

Where she’d been nothing but fight and vinegar when I’d first shown up, now she looks and sounds drained. I want to invite myself in and hold her and whisper away the pain, but you can’t console someone when you’re the cause of the heartache.

This time, when she shuts the door, I don’t stop her.

It’s late by the time I make it back to my dad’s house. The sun has set and the moon hangs full in the midnight-blue sky. My brain and heart are filled with a cacophony of thoughts and emotions.

Kambria’s sitting on the couch in the living room when I return. Her hands are in her lap and her wheeled suitcase is packed and upright beside her. Her right knee bounces with pent-up energy. The house is silent, but it’s late, so my dad and Emily are probably asleep in their rooms.

The front door shuts behind me, and the noise it makes sounds like an explosion.

“I’m back,” I announce.

She doesn’t look in my direction. “Where were you? Your dad got home awhile ago.”

“I had to get gas,” the lie slips out.

“Did you know your dad’s store sells cell phones?”

“It does?”

She slowly nods. “Your sister let me know. So I went there and bought a new phone.” Her mouth twitches. “I got your messages. Your many, many messages.”

My throat tightens.
Damn you, technology.

“You broke up with me in a voicemail.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah, I did.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

No, not really.
“Coming back here, to this place, it made me realize how very different you and I are. I’m sorry, Kami. I just don’t think you and I have a future together.”

“It couldn’t wait until you got back to LA?” Her voice waivers with emotion. “You couldn’t stand the thought of dating me so much that you had to break up with me in a voicemail?”

She’s spiraling down a hole of self-doubt and loathing, and I’m powerless to stop it. “No, that’s not it at all.”

I don’t bother taking off my shoes. I sit beside her on the couch. The fabric smells like my dad’s cologne—Old Spice. We sit beside each other in silence, neither of us brave enough to talk or to even look at each other.

“I’m sorry.” The syllables get caught in my throat and I try again. “I’m sorry you came all this way.”

When I feel the couch cushions begin to shake, I hazard a glance in her direction. Her head is bent forward and tears roll silently down her cheeks. “The bartender?” She’s more perceptive than she gives herself credit for. “I could tell something was off with you two.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I say helplessly.

“But it did.”

“But it did,” I acknowledge.

“I feel like an idiot. I wanted to surprise you, but you never wanted me here. You never wanted
me
.”

“That’s not true,” I weakly protest.

There’s a wet sobbing noise and then Kambria’s standing up and extending the handle on her suitcase.

I look up after her. “Where are you going?”

“The airport. This was a mistake.”

I couldn’t agree with her more, but it’s too late for her to be driving all the way to Minneapolis.

“Stay the night at least,” I urge. “The airport will still be there in the morning.”

By some miracle, she agrees to spend another night. I sleep on the pull out bed in the den and she once again takes my childhood bedroom. Kambria leaves in the morning after a stiff and awkward goodbye to my family and me. I don’t try to see Charlotte after that night. I stop going to the bar, the beach, and the library—the three places I’m sure to see her. I avoid most other places as well, afraid that I might bump into her at the grocery store or the video rental place. I want to give her space, but I’m also afraid. Seeing her is a tangible reminder of the terrible thing I’ve done.

At least Emily has started to come around, otherwise my dad would have had both of his daughters haunting his house. The roles now reversed, Emily leaves food outside of my bedroom door while I hide out. Pain is one of life’s great motivators. Right up there with love, heartache and disappointment has always activated my pen. I write a lot. I pour out my emotions into a new play. My ink-stained hands resemble the kind of work my dad does for a living. Maybe that’s why I had been so stuck before—I had been too content with my life. But without the extremes of passion and angst, my emotional gas tank had been running on empty. I owe both Kambria and Charlotte penance, so I do it the only way I know how—I write.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Surrounded by the familiar silhouettes of my childhood bedroom, it should be easy to fall asleep. The stack of stuffed animals on my steamer chest. The bookshelf packed with novels. The outline of movie and band posters on the walls. Beyond my bedroom window, Lake Superior crashes against the rocky shoreline, more soothing than any white noise recording.

I had had such big goals for myself when this room had been my home. I was going to graduate top of my high school class and go to a fancy university in the Twin Cities. And after college, I’d move out-of-state to an exotic, exciting city where I’d make a name for myself. I hadn’t known yet that I wanted to be a writer, but I’d been confident that whatever career I pursued, I would be the best at it.

A rewarding, long-lasting relationship had never figured into those grandiose plans. I’d only ever dreamt about my future career and the big city where I’d live. And as little as I had thought about what my future significant other might be like, having children figured even less into the equation. Maybe because my dad didn’t date, having a relationship as an adult hadn’t been high on my list of priorities.

I thought about my dad living in this big house all by himself. I didn’t want that for me. I could buy houseplants to fill every room, but in the end it was human touch and companionship that I craved. Was I ever going to find someone to grow old with? Or would I continue to self-sabotage my own happiness?

A gentle knock on the door to my bedroom has me rousing from troubled thoughts. The door opens partway, and I hear my sister’s quiet voice: “Abby? Are you awake?”

The door opens the rest of the way.

I wipe at my eyes and clear away the frog that’s taken residency in my throat. “What’s wrong, Em?”

“I can’t sleep.”

I pull the sheets back. “Get in.”

Her steps are light as she scampers across the room as if she’s worried I’ll rescind my invitation. She wiggles her body into the empty space beside me. My bed is only a twin-sized mattress, and I consider it a small miracle that we’re both able to fit. Even when I was in high school and she was in junior high, she’d sleep in my bed whenever we were hit with a particularly brutal storm. She’s always been afraid of thunder and lightning. It’s not storming tonight though.

“Your girlfriend didn’t stay very long,” she says into the dark room.

“She didn’t stay my girlfriend for very long either,” I remark.

“I tried calling to give you a heads up, but you didn’t answer the phone.”

“I know. I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I never should have encouraged Charlotte or I at least should have been able to keep it in my pants until I got back to Los Angeles and broke up with Kambria properly.”

“Probably would have been a good idea.”

I know that sometimes I live inside my head. I become a character in one of my stories where there are no consequences and everything works out by the end of the play. But real life doesn’t work like that—and even the best told stories don’t always end happily with a tidy bow.

I breathe out heavily and stare at the single glow-in-the-dark star stuck to the ceiling. “I messed up, Em. And now Charlotte hates me.”

“Did you really think you wouldn’t get caught?”

“I wasn’t thinking, period. That was my problem.”

We don’t talk the rest of the night. Soon enough I hear the sound of her quietly snoring. I don’t expect to get any sleep, but after a few hours of staring at the glowing star on the ceiling, I finally pass out.

When I wake up in the morning, Emily is gone. I hear the sounds of pots and pans slamming around downstairs, so I know she hasn’t gone far.

Walking past my sister’s bedroom, I pause in her doorway when I notice that the room is flooded with sunlight. The blinds have been opened and the curtains pulled apart. The sheets on the bed have been stripped to be laundered and the top quilt is folded at the end of the mattress.

I trudge down the stairs. “You’re awfully loud this morning,” I grumble upon entering the kitchen.

“Good morning to you, too,” Emily sweetly chirps. She’s wearing clothes—real clothes—jeans and a button-up shirt. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in something other than ratty old t-shirts and pajama pants since the Fourth of July picnic.

The kitchen looks clean, less cluttered. The various electrical components that have become a part of the landscape are gone. I run my fingers through sleep-tangled hair. “Did you finally give up and throw those parts away?”

“No. I put everything back together this morning.”

As if to punctuate her point, I hear a quiet chime and the toaster-oven door flips open to produce two perfectly toasted pieces of whole grain bread.