The End of Forever (24 page)

“When I said Amy’s name. I didn’t mean to, but for a moment I forgot she wasn’t with us.”

Erin felt panic, because she was certain she saw a mist cover his eyes. “That’s all right,” she said quickly. “Dr. Richardson says it’s good to talk about her.”

“How’s it going with the counselor?”

“She says I’m making progress.”

“She wanted us to come in as a family at first.”

The news surprised Erin. “So why didn’t we?”

“Your mother felt it wasn’t necessary. You were the one with the headaches.”

Erin wasn’t surprised by this information, but it still annoyed her. Why did her parents act as if
she
was the only one with a problem? Couldn’t they see how they were growing apart? “I’m really trying hard to get well, Dad. Honest.”

“I know, and I’m not sure it’s something you should be going through by yourself.”

Their ice cream arrived, and Erin ate a spoonful of whipped cream, but it was too sweet, and the taste clung to her mouth. “Dr. Richardson thinks that I’m not over Amy’s death.”

“Who is?” he asked heavily.

“It’s been over a year,” Erin said.

“Is there a time limit on these things?”

“I guess not. I miss Amy too.” For a moment Erin’s voice sounded thick. She wanted to tell him,
“But Daddy, I’m still here.”
Instead, she asked, “I guess no one can ever take Amy’s place, huh?”

Mr. Bennett shoved his sundae aside. “You and Amy were always so different from one another. Maybe it was because you were the firstborn, and your mother and I wanted so many things for you. Parents go a little overboard for the firstborn, you know.”

“You didn’t expect things of Amy?”

“We did. but it was different.”

Erin wanted to say, “
You
bet it was different. You always let Amy do anything she wanted.”
Instead, she said, “Amy used to wonder why she was short and dark-haired and I was tall and blond.”

“You take after my great-grandmother, Emily Eckloe.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Amy resembled your mothers side of the family—small and dark. But Emily was from Norway, and a real beauty. I think she studied classical ballet but gave up her career to marry great-granddad.”

So
she
was the oddball of the family, not Amy. For some reason the information pleased her. “That sounds romantic, but I can’t imagine giving up my dancing.”

“Not even for love?”

Erin blushed. “Especially for love.”

“I guess that love doesn’t have much to recommend to you.”

She knew he was alluding to his own crumbling relationship. “Its okay for other people, but I’ve got lots of other things I want to do first. Books and movies make it seem sort of corny, like it’s nothing but butterflies in your stomach.”

“That’s where it usually starts, and there’s no substitute for it in the world. Don’t tell me you’ve never gone through the butterfly stage.”

She thought of how simply seeing Travis used to make her feel gooey inside. “I guess I have, but I knew it wasn’t the real thing.”

“That’s supposed to be my line,” Mr. Bennett joked. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

“Probably because I was always so busy with my dancing. Its always seemed more important than guys and dating.”

“I understand that. Love starts out with such enthusiasm, but somehow it gets lost between mortgage payments and kids in the right schools and jobs that pay enough money.…”He rubbed his eyes. “I sound cynical, don’t I?”

“Just tired.” He seemed defeated. “Would you rather have a job someplace besides Briarwood?”

There was a long pause between her question and his answer. “Do you know what I really wanted to be when I was in college?” Erin shrugged. “A novelist,” he told her.

“A writer?”

“Not just
any
writer. I wanted to live in the East Village in New York, or maybe even Paris, and write ‘meaningful’ books about life and the universe.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Mr. Bennett gave her a poignant smile. “It wasn’t very practical. Besides, I met your mother, we married, and then you came along, so starving in the Village became less appealing. I guess that’s why I encouraged you and Amy when you took to dancing and acting.”

Thinking back, Erin realized that it had always been her father who had favored her dance lessons and encouraged Amy’s acting skills. Why hadn’t she
seen that before? “Remember how you used to read to us when we were little?” she asked.

“And Amy would ask a million questions about why Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall—” he said.

“And why couldn’t they put him back together again.”

“You used to get so exasperated, you’d clamp your hand over her mouth.”

“I read that old book to her when she was in the hospital,” Erin confessed, sheepishly. “I knew she couldn’t hear me, because they said she was brain dead, but I read it anyway.”

Her father studied her, then said, “Oh yeah? So did I.”

“You did?” Goose bumps broke out on her arms. “The nurses must have thought we were crazy.”

“She was my little princess.”

Erin felt a surge of envy. Hadn’t she always felt that Amy was ‘Daddy’s little girl,’ and that she was just the ‘responsible one’?

“Are you sorry?” she asked. “Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?”

“No. You can’t trade what is for what might have been. Besides, if I had, I would never have had you or Amy, would I?”

“Sure you would have, but we would have been born in Paris.”

He took her hand. “No. You would not have been born at all.”

She tried to imagine nonexistence but
couldn’t. “I’ll go to Paris for you,” she said. “I’ll dance and be the hit of Europe.”

“Not for me, Erin. For
you.” And for Amy,
she thought, because her sister would never be able to realize her dreams either.

Her father reached over and clasped her hand. “And don’t be so down on falling in love. Love can be very good.”

“Not to worry,” she said, faking enthusiasm. “I’ll be on the lookout for Mr. Right.” Yet she knew deep down that falling in love was the last thing she wanted to do. “Dad,” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “Do you ever feel like leaving?”

“Leaving? Where would I go?”

“Off to Paris to write novels?” She said it with a smile, but her heart was hammering.

“Those were silly dreams, long ago. No, I won’t go away.”

She wanted desperately to believe him, because she didn’t think she could stand to lose her father too. “I’ll be going away in the fall,” she ventured.

“You want to very much, don’t you?”

She nodded vigorously. “But you and Mom seem against it. Mom more so than you.”

“Letting go is hard, that’s all.”

“But I
have
to go. I just want …” Words failed her. She wanted so much to be a good daughter, but she also wanted to live her own life. “Well, you know,” she finished lamely.

He picked up the check. “You want to be out on your own. It’s natural. I guess we should discuss
it with Dr. Richardson. I’ll—uh—talk to your mother about it.”

They drove home in silence, with Erin feeling detached. She was glad she’d talked to her father. It had helped for her to see him as an individual. He’d had dreams and plans for his life too, but they got changed as surely as Amy’s had. Later that night she lay in her bed and wondered what kind of books he would have written. Through the darkness she heard muffled, but loud, words. Erin couldn’t make them out, but she recognized their angry tone. Later she heard a door slam, and she rolled over and stared at the wall, knowing that her father had gone down the hall to sleep in another room.

“Are you
really
going to eat that?” Erin asked David the next afternoon at the mall as the clerk in the ice cream store handed him a cone heaped with three different flavors.

“Every bite,” David said, taking a mouthful from the top.

Jody pulled on his arm and signed him a message. Erin watched as David signed a reply. “My sister wants the same thing,” he told Erin.

“Make mine vanilla, and only one scoop,” Erin insisted.

“Boring,” David said, but placed the order anyway.

Erin observed David and Jody covertly, still wondering how she’d let him talk her into coming to the mall when he’d appeared on her doorstep that Saturday afternoon, uninvited. She supposed it
was his little-boy charm. And his sister. Erin found the little girl adorable. Her big blue green eyes, curly blond hair, and infectious smile—so like David’s—were hard to resist. Erin was also intrigued by the child’s deafness. She’d never known a handicapped person, and the way Jody adapted to the regular world fascinated her.

After they’d sat down, Erin said, “Jody doesn’t miss much, does she?”

“She’s got a very high IQ. Once she figured out signing and broke through the communications barrier, she was off like a shot.”

Jody signed something to Erin. “I don’t understand,” Erin told David.

“You should learn to sign,” David said. “Then you can talk to Jody yourself.”

“Oh, I could never learn—”

“Sure you can! It’s easy. Watch.” He made slow, deliberate moves with his hands and fingers.

“That’s Jody’s name, isn’t it?”

“Very good. You remembered. Now here’s yours, and here’s mine.” She watched, then mimicked his movements. “You’re a natural,” David said.

“But it doesn’t seem like you spell out every word when you talk to Jody. I mean, that would take forever.”

“That’s the beauty of signing. Certain gestures stand for nouns and even complete phrases. For instance …” David drew his thumb along his cheek and down his jawbone. “This means ‘girl.’ ” He repeated the movement, addine a circular motion
with his open palm in front of his face. ‘That means pretty girl.”

Jody tugged on Erin’s arm, made similar gestures, and added the letters of Erin’s name. “What do you guess she’s just said to you?” David asked.

“I think she just told me that
I
was a pretty girl.”

“You got it!” David smiled, and Erin dropped her eyes because it made her quivery inside. “Now try this,” David said. He held up his hand and tucked his two middle fingers against his palm so that only his thumb, forefinger and pinky were extended.

“I give up,” Erin said.

“He repeated the move while saying the words, I love you.”

His aqua-colored eyes were so bright that they seemed to glow. Erin’s stomach did a somersault, and she felt a tightness in her chest, as if her breath couldn’t find a way out. She jumped to her feet. “I’m going to get a drink of water. I saw a fountain near the entrance of the food court.”

“Hurry back,” David called. “There’s lots to learn.”

She didn’t want to learn anymore. David made her feel things she hadn’t felt in over a year. She didn’t want to care about David Devlin. She really didn’t.

“Erin!” Someone called her name, and she spun.

A tall boy with black hair and chocolate-colored eyes was coming toward her through the crowd. For a heart-stopping moment Erin stared as Travis Sinclair walked her way.

For Erin time stood still, and she saw Travis, not in the mall, but in the moonlight on the sidewalk that surrounded Tampa Bay. She could almost hear the lapping water and smell the jasmine-scented night air.

Travis approached her tentatively, his thumbs hooked on the belt loops of his jeans. “Hi,” he said. “I was just coming in the door, and I thought I recognized you, so I hollered.”

Erin felt her mouth settle into a grim line. “I thought you were away at college.”

“It’s spring break. My roommates and I are down for the week. You know, the beach and all.”

She remembered last year at spring break she was supposed to go to the beach with Shara and some friends and flirt with the college guys. But Amy had been hooked to life support. “Have you seen Cindy?” She arched the words, like barbs.

Travis reddened and shifted from foot to foot. “I told you once before, Cindy’s nothing to me. I never went out with her again after the dance.”

Erin was angry. She wanted to hurt him; she wanted to run away. “Well, I’d like to say it was good to see you again, Travis, but why lie?”

“I was hoping you weren’t still mad at me, Erin. I was hoping that you might have figured out how hard it was for me to see Amy that way—”

“Save it!” She might have said more, but David appeared and stepped between her and Travis.

“I’m David Devlin,” he said. “Weren’t you a senior last year at Berkshire?”

Travis nodded at David. “Yeah. I remember you. How is the old place? Is Mr. Wells still there?”

“Yep. He’ll never retire. I think we’re gonna cast him in bronze and set him out for the pigeons.”

Erin listened while David and Travis traded school memories, and when Travis turned to leave, she refused to say good-bye. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I looked out and saw the two of you standing in the middle of the food court, and it looked like you were arguing. So don’t pretend nothing was going on.”

“It’s not important.”