Untethered (13 page)

Turning off the ignition and still staring ahead, Allie said, “Oh, uh, thanks. But I kind of made plans with Kate and the guys for tonight.”

Char could feel heat rise from her chest to her cheeks as the
corners of her eyes began to sting. She bent her head to the floor and pretended to look for her purse, to keep Allie from seeing her face. Bag in hand, she snapped her seat belt off and shoved open her door as the stinging in her eyes turned into a fullness that signaled her tears were close behind.

She managed to bark the words “fine” and “bathroom” before diving out of the car and running into the house.

A
llie left after dinner, and Char instructed herself to use the time to work. No more pacing. No more obsessing about the teenager. This was practice for spring break, when Allie would be away. It was practice for the future.

Sitting at Bradley's desk, Char eyed the square white envelope that had been there for the past two weeks. A sympathy card from Professor Winchester, the dean of journalism at American University and her former boss.

I am so very sorry for your loss
, the card said.
Work heals the soul. There could be a position here for you—I know Ruth has mentioned this. I am hoping you will call.

She had called him right away. Not to say she would vie for the job—she had spent months refusing to entertain Will and Ruth in their quest to get her to at least enter the race—but to thank him for thinking of her. Dean Winchester wasn't about to let her off easy, though. He allowed for a bit of small talk (she still hated Michigan winters, she sorely missed her colleagues and her job and D.C.), he insisted on a bit of big talk (he had been horrified to hear
about Bradley's death, everyone on faculty was thinking about her and sent their best), but after a while, he would not allow her to escape the topic he wanted to discuss: her potential return to American.

“I can't leave Mount Pleasant,” she told him. “Not as long as Allie's here. I can't even consider it while there's any chance she might stay.”

“Oh, of course,” he said. “We have plenty of time, though. Rhiannon doesn't officially retire until June, and we're not offering her classes in the summer. You could easily stay in Michigan while Allie finishes out the semester, if that's the concern. You'd have plenty of time to move back here, get settled. You wouldn't need to be on campus until late August. We could even have someone get to work on finding you a place to live while you're still in Michigan.”

“That's the thing, though,” Char said. “I don't know if it's only for this semester that Allie will be staying. She may still be here in August. Or later.”

“Ah, I see. And when will you know?”

Char laughed. “The day she leaves. No target has ever moved as wildly and as often as this one. It depends on when her mother can take her back. And that depends on a lot of details around her mother's business travel and decorating schedules and who knows what else. It also depends on whether her mother
wants
her back, and that doesn't appear to be a foregone conclusion yet.

“And even if we get over those two giant hurdles, it depends on Allie. I don't think she knows where she wants to be. She has friends here, she's on sports teams here, she's got this cute little girl here who she's gotten really close to through a volunteer thing she does. Even if her mother wants her to move there, Allie might lobby hard to stay, and if she does, it's possible her mother would concede.”

“I see,” Dean Winchester said, in the tone of someone trying to be patient with a person making no sense. “Am I correct in assuming that you feel there's some reason why you can't simply ask each of them what they would like to do, and in what time frame, so that you might proceed with plans of your own?”

“I wish it were that simple,” Char said. “I'd love nothing more than to be able to tell Allie, ‘Stay forever!' and then, assuming she says yes, call up her mother and tell her, ‘This is what your daughter wants,' and ask for her blessing.”

“That would certainly be the direct route,” the dean said. “But I sense you don't feel it's a route that's available to you.”

“It's complicated,” Char said.

Because how could she explain, without sounding petty or scheming, that pushing Lindy, or even directly asking her, to let Allie stay was simply the wrong strategy? Char had learned over the years that to get what you wanted from Lindy, you had to wait patiently until the thing you wanted became her idea. If you jumped the gun and asked too soon, she would say no, purely out of reflex.

If Lindy truly wanted her daughter to move to California full-time because she loved her and missed her and wanted to be part of her life again in a meaningful way, Char could accept that. But if Allie ended up with a one-way plane ticket to LAX as a result of her mother's knee-jerk reaction to Char's suggesting that Allie should be able to stay in Michigan, Char would never forgive herself.

Char couldn't explain all of this to her former boss. The antics of ex-spouses were, she had learned, generally only believable to people who had ex-spouses themselves, or who were married to people with ex-spouses. And the trickery it might take to work around Lindy's antics wasn't something Char wanted to reveal to a wide
audience. She was willing to take the time to craft an intricate scheme, if that's what it took to get Lindy to let Allie stay in Michigan. But she wasn't willing to admit it out loud to anyone but Will and Colleen.

As for simply asking Allie what she wanted, it was a shorter answer, but no less crazy sounding to a person not familiar with stepfamily relationships. Char didn't want to ask Allie where the girl wanted to live, because, one, it would put Allie in the terrible position of feeling she had to choose between Char and Lindy.

And two, Char wasn't sure that if Allie were forced to choose, she would choose Char. Of course Char would understand, intellectually, if Allie cast her vote with her bio mom. But there was a difference between intellect and emotion. Waiting around for Allie and Lindy to make up their minds was more bearable than addressing it head on with Allie and hearing an answer that would break Char's heart.

“Well, if it becomes uncomplicated at some point,” the dean said, “and if that point should occur in the next few months, before I've found someone else for the position, please call me.”

Char lifted the envelope. She moved the flap and slid out the card. She opened it, reading the words she had read and reread so many times in the last two weeks that she had committed them to memory. “I can't,” she announced to the empty office, before she closed the card, slid it into the envelope, and set it on the desk.

Turning to her laptop, she opened a nonfiction piece by a journalist she had worked with for years. A magazine article on food insecurity was the perfect distraction from thoughts about Allie, and why it was that the distance between Char and the girl she loved so much kept growing.

•   •   •

I
t was only when Char's cell phone rang an hour later that she realized even food insecurity, something as unrelated to Allie as the European debt crisis, hadn't done the trick—she had been staring out the window into the black winter night since the moment she clicked open the article. She lifted her phone eagerly, expecting to see her brother's name on the screen. She had left him two voice mails and a text.

It wasn't her brother.

“I only have a minute,” Lindy said, not bothering with a greeting. “I'm expecting an important work call. But we haven't talked in a while, and I wanted to check in before Allie's trip here on Saturday. Make sure she's all set with her flight information and everything. I tried to reach her, but it went straight to voice mail.”

“Hi, Lindy,” Char said. “Allie's out with friends.”

“On a school night,” Lindy said, pausing for effect. “It seems like she does a lot of that these days.”

Char waited, but as usual, Lindy declined to level a more express criticism. After a few beats of silence during which Char refused to apologize for letting Allie go out on a weeknight, Lindy finally spoke again. “So, how are things? How's my baby? And how are you, Charlotte?”

“Not bad,” Char said. “We've gotten into a routine. We're not exactly back to normal. We never will be. But—”

“But you're moving forward,” Lindy said. “Work, school, one foot in front of the other.”

Not quite as simple as that
, Char thought. But she said, “Right.”

“Excellent,” Lindy said. “I was talking to a friend the other
night, about Allie, Bradley, and the whole thing. She's been through something like this. And she was telling me that the best thing is to not disrupt Allie's schedule right now. There's comfort in routines, she said.”

“I think that's true,” Char said.

“It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about letting her stay until graduation. If that's still okay with you. But maybe you've made other plans. . . .”

“It is,” Char said. “I haven't.”

“Of course, I haven't quite decided.”

Char glanced at the square white envelope on Bradley's desk. If only Dean Winchester could hear this.

“So, is she out with that one girl?” Lindy asked. “That nice one, who was at your house, um . . .”

“Sydney? No. I wish. She's with Kate and those two older boys again—”

“Oh, there's my call,” Lindy said. “Let me know if there are any issues with her trip.”

Before Char could respond, Lindy was gone.

C
har was lying on the couch in the family room with a novel when Allie came in.

“How was the movie?” Char asked, looking up from her book.

Allie didn't answer. She was shifting from foot to foot and looking in every direction but at Char.

“Allie? What's wrong?”

“You told my mom about Justin?”

“Uh . . .” Char shut her eyes and tried to recall what she had said to Lindy. She opened them and shrugged. “I guess maybe I did. Not by name, I don't think, but I believe I mentioned the three of them. I thought she already knew.”

Allie's expression made it clear she had thought wrong.

“I assumed you had told her,” Char said.

“Well, I hadn't.” From Allie's tone, Char could tell there was an implied “duh” at the end of her sentence.

“Sorry,” Char said. “I didn't know it was a secret. But even if
I thought it was, it's not really my place to keep secrets from your mom.”

Allie crossed her arms and dropped her shoulders with a sigh. “It's not a
secret
. It's just not something she needed to know. You know her—she overreacts to things. I just got the third degree about it, and now she says she doesn't want me hanging out with them.
At all
. Even though she doesn't know anything about them. ‘Sophomore girls shouldn't be riding around in cars with senior boys, Allison,'” she said, imitating Lindy.

“Well, that's not an entirely unreasonable position for a mother to take,” Char said.

“Then, why have
you
been letting me go out with them? And anyway, she wouldn't have said that if you hadn't told her you don't like them.”

“I didn't tell her I don't like them.”

Allie narrowed her eyes. “Well, we both know you have nothing good to say about them.”

Char couldn't believe how quickly things had changed since their pleasant conversation on the way home from tutoring. “Allie, come on.”

“Anyway, now she says she's going to call you. To tell you not to let me go out with them anymore. And she and I are going to have ‘a long discussion about it' the minute I land at LAX.” She cocked her head and gave Char a “So, thanks for
that
” look.

“Well, I don't think she's going to call me about it,” Char said. “She was probably just a little shocked to learn you're dating someone and she didn't know about it—”

“I'm not
dating
him! I've told you that, like, a hundred times. We've only ever been out as a group.”

“Well, spending time with him, then,” Char said. “Whatever
you guys call it. She was likely just surprised, and she overreacted. And maybe she'll want to talk to you about boyfriends”—she held up a hand before Allie could sneer—“not saying he is one. But maybe she'll want to have that whole talk.” She refrained from adding,
The one you and I had over a year ago
.

“I'm sure it'll end there,” Char said. “I don't think she's going to call me with some rule about it. I mean, think about it. She never once called your father to tell him how to handle . . .” Char let her sentence fade as it hit her: Lindy may not have told Bradley how to handle his daughter, but that's because she was, in fact,
his daughter
.

Allie looked unconvinced. “She said she was going to be more involved. When we were driving her to the hotel, when she was here. She said that. And she's already started, with the whole tutoring-is-a-waste-of-time-and-you-need-to-quit thing. And now this.”

Lindy hadn't followed up on the tutoring, though, Char wanted to point out. She had blustered about it while she was here, but knowing Lindy, she had forgotten all about it once she had gotten back to Hollywood, her business, her own life. By tomorrow, she probably wouldn't remember Justin.

But a reminder that Allie and her day-to-day life weren't in the forefront of her own mother's mind wouldn't make the teenager feel better. And although Lindy hadn't followed up on the tutoring issue yet, who was to say she wouldn't? If certain aspects of Allie's upbringing now seemed important to her, she very well might get involved.

Char glanced at her cell phone sitting on the coffee table and wondered what she would say if Lindy called and imposed a new rule about whom her daughter was allowed to spend time with. The woman had no right to instruct Char about how to run her own
household. At the same time, though, she had every right, since her daughter was living in that household.

“Hopefully, she'll reconsider,” she said, as much to herself as to Allie.

“I figured you'd say something like that,” Allie said. “Something completely gutless.”

“Gutless? What are you talking about?”

Allie glared at her, and Char could tell she had committed another offense, in Allie's eyes, by not knowing what the girl meant. “I honestly have no idea what you mean by that,” Char said.

“Never mind,” Allie said. “I'm going upstairs.”

Leave it
, Char told herself.
Leave it, and go back to your book
. But she couldn't. Gutless? Allie had never said anything so harsh to her before. Or so unjustified.

“Is this really the way you want to leave things tonight, Allie?” she called.

“I have to pack,” Allie called back. “For my trip to see
my mother
.”

Char jumped up, stomped to the bottom of the stairs, and opened her mouth to yell at the girl to get the hell back down there. Bradley would never have tolerated being spoken to like that. Walked out on. This warranted the loss of her cell phone for at least a few days, possibly all week.

She closed her mouth. Allie was leaving in a few days. Was it wise to have a blowout now? How much mileage might the girl get from her Tales of a Wicked Stepmother when she was with her mother? Even if Lindy stuck to the high road and didn't join in the bad mouthing about Char, would her daughter's complaints be enough for Lindy to decide not to send her back up north?

Char could imagine the phone call. “I'll take over from here,
Charlotte. It sounds like perhaps the loss of Bradley has set you . . . a little on edge. Maybe having children around isn't the best thing for you. . . .”

Char stepped quietly onto the first step and arranged her face into a friendly expression. She wouldn't take away Allie's cell phone, she decided. She wouldn't challenge her on her “gutless” comment, either, or the “my mother” one. She would chalk up Allie's rudeness to grief, and the stress the girl must be under in deciding where she wanted to live. A bit of rudeness after this much time under pressure was forgivable. It was a wonder the girl hadn't burst before this.

She would simply knock on the girl's door, Char decided. Smile nicely and suggest that maybe they should start over. Forget what had been said in anger. She would sit on Allie's bed and watch her pack, as she had done so many times before. They could talk about the movie Allie had just seen, about soccer, about what Allie and her mom had planned for their week together.

Her legs wouldn't move her up the staircase, though, and after standing for a while, trying to urge herself forward, she brought her foot down from the first step and turned toward the kitchen. She put the kettle on, and when her tea was ready, she carried it into the office, closing the door behind her. She sat in Bradley's desk chair, her hands wrapped around the hot teacup.

Outside, the sky was black ink. She had never seen such dark skies before she moved to Michigan. In D.C., even on the most overcast of nights, there was still a glow from the city lights. Here, with the night clouds blocking the stars and moon, and the state land as her largest neighbor, there was no glow. No soft yellow reminder that she had company. There were as many other heartbeats on her old apartment block in the city as there were in all of Mount Pleasant.

The dean hadn't understood why Char couldn't simply make a decision about what she wanted and act on it. He couldn't grasp why she would be willing to turn down the opportunity to reenter a career she loved while she waited around for Allie to decide whether she wanted to stay and for Lindy to meander her way to deciding whether or not she would rather have her daughter remain in Michigan.

He hadn't asked,
Are you insane?
But he was clearly thinking it. She had dismissed it at the time. Told herself he simply didn't understand. He wasn't in a blended family. He couldn't possibly get it.

Maybe she was the one who wasn't getting it. For starters, she wasn't in a blended family, either. Not anymore.

Char turned away from her reflection in the window, unable to face herself as she allowed a thought:
Would it be such a bad thing if Lindy refused to send Allie back to Michigan after the break?

She had told herself she didn't want her old teaching position back. She didn't even want to consider it beyond making the call—a courtesy call, nothing more, she told herself—to thank Dean Winchester. But she had kept the card. She had set it in plain sight. And she had lifted it, opened it, read it, how many times now?

Had her subconscious known there would be a night like this? Had something inside her realized that at some point, she would crack under the strain of the unknown, undefined relationship between her and Allie and Lindy?

She reached for the card. Slid it out of the envelope. Read it. Read it again.

And for the first time, considered it.

It wasn't, she told herself, that Allie had been rude. She would never let a thing like that have such an extreme effect on her. Back talk, Char could handle. She didn't like it, but she knew it was
simply stress and immaturity and teenage hormones. She knew not to take it personally.

It wasn't Allie at all.

It was the predicament. It was the dance they had been doing, where Char said a little to Allie but not too much, and Allie pushed back a bit with Char but not more than she should. Where Lindy called every few days but not more than that, asked innocent questions but no tough ones, made veiled suggestions but no firm demands. Where Char hoped Allie wanted to stay but didn't want to ask her, prayed Lindy would leave Allie in Mount Pleasant but didn't dare come right out and request it.

It all seemed absolutely ludicrous, now that she had heard herself describe it out loud to Dean Winchester. And more than ludicrous, it was exhausting. Is this what she wanted? To continue this tiring, stress-filled waiting game?

The longer she waited, the less chance she had to salvage her career. Was she willing to sacrifice it a second time, to trade D.C. for Mount Pleasant again? And for what? The first time, there had been a huge payoff: Bradley. And his terrific daughter. An instant family.

This time, there was no Bradley. There was no family. Allie and Lindy were the family. There was Allie, for now, but who knew how much longer she would be here? There was Colleen, but her life was wrapped up in her own children and husband, as it should be. Most weeks, before Bradley died, Char saw her only for their Thursday lunch date on campus.

After, Colleen had been dropping in almost every day, suggesting they make more frequent lunch plans, maybe add a weekly dinner. Char had resisted. Colleen didn't have time to be a stand-in for Char's missing family, and Char didn't want her friend to feel that obligation.

Char lifted her cell from the desk and tapped out a text to her brother:
That opening still available for next week? I
know of a sibling who might be interested. Half-week occupancy
only. Planning the other half in D.C. I need to see a dean about a job.