Equilibrium (10 page)

Darcy went into her bedroom, slid open her top dresser drawer, and took out the emergency joint hidden beneath her underwear. She sniffed the sweet weed through the paper’s length. The scent made her feel better, as if help were on the way, even though she was breaking her self-inflicted rule about partying twice in one week. When she’d told Nick on Wednesday about Mom’s plans for Daddy’s Death Day Eve dinner, he’d suggested they celebrate their six-week anniversary a few days early with a reenactment of their first date.

She made sure she wasn’t a total pothead. She didn’t get high every day or even every week, making the treat into a special event. Today definitely qualified as a holiday. This joint wouldn’t get her very far though. The cheapo stuff she’d purchased months ago from the loser in the high school girls’ room wasn’t half as good as Nick’s homegrown. His powerful weed sailed her within three hits to her favorite vacation spot: anywhere but here.

She couldn’t call Nick. She’d told him she was busy today. She’d resigned herself to family time at the cemetery. Besides, she would not play the role of the clinging girlfriend. Mom had been right about the don’t-call-boys rule. Boys liked you better. She’d call Heather if her best girlfriend weren’t such a drag lately. She needed entertainment, not more doom and gloom. For a good time call . . . Nick. Thinking about making out with Nick set her heart beating madly, which only made her want more.

What if she broke her self-inflicted dating rule, too, and made the anniversary of her father’s suicide into a day of living dangerously?

From beneath her bras at the back of the drawer, she dug out the box she’d been saving, tore it open, and ripped off a shiny red packet. Loudmouth Vanessa had given her the Trojans, and then enacted a demonstration for Darcy, complete with a mold-slick cucumber. The poor vegetable had looked ridiculous, like something no one in her right mind would go near. Still, remembering her embarrassment heated her cheeks, heated places in her body she’d never shared before.

Sure, she’d kissed plenty of boys. She and Heather had kept lists since their first spin the bottle game five years ago, and they regularly reviewed them to compare stats. About a year ago, they were running neck and neck. Now she bested Heather by at least ten boys. How could Heather stand it?

Darcy dialed Nick’s number before she could chicken out. He probably wouldn’t be at home today, anyway.
It’s ringing.
Probably, he’d gone for a drive to visit old friends, or he could’ve gone to the library. He’d told her last night he might go to do homework, which had really shocked her.
Another ring.
Not that she thought he was stupid or anything. She just didn’t see him as the library type.

“Yeah?” Nick answered, sounding as if he’d just come through the door and had yanked the phone off its receiver.

“Wait a second.” Nick’s voice came from a distance, along with clattering and thuds. “Sorry, just cleaned the house.” He chuckled. “Who is it?” Well, there he went. Her boy pulled it together.

“It’s Darcy. What’s going on?”

“Swear to God, I was just thinking about calling you. Thought you were doing family stuff today, so I was gonna wait until later and call or swing by or—”

“Could you swing by now?” She slid the useless joint inside the box of condoms, tossed the box back in the drawer, and slipped the foil packet into the back pocket of her jeans.

“I can do anything you want.” Nick lowered his voice, and the special spot where he kissed her neck tingled.

“There’s just one not so small matter,” she said. Her mind sped, jazzed with the challenge of working up an escape plan to circumvent Maggie on guard duty in the living room. “You have to park on Lake Street and wait for me there. Think you can do that?”

“Know I can.”

“Thata boy.” Darcy hung up and docked her iPod. She set the volume loud enough to mask the sounds of her climbing out the window and clambering down the iron fire escape, a lucky leftover from the house’s previous owner. The random song selections would play infinitely, leading Maggie to believe her charge was enjoying a bit of alone time, grooving to the beat.

She threw open the sash and screen, and inhaled the rain-scented air. Far-off storm clouds mingled above the mountaintops, threatening a future deluge. She should probably grab a jacket, but she couldn’t risk going downstairs. Besides, who was afraid of a little rain? Her mother’s eventual punishment carried a much more imminent threat. Darcy didn’t have a clue how she’d explain her mother’s discovery of her friend guarding an empty bedroom. The porch-side wind chimes tinkled, and she laughed. Who cared? What mattered was now, sneaking out, and getting with Nick.
Dream. Believe. Do.

She tiptoed down the slatted steps, and then dropped to the squishy spring ground. Delicious dangerous energy danced through her body. She touched the condom in her pocket, checking in with Daddy’s Extreme Girl. She ran up the hill, away from her house, took a shortcut through a neighbor’s property, and then sat waiting at the corner, writing Nick’s name in the curbside sand with a stick.

The ratty Monte Carlo pulled up alongside her, and she checked her watch. Ten minutes—he must’ve flown. Nick got out, came around to the passenger side, and even opened the door for her. “Where to, gorgeous?”

Her last trace of doubt fell away. “Anywhere but here.”

Chapter 12

No matter how many times Laura visited Ever True Cemetery, she’d never get used to seeing her husband’s name inscribed on a gravestone. Reading Jack’s name narrowed her windpipe, numbed her legs, and sucked the joy out of her life.

She lowered herself to her knees between Elle and Troy, and stifled an urge to rock. Purple-and-gray clouds hung low, swollen tight like overripe fruit. The musty-compost smell of impending rain filled her nose and burned the back of her throat. To stave off the chill, she tugged the lapels of her bright-coral trench coat around her neck. She set a bouquet of daffodils in the cemetery vase, proof that Jack had been gone for a full year and the world had not come to an end.

A year ago, she’d stood in this spot, buoyed by a sea of friends and neighbors, with the knowledge that Jack’s body lay in the grave below, dwelling, as he would say, with the vilest of worms. Then she’d gone home, and the discovery that Jack wasn’t waiting there for her had knocked her on her ass.

Logic, be damned.

She no longer expected to feel the warmth of his body when she skimmed her hand across her bedsheets. She no longer expected to hear his voice wending its way to her from the kitchen as she headed up the stairs. And she certainly didn’t expect to see Jack emerge from his study, gray hair poking around his head in odd angles, blue gaze unfocused with thoughts of the fictional characters in his head.

Over the past year, the surface understanding that Jack was gone for good had seeped through her skin, traveled through her bloodstream, and embedded itself in her heart. The anniversary served as an exclamation point. Jack didn’t need her anymore.

But did she need him?

“We’ve really missed you,” Laura said, feeling slightly ridiculous talking to her atheist husband at his burial site. What the hell? If Jack could actually hear her, then the joke, for once, was on him.

Irony, be damned.

“The kids are doing . . . as well as can be expected,” she said, thinking of Darcy closing herself off from Laura, all her Daddy’s-girl hurt misdirected. Troy pitching a fit, his thirteen-year-old heart and mind overwhelmed with the sadness Jack had caused. Herself. Well, that hardly mattered. “Do you want to say something to Dad?” she asked Troy.

Her son had decided to leave his Jack-memories notebook filled with his Laura-like impossible to read handwriting back in his room. Sharing memories with Laura till the wee hours of the morning had been enough of a tribute.

Big plans, be damned.

Elle rubbed Laura’s arm. Elle’s breathing betrayed a readiness to cry. Laura loved Elle, but she probably should’ve asked Maggie to come to the cemetery in her stead. Troy’s emotional state was enough of a worry.

Color rose in Troy’s cheeks. His nostrils flared, and he stared at the gravestone, reminding Laura of the expression on Troy’s face when he’d tried to talk to Jack about his interests, and Jack had only half listened. Listening, she supposed, had been her job.

Jack had always told Laura he was proud of their son. Laura would’ve preferred it if Jack had shown that to Troy.

“Maybe tell Dad about making the A-team for basketball? Placing for the mile run in track?”

Troy shook his head, and he sucked his lips between his teeth, as though trying to hold back his words.

Elle made a sound at the back of her throat, a cross between a growl and a suppressed sob. Her hand dropped from Laura’s arm.

Troy took a loud breath, and his exhalation vibrated the air before them. He slid a daffodil from the cemetery vase, worried a yellow petal between his fingers.

“Your science project?” Laura said.

Troy plucked the petal, and it dropped to the grass.

“Shaving?” her high-pitched word hit the air. Power of suggestion, she inhaled the lime smell of her son’s freshly shaven face. An image of Aidan’s clean-shaven face flashed over Jack’s.

Troy plucked two more petals and crumpled them in his fist. Troy’s chin dimpled, and he flung the ruined petals to the ground.

“Never mind, baby.”

“How about telling your dad how you really feel?” Elle said, and Laura’s jaw clenched. She cut her gaze to Elle and gave her the universal arched-brow signal to back off.

Troy stopped in midpluck, his fingers buried in the remainder of the yellow blossom. Tears pooled in the sleep-deprived wells beneath Troy’s eyes. He looked to Laura for approval.

She nodded. Her whole body shifted toward Troy. After last night’s headfirst dive into Jack memory lane, what could Troy have left to express?

“I liked how you made Mom laugh during dinner,” Troy said, and Laura let out a breath. “I liked that time we tried to beat the Guinness World Record for stringing rubber bands. Especially the part where we caught Darcy in our giant spiderweb. And camping. I miss climbing the giant anchor with you at Hermit Island. I miss that a lot.”

“Me too, sweetheart. Those were good times.” And took place years ago. Laura rubbed Troy’s back, and he stared straight ahead. His fingers plucked, crumpled, and then tossed the daffodil’s petals until nothing remained but the stalk, stamen, and pistil, trembling in his hand.

“This year’s been okay. Mom’s sad,” Troy said.

Laura held a hand to her throat and reminded herself to breathe. She’d never wanted to burden her children with her grief. She thought she’d hidden it well.

“But now Darcy and I can have friends over without worrying you’re gonna embarrass us. And Mom’s not all preoccupied with you.”

She’d mostly hidden that, too, with the possible exception of the few times she’d forgotten to pick up Troy after school in the second grade. And once when he was in fourth. “Dad was sick,” Laura whispered.

Troy turned to her. “He was also a jerk!” Troy said, debunking Laura’s conviction that she knew the difference between her husband’s personality and his mood disorder.

How could she? How could anyone?

Elle took a tissue from her jacket pocket and blew her nose. She looked from Troy to Laura. “I’ll go wait in the car,” Elle said, and she got to her feet.

Oh, sure. Start trouble, and then run for cover, leaving her to deal with the mess.

Just like Jack.

Except Laura could criticize Elle. She hadn’t let herself get mad at Jack until recently. For years, she’d buried her anger and resentment, so it wouldn’t bury her.

“I’m so sorry, Troy.”

“What if I don’t miss him?” Troy said. “What if, sometimes, I don’t miss him at all?”

Sometimes Laura was too pissed to grieve. Sometimes, in between spikes of loneliness, she couldn’t miss the man who’d torn their family apart. She’d hoped she’d hidden that from Troy, too.

“I think that means we’re making progress.”

Laura’s ponytail holder strained, pulling the hairs at the nape of her neck. The sky rumbled and brightened between the maple trees, illuminating fuzzy rhubarb-colored buds. Last year, she’d missed all the signs of spring. This year, she was determined to pay better attention.

“One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi,” Troy said, and Laura grinned, remembering the trick Jack had taught the kids to estimate the distance from the storm.

“Three, Mississippi. Four, Mississippi. Five,” they said together. On six, thunder smacked the sky, the storm nearly upon them. Raindrops splattered against Laura’s trench coat, darkened Troy’s unzipped navy fleece, and wet the red silk of Jack’s tie he’d insisted upon wearing.

“Think Dad’s the rain king?” Troy asked, and he started to cry, a perfectly normal reaction.

Sadness, anger, resentment. All these emotions fell under the umbrella of grieving. So why was she planning on bringing her son to a shrink?

“King of the heavens?” Laura said. “Sure, honey. Why not? Anything’s possible.” She imagined Jack in one of his grandiose moods, loving the title.

Another flash and a boom, and the sky cracked wide open, releasing a downpour. Laura imagined Jack gazing down on them, happy at last, and something inside her released, too.

Then she imagined Jack, the day after one of those moods, seeming perfectly normal. He’d play mind games with her and rationalize his previous day’s behavior, trying to convince her he didn’t need to see Dr. Harvey.

She hugged Troy to her side, tilted her face to the skies, and let the rain numb her face. Good thing for Troy, Dr. Harvey had a supersensitive BS detector, honed from years of listening to patients like Jack.