Days Like This (22 page)

I WOKE UP the next afternoon
and my head felt like a weight. Crying did that. I’d played last night in my
head a million times, but it never ended that way. With me walking away. In my
scenarios, it was Graham kissing me. It was never just over. I guess I’d gotten
my wish for Graham to be free of me. That was for the best, anyway. We weren’t
the same people we used to be. There was no sense in telling myself we could
rebuild that and go back.

There was no
going back in life. Only forward.

I was ready
for that.

I curled up on
the porch with some coffee and my notebook. Even though an internship felt like
an impossibility since someone had to help my mom, I still had music in some
way. There were a lot of songs in my head, and I started writing them down.
Lyric after lyric. Maybe this could be my future.

It’s your
life // it’s your call // you can’t be afraid/ of the fall // If you want to
fly // you’ve gotta try // close your eyes // let it go // Hold on tight

Or the start
of one.

I WENT DOWNSTAIRS for lunch,
and the kitchen table was covered in papers. I called out for Mom, but there
was no reply. I picked one of the pages and there was a picture of a woman with
a smile.

Qualifications:
Graduated 1978 from Duke. Twenty years of Nursing Experience in general medicine.
Ten years in North Carolina State Psychiatric Medicine. Daughter with Down syndrome.

Looking
for: Low-key patients who need daily assistance at their homes. Will live in.

“Cassie!
You’re up! Coffee?” Mom said, bouncing into the room.

“What’s this?”
I asked, waving the sheet in the air.

She took a sip
from her mug. “A resume.”

I knew that.
“For what?”

She went into
the kitchen and poured me a cup of coffee. “I’m hiring a nurse.”

“A nurse?”

“A companion,
maybe. I like that term better. Someone who can be here to make sure I’m making
good choices and to be part of things.” Mom handed me the mug, a smile on her
face.

“You don’t
need a nurse. I’m here.”

Mom reached
her hand out and rubbed it on my back. “You have things to do, Cassie. You
can’t stay here.”

“What? Don’t
be silly.” I was here. I was staying. It was already done. Mom needed me, and I’d
already decided to give her that.

She lowered
herself into a chair, turning through a few of the resumes. “I heard you on the
phone with June.” She smiled when she glanced up at me. “I want you to go and
do whatever you want to do.”

“Mom,” I
started.

Mom shook her
head. “Music is exciting! I knew that was where you’d end up. You have such an
ear for it—have since you were a baby. We used to sing to you and you’d dance
along in our laps. You loved when Richard would play Bruce Springsteen.”

I took a seat
next to her. “I’m here, Mom. I don’t want to go back to Butler.”

“Then don’t.
Go wherever you want!” She took my hand. “The point is that we both know you
don’t need to be here. Follow your dreams, Cassie. I’ve already had mine, and I
can take care of myself. I know you think I can’t, which is why I’ll have
someone else move in. Maybe not forever, but for as long as I feel like I need
it.”

She was serious.
My mom was going to have a stranger come live in her house so I didn’t have to.
I never expected that. I was so resigned to stay here after the other day. “I
don’t know what to say.”

“My life
doesn’t have to be yours, and I don’t want it to be,” she said. “Having someone
here will be nice. This house is too lonely anyway.”

I hugged her.
She rubbed my back and held me close. It was hard to believe this was my mom.
She was so grown up. “Can I help?” I asked.

“Only for an
hour. Then you have to apply to more internships or schools or whatever you
want.”

“Deal.” My mom
had her moments of being the best. This was definitely one of them. I reached
for a stack of resumes. “So the most important question—
favorite Stevie Nicks song?
”

“Of course,”
Mom laughed.      

TWO HOURS LATER, we’d
narrowed it down to four nurses for an interview next week and I’d applied to a
couple more internships. It felt good, for the first time, like it could
actually happen.

Like somehow I
could really find something to make me happy.

“WHAT ARE YOU doing, son?”
Dad asked me. He’d been away on business for seven weeks, flying back and forth
between home and New York and Hong Kong. I didn’t realize he was back. He was
still dressed in his suit, rolling his suitcase right behind him.

 “You home for
good?”

Dad smiled,
but he looked tired. “I had to spend some time with my boy before he went to
school.”

“James helped
me load up my truck with this. I have something to fix,” I said, answering his
other question.

Dad eyed the
wood on the back of the truck. “Looks familiar,” he paused, but I didn’t
answer. I didn’t have to. He knew this project. “Where you taking it?”

“Garage.”

“Let me help
you,” Dad said. He threw his jacket on the ground next to his suitcase and climbed
up into the bed of the truck. “Glad it’s going to be fixed.”

Dad took one
end of the wooden beams, and I took the other. I was glad, too. Cassie wasn’t
the only one who’d made mistakes. I couldn’t let her think she was.

MY ALARM WENT off at 1 a.m. I
grabbed a bottle of water, put on my shoes, and started unloading my tools.
Each trip back and forth, I glanced up at Cassie’s room. The light was off.
It will work out.
But I wasn’t fully convinced. This could
be the dumbest plan in history. I didn’t have a Plan B yet.

I took a long
swig of my water, and started moving the pieces of wood I’d cut earlier in the
day. I had to do the short ones first. I moved toward the broken fence, and
measured a foot on my tape measure. When I found the right place, I put a
marker in the ground. I went all the way around and marked until I ran out of
room. I hoped this was the right decision, but there was no turning back now.

An hour later,
I was ready.

I dug at that
marker with my shovel, digging up bits of the ground, and when it was big
enough, I shoved the first wooden beam into the ground, hammered until it was
solid, and then re-positioned the dirt. After the second beam, I started on the
first long side of the fence.

Cassie hated
surprises, but I was thinking of this more as a grand gesture.

I got one side
done before Cassie’s light came on and I smiled.

I FOLLOWED THE pounding outside.
Immediately, I noticed that every light in Graham’s apartment was on, and he was
in the space between our yards, re-building the fence.

“What are you
doing?” I asked, moving closer toward him.

He pushed his
foot down on the shovel, and glanced up at me. He was quiet for a moment,
staring at me, and then he said, “Fixing what I broke.”

“The
fence?”

He
shrugged. “To start.”

My nerves
tingled. There was a hidden meaning in his words. I started to say something
but Graham went back to work, and I debated what to do. I couldn’t sleep now,
not when I knew he was out here working. So, I went toward the old part, a few
feet off where he was, and sat on the top. I tightened my robe around myself,
and tried to cover up my thighs.

Graham raised
an eyebrow at me. “You’re staying?”

“Do you mind
me staying?”

“No,” he said
with a smile.

 I sat, and
watched him work. Sat and debated what was supposed to happen next. I’d cleared
the air, and moving forward was next, but what were we moving toward?

“There wasn’t
a storm,” Graham said as he moved some logs around. “Well, maybe Hurricane
Tucker.”

I smiled. “I figured.”

His lip
twitched and he turned back to work before I could see his face, but I knew he
was smiling. I twisted the tie on my robe around my wrist. “Why are you doing
this in the middle of the night?”

“I haven’t slept
well lately,” he said.

“It’s been
hard for me since I got back, too.”

“It’s been
hard for me since you left,” Graham said. His eyes locked on mine.

Way to say
stupid things, Cassie
. “Sorry.”
I should’ve stopped bringing it up if I ever wanted to move on.

“You can stop
apologizing,” he said.

“I can?”

Graham nodded.
“We all do stupid shit that we think is right, Cassie.”

“Is that
forgiveness?” I fought back the smile I felt forming. This was what I wanted,
his forgiveness.

“I think it
is,” he said. He doesn’t look back at me, but I don’t need him to. I believe
him.

A weight
lifted off me in that moment, and even though it was good and wonderful, I
wondered if I deserved it. At the end of the day, I’d still made my decisions.
If he could forgive me, really forgive me, then I could let him go. It wasn’t
what I wanted, but it was right and the most fair to him.

“Graham,” I
said. Even just saying his name made my heart hurt. Fairness sucked.

“Cass?”

I took a
breath. “I’m happy for you. Really, I am.”

“Happy about
what?” he asked, unloading a little dirt to the side. He looked at me again.

It was harder
to say with him staring at me.

“You were the
only good thing about this place for me, and I’m glad you’re getting out. You
have a good girlfriend and a future at the school of your dreams. I’m happy that
you have what you want.” After I said it, I realized how much I really meant it.
All I wanted was him happy.

He froze for a
moment, and I was nervous. Then, Graham threw the shovel and he lowered a beam
into the hole he’d dug. “We broke up.”

“What?”

“Molly and
I—we broke up.” His eyes were intense on me.

“Oh…” I
started. “I’d apologize, but you told me to stop.”

I swear he
smiled.

“It’s okay. It
was a good thing,” he said.

Such a little
phrase, but for some reason, it took my breath away.