The Good Goodbye (32 page)

What could Hunter have talked to Henry about? “What does this mean?” I let hope dance past. “Do you think it was Hunter who started the fire?” But Detective Gallagher just flips his notebook closed. “Thank you for your time,” he says.

—

My mother calls that afternoon. “Oliver wet the bed,” she says in a low voice. “I found his pajamas in the laundry room, buried under the towels.”

Poor Oliver. “He hasn’t done that in years.” Of the twins, he was the first to get out of diapers.

“I think you need to talk to him.”

I take Theo’s laptop into the family lounge and prop it open on the small table. I put a big smile on my face and tap the video call button. It rings, connects. I hear the chatter of voices, then see my little boys, jostling for space on the couch, their round faces and neatly combed hair. The image tilts this way and that, and then my mother’s voice. “Here, let me put it right here. Okay? Then you both can see.”

“Hey, guys,” I say.

“Hi, Mom.”

They sit close together, their shoulders touching. They’re wearing their favorite red-striped polo shirts. The collars aren’t curling up the way they usually do, so I’m guessing my mom went to the trouble to iron them. “I like your haircuts,” I say.

Henry beams. “It’s way cooler than Caleb’s. So, haha.”

“Haha, indeed. Do you like your haircut, Oliver?”

His eyes are so blue. I never before noticed how much the boys look like my sister. In the week that we’ve been apart, they’ve grown, their cheeks hollowed a tiny bit, the blue of their eyes deepened. Or maybe it’s just a trick of the computer screen.

“I have an owie.” Henry crooks his elbow. He frowns at the image of himself in the corner, works to angle his arm so the Superman Band-Aid is front and center.

“Yikes. How did that happen?”

“Caleb pushed Lily, so I pushed him back.”

“Henry has a girlfriend,” Oliver informs me.

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do.”

They squirm.

“Boys,” my mom chides, her voice coming from somewhere.

“Mom, it’s okay,” I say, and there’s a pause and then she says, “I’m going to go check on the bird feeder. The squirrels have been feasting. You two behave for your mama, got that?”

Oliver’s eyes track her departure and then he says, “Grandma gives us ice cream for breakfast.”

I smile. “That’s okay, honey. I told her she could.”

“With chocolate syrup,” Oliver whispers.

Henry’s nodding. “And mini-marshmallows.”

“Well, you two better live it up, because when I get home, it’s going to be zucchini and brussels sprouts twenty-four/seven.”

Henry giggles. “You’re so funny, Mommy.”

“Yep. I’m a real card.”

“What does that mean?”

I think about it. “I don’t know. It’s just something your grandpa used to say.”

“Grandpa George? I never heard him say that.”

No, my own father. Somehow, he’s crept into this conversation. It’s the way Oliver’s looking so steadily at me. I blink. “So listen. I wanted to talk to you two about Arden.”

“Okay,” Henry says. “Is she better? Can she Skype?”

“No, not right now. She’s sleeping.”

He pouts. “Every time she’s sleeping.”

“I know.”

“Sleeping’s another word for dead,” Oliver says.

“Oh, honey,” I say, dismayed. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. On Captain Fantastic it is.”

“You know that’s a cartoon. In real life, sleeping isn’t being dead.”

“What about
Sleeping Beauty
?”

“That’s just a fairy tale. It’s pretend, too.”

“But
why
is she sleeping?” Henry asks.

“Well, you know how when you’re not feeling well, you just want to lie down and rest?” Solemn nods. “Well, Arden’s not feeling well, either. She’s resting so her body can get strong again.”

“It’s taking a long time. It’s taking
forever.
”

“I know. It feels that way to me, too.”

“Sometimes when I’m resting I just pretend to be asleep,” Henry says. “Maybe Arden’s doing that, too, pretending.”

“No way. She can’t wait to Skype with you guys. She’ll want to hear all about Lily.”

“Lily
isn’t
my girlfriend,” Henry says.

“Right,” I agree. Oliver’s got his head down. I can see the track of comb teeth and his crown where the hair springs up. “What’s the matter, Oliver?”

He shrugs.

Henry says, “Oliver doesn’t think Arden’s going to get better.”

“Is that true, Oliver?” The rise and fall of one small shoulder. “What makes you think that, honey?”

Henry says, “That’s what Caleb said. He says his mom said that when people bump their heads like Arden they don’t wake up ever.”

“Does Caleb’s mom know Arden?”

“No,” Oliver says. He’s still got his head down.

“Has she been here to see all the doctors and nurses working to help Arden get better?”

“No.”

“Does she know they’re giving her special medicine?”

Oliver looks up. He’s a big believer in medicine. “No.”

“Okay, then.”

Oliver shrugs.

“I’ll tell you what. Maybe Grandma can bring you up for a visit soon. But you’ll have to promise to be super-quiet so you don’t wake Arden up.” I wish they would. I wish they’d charge into the room and bump into things and laugh and climb all over her and find all her ticklish spots.

“Okay, Mommy,” Henry says. “Can I go now? I want to help Grandma with the bird feeder.”

“Hold on just a second. You remember the rules about answering the phone?”

Henry’s eyes slide away from mine. “Maybe.”

“It’s like opening the front door. You know how you’re not allowed to do that unless Daddy or I are there. Right?”

“Yesss.”

“But you answered the phone the other day and talked to a stranger, didn’t you?”

“He wasn’t a stranger,” Henry protests. “His name’s Hunter. He’s Arden’s boyfriend.”

“Arden’s boyfriend?” I try to keep my voice light, but this knowledge shimmers. “What did he want?”

Henry shrugs. “Just to talk to Arden. Can I go now?”

“You talked to him for a long time. What about?”

“I don’t know.”

It makes me uneasy but Henry’s face is guileless. “You realize it’s a safety rule?”

“Sorry.”

“When you’re older, you can answer the phone anytime you want.”

“Okay.”

“You can go now.”

“Finally!” Henry reaches for the laptop and puts it in Oliver’s lap.

Oliver’s face is centered on the screen. “He didn’t mean to be bad.”

“I know he didn’t. It’s okay.” Is it? We might never know.

He nods. He looks so serious. I put my face close to the screen. “I see you,” I whisper.

“I see you, too,” he whispers back.

“I love you.”

“I love you most, Mommy.”

—

Toward dawn, I wander down the deserted stairs and step out into the dim lobby. No one’s at the reception desk at this hour. The big glass doors beckon, and as I walk toward them, they glide open to gray pavement and velvety purple sky.

“Storm’s coming.” It’s Vince, sitting on the low brick wall encircling the flower beds, smoking.

I go over and look down. “Done avoiding me?”

He shrugs. “I have some practice being on the receiving end of that.” He taps a cigarette from the pack and extends it. I put it between my lips and lean down as he thumbs the lighter. The punch to my senses is dizzyingly familiar. I’ve missed this. Another broken promise. I sit down. “How’s Rory?” Vince had never texted me back; he hasn’t stopped by Arden’s room. Vince being Vince.

“You hear about the artificial lung?”

“Christine says she might not have to be on it long.”

“To know your kid can’t even inflate her own lungs…makes me wonder about all the other things going on inside her we don’t even know about. How’s Arden?”

I look off into the distance, to the smudged fringe of trees on the clouded horizon. “Nothing’s working, Vince. Nothing.”

“They can’t get the fluid down?”

“It keeps building back up. It’s relentless. And then I think,
What if they do get it back to normal levels but it’s already too late?
All that fluid pressing on her brain…” Saying this out loud breaks the glass. It allows me to pick my way through the pieces. “What if Arden’s already gone?”

“Do you remember when you brought the boys home and she showed up at our house with her little pink suitcase?”

I can’t get any sleep over there,
Vince had told me she’d pronounced when he swung open the door. “I still don’t know how she got all the way to your house. I have this horrible suspicion she hitchhiked.”

“I bet Rory had something to do with it.”

“I bet she did. When did Arden ever do something that Rory wasn’t in on? Or, more often, take the lead on?”

“I think it was Rory who wanted to room with Arden, not the other way around.”

I glance at him in surprise. His profile’s to me, the clean line of his forehead and nose, the shadow of his cheek. I remember when he tried growing a beard, how mercilessly I’d teased him about it. I’d called him a Brad Pitt wannabe and he just puffed out his chest. “You do?”

“Rory needs Arden. Hard to be a leader when you don’t have a follower.”

“Arden’s not just a follower.”

“Of course not. Arden’s secure enough in her own self to let Rory boss her around. She doesn’t have as much to prove as Rory does.”

This is the closest Vince’s ever come to admitting Gabrielle’s been hard on their daughter. “What do you know about Hunter? Did you ever meet him?”

“No, though Gabrielle spent some time with him when she visited campus. She said he seemed like a nice boy, but not good enough for Rory.”

“I doubt she’d think anybody would be.”

“True.”

“He called our house last week, looking for Arden.”

“She was home?”

“No. That’s what’s so strange. Why would he think she would have been?” I exhale a stream of smoke. “What if the police don’t find out who did this? What if we never know?” A boy was dead. Will suspicion hang over Arden the rest of her life?

He taps the end of his cigarette against the edge of the curb. “Maybe it’d be better that way.”

“How? How can that possibly be better?” I frown. “You’re the one who said we had to know.”

“I’ve been thinking. Do we really want to know who did this? What if knowing makes everything worse?”

“How can it be any worse than it already is?”

“I’m just saying. Maybe it’s better to let things go. Focus on the girls recovering, like you said.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Good old Natalie.”

It’s started raining, a quiet drizzle that leaves a sheen on the pavement. A car drives past, headlights a distant glimmer. Vince shakes his head. “Why didn’t you wait for me, Nat? I called you from Paris. You never called me back.”

Surprised, I look at his profile. This is the first time he’s ever mentioned it. I wasn’t even sure he remembered proposing.
Come to Paris,
Vince had said. What if I had gone? I wouldn’t be who I am today. There wouldn’t be Arden, or Henry, or Oliver. There wouldn’t be a small dachshund with floppy ears, a house on a lake with a ramshackle party barge, and a sun that eases itself up over the pines to flood my kitchen with light. There wouldn’t be Rory. “You’ve always been about the chase, Vince. I knew that once you were done chasing me, we wouldn’t have anything left. I decided it was better to be your friend than just another conquest.” And that, I understand suddenly, is why he fell in love with Gabrielle. She keeps a part of herself closed off. She keeps him guessing. He must feel like he never knows who’s going to be there when he gets home.

“It would have been different with you.”

“No. It wouldn’t have.”

He doesn’t answer. Silence stretches out, heavy. Then he says, “Liz got a job offer.”

He’s changed the subject abruptly. I know we’ll never talk about it again. “She never said anything.” She’d been texting me all day.
I’m sorry to bother you but should I get the dishwasher repaired/hire that busboy/keep our seafood order as is? Want me to call the bank/landlord/customers coming in for a birthday/anniversary/business meeting?

“She didn’t want to upset you. I told her to go ahead and take it.”

I’m annoyed. “Why would you do that? We’ll never find someone else as good.” It had taken us months to find her, after we’d had to fire Ignacio. I can’t even bear to think of taking up a new search, especially now.

“I need to tell you something,” Vince says. “Before you find out another way.”

I look at him. Haven’t I had enough revelations?

“Mitchell wants to buy Double. He’ll keep us on, but he’ll own the restaurant.”

“No, he won’t. I won’t sell to him.”

“He’s the only one who’s made an offer. It’s a crappy offer, but it’s the only one in play.”

“It’s not in play. I won’t accept it.”

“Why not? This way, we can just cook. We can make fucking raspberry torte if we want to. We can just do what we’ve always wanted to do.”

“For how long? You really think Mitchell will keep us on? He’s just going to train his team and then we’re out.”

“You don’t know that’s true. We’ll have money in the bank. Let someone else have the headache of running the business.”

“How have you been dealing with it? You’ve been coming in late, leaving early. It’s like you’re not even trying, and you’re the one who got us into this to begin with.”

“Because I can’t stand it anymore. I walk into Double and you look at me with such disappointment.”

“I know you, Vince. I know you think it’s going to be easier working for Mitchell, but I’ve worked for him. I know what it’s like. You’ll hate it, too.”

“Damn it, Natalie. I’m over it, all right? Let’s sell the fucking restaurant. Let’s just move on.”

“Where’s this really coming from, Vince? Is it Gabrielle?”

“It’s time we accepted the truth. Double isn’t ours anymore.”

“We can turn it around. We just need a little more time.”

He tosses his cigarette onto the sidewalk, where it smolders in the spitting rain. “We did everything we could. Now we’re just wasting our lives.”