Untethered (18 page)

C
olleen spoke, but her voice grew faint and tinny as the phone slid out of Char's hand, bounced on the couch, and fell to the floor. She flew to the front hall, leaping down the three steps from the living room without slowing.

Allie stood inside the door, her shoulders halfway to her ears with tension, arms bent rigidly at her sides as though she was ready for a fight. It was the first time she had done something so wrong on Char's watch.
I dare you to make something of it
, her body language goaded. But her face said something very different. Her cheeks were a patchwork of red, and her eyes, shining with liquid, flitted from the floor to the hall table to the mirror to the ceiling and everything in between—except for Char's face.

Brace yourself, kid, while I tell you exactly what I'm going to make of it,
Char thought. But the thought was fleeting, and she left it at the bottom of the stairs as she hurled herself toward Allie and wrapped her arms around her.

All of the things she had said to Colleen were true. Her
frustration and anger had been real. It still was. But relief filled her now, and it pushed aside the other emotions. Not forever, but for now.

For now, the girl was home, and that was all that mattered.

“Thank God you're okay!”

Allie teetered back with the force of Char's embrace and they both let out a laugh, which, for Allie, turned immediately into a sob.

“It's okay,” Char said, holding her tighter and kissing her temple. “It's okay. Oh my God.” She laughed again, with relief. “You're okay! I was so worried.” She kissed the crying teenager again.

“I'm so sorry,” Allie said, her voice in the high note of someone talking and crying at the same time. “I decided to go out with Kate and the guys after school and they promised we'd be back before six so I didn't think it would matter, really, whether I was with them or at the soccer field, but then they had another stop to make, and then another, and I thought I had lost my phone, and when I finally found it, I saw you had called and texted and I saw how late it was, and I'm so sorry I didn't call or text you back and let you know but I was safe the whole time and I'm so sorry you were worried. . . .

“And I'm sorry I didn't tell you about not trying out for soccer but I can't deal with it, Char, I can't deal right now with the . . . obligation . . . it just feels like too much, first Dad's gone and now Morgan, and I have no idea when—or if—I'll ever be moving to my mom's, and I've been so stressed about that and wondering if she even wants me to move out there since her plans keep changing and my room keeps not getting decorated and there's always some new excuse why ‘now isn't the right time.' . . .

“And then with the whole Morgan thing, I feel like it just pushed me over the edge, and I just didn't want to have to deal with anything extra so I told the coach I didn't want to try out, and I should have told you first and I'm so so so sorry.”

Allie let her forehead fall to Char's shoulder, as though the effort of her apology had exhausted her.

“You're right,” Char said. “You should have told me where you were. We're going to need to talk about that. But we don't have to do it this second, when we're both emotional.” She kissed the girl again. “It can wait. For now, let's go eat.”

In the kitchen, she moved a pot of soup from the middle of the stove back to a burner. “I heated this before, and then took it off. I think it'll be fine if I warm it up, but I'm not sure. It's Colleen's chicken noodle.”

“I'm sorry,” Allie said from her seat at the counter.

“I wasn't trying to make a point,” Char said, looking over her shoulder. “I was only thinking that the noodles might fall apart. Sometimes reheating does that. But we can dump it and find something else.”

“There are a few other options in there,” Allie said, nodding toward the freezer, newly restocked by Colleen.

Char slanted her eyes to the ceiling. “That woman.” She turned back to the soup and stirred it. “She tells me Sydney knew you were quitting.”

“She tried to talk me out of it.”

“Mmm,” Char said.

“Are you going to try to talk me out of it, too?”

Char laughed and struck a decidedly uncoordinated pose. “I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm not what you'd call ‘athletic.' I think it's amazing you've done field hockey and soccer all these years. And by amazing, I mean a little crazy. So, no, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. Do the things you want to do and don't worry about the rest.

“I know there's the whole extracurricular list to think about for
college applications. But you did two sports freshman year, and you did that prom-planning committee thing last spring, too. Field hockey and tutoring this year. I think you're in good shape, don't you? Remember what Mr. Slavin said when we met with him in the fall: colleges don't need to see three pages of activities. They need to see you doing things that truly interest you. Don't go through the motions in soccer if your heart's not in it.”

Allie wrote something on the counter with an index finger. “My mom won't be happy about soccer, especially since I might have made varsity. On the other hand, she'll be thrilled that I'm not tutoring anymore.” She moved her finger to her phone and touched each of the buttons. “I'm not looking forward to telling her about the team.”

Char tasted the soup. “Another minute or two, and I think we'll be good,” she said. “Look, I think you can avoid some stress about the soccer thing. The last few times your mom has called me to check in, she hasn't even asked about it. I think she might have forgotten it's a spring sport in high school. So, you might have a get-out-of-jail-free card on this one.”

Setting down her spoon, she turned around to face Allie, expecting to find a relieved smile on the girl's face. She found two wet eyes instead. Char wanted to smack herself on the head with the soup ladle. Of course Allie didn't see “Your mother likely forgot you're even in soccer right now” as a good thing.

“I'm an idiot,” Char said. “I'm sorry. I meant that as a consolation, but obviously, it's not one.” Moving quickly, she turned off the burner, reached into the cupboard for two bowls, and ladled the soup, all while keeping up a light prattle designed to distract Allie's attention from the clueless remark. “I tell you what. It's been a
tough night for both of us. Let's take dinner into the family room and eat with the TV on. Okay?”

But Allie was on her feet now, halfway to the stairs.

“Allie?”

“I'm not hungry,” Allie whispered.

“Oh, sweetie. I didn't mean to upset you. I only meant to relieve some pressure, to let you know you might not have to face that conversation right now.”

“I . . .” Allie's voice broke. She spun around and ran up the stairs, and Char could hear her crying as she went.

S
o,” Colleen asked at lunch in Char's office on Thursday. She reached into the cloth tote bag she had set on the desk and pulled out a container of salad, two plastic bowls, and two forks.

Char frowned. “It's not that I don't appreciate your bringing lunch . . .”

“Oh, this is just for show,” Colleen said. “I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet.” When she brought her hand out again, she held a Ziploc with two chunks of thick sourdough bread, a plastic-wrapped triangle of Brie, a cheese knife, and two gigantic chocolate chip cookies. “Oh, and these,” she said, pulling out two cans of Sanpellegrino Limonata.

“That's my girl,” Char said.

“Catch me up on what's been going on since Tuesday,” Colleen said, cutting wedges of Brie. “Did you finally confront Allie about Justin, and soccer, and all the rest of it?”

“No. When I saw her standing in the front hall, safe, alive, I was so overcome with relief that I couldn't bring myself to confront her.
And then at dinner, I said something wrong and she stormed off in tears. So.” She lifted her shoulders.

“Another time.”

“Exactly,” Char said. “And actually, I was thinking this morning that maybe it's a good thing I didn't get to talk to her about it that night anyway. Because I think there's something else I need to tell her first, before I launch into a big lecture about who's in charge and who needs to obey. And I didn't realize it until this morning.”

“What's that?” Colleen asked.

“I haven't told her I love her in . . . I don't even know how long,” Char said. “At some point, during the whole you-hate-my-new-friends thing, she stopped saying it to me. So I stopped saying it to her. Not as a punishment or anything, but just . . . you know me . . .”

Colleen nodded. “The whole I-don't-want-to-push-her thing.”

“Right. But I need to say it. And not as the precursor to a lecture, but on its own. And I'm going to. Today, when I get home, I'm going to tell her how much I love her.”

She ripped off a hunk of bread and ate it, followed by a slice of Brie. “I mean, what if something had happened to her? What if she hadn't come home? What if I never saw her again?” She put a hand on her chest.

“When Bradley died, the one thing I didn't have to deal with was regret. You hear about these people whose spouses die, or their sisters, or their mothers, and they say the worst part of it was that they hadn't told that person how much they loved them. Maybe they were in the middle of an argument, in the weeks before. Maybe they'd been giving each other the silent treatment.

“And then, bam, the other person's gone, and they've missed their chance. And the grieving takes them so much longer. Because they don't only have the sadness and loss to face. They have
all this terrible regret, too. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have to live with that regret about Bradley.

“But I don't have to. He knew how much I loved him, because I told him all the time. We weren't in the middle of some big argument that day. There weren't all these unspoken things between us that I'll never get to say to him, or hear him say to me.” She popped a bite of cookie into her mouth, chewed, swallowed.

“I mean, it's not like we had some great romantic night, the night before. It wasn't some Hollywood ending. We'd had a typical weekend. We did all our usual—slept in, went for a lame hike, ate too many chips, watched too much TV. And then on Monday morning, before he left for Lansing, we kissed good-bye, told each other ‘I love you.'

“It wasn't some big passionate thing but it was us, you know? It was real. We meant it, and we each knew it. So, of all the things I've cried about and wished were different since the night we got that horrible call, the idea that he died without knowing how I felt about him isn't one of them. I can't tell you what a comfort that's been for me.

“I thought about that while I was driving to work today. About how I'd feel if Allie hadn't come home at all the other night, and never came home again. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something happened to her. If she was hurt or . . . something, and I thought she might have spent her last moments not knowing for certain how I felt about her.

“Or even if she took off on purpose with those kids. Chose not to come back. Didn't want anything to do with me anymore. Even then, I'd still want her to know how much I loved her. And I'd feel sick forever if the reason she didn't know was because I hadn't bothered to tell her.”

Char set aside the rest of her cookie and looked at her friend. Seconds later, she turned back to the cookie, retrieved it, and took another bite.

Colleen smiled and shook her head.

“What?” Char asked. “Oh”—she gestured to the cookie—“I know. My willpower's impressive.”

“It's not that.”

Char lifted her shoulders and raised her hands, palms up.

Colleen smiled again. “It's just that for all your talk all these years about how you're ‘only' a stepmom, and now you're not even technically that, you sure do sound like a mother.”

•   •   •

A
fter work, Char sped home. She couldn't wait to see Allie and tell her the three words she'd kept from the girl for too long. She had been thinking about it all afternoon. She would start with that, and give the message room to breathe. Only later would she launch into her disappointment about Allie's lying, her sneakiness. But first things first: I love you.

And maybe Allie would say
Uh, okay,
and retreat into her room for the rest of the evening
.
Or maybe she would say
I love you too, CC
. But either way, she would know how Char felt about her.

As Char turned onto their street, she had to will herself not to press the accelerator too hard. As she got closer to the house, she had to force herself to take deep, slow breaths, to bring her racing heart back to normal. As she pulled into the drive, she had to resist the urge to lean on the horn.
Honk! Honk! Honk! It's a new day for you and me, Allie!

As she pressed the button on her sun visor to raise the garage
door, she had to fight herself to wait for the door to lift all the way before she gunned the engine to park faster.

And as she surveyed the three empty bays in the garage, she had to do a double take, and then another, before it finally sank in.

The convertible was missing.