Wherever You Go (34 page)

"What, Grandpa?" Holly says, turning toward him.

"I didn't mean to wreck your life," he says.

You lean in closer next to him, patting him on the back with your invisible hands. "Good job, Aldo."

Holly mutes the TV and turns to her grandfather. "You didn't wreck my life."

"Roberto," Aldo says to her. "He said it."

Holly's eyes tear up. "Grandpa. Not Roberto again."

Mustering the effort, Aldo shakes his head. "
Cara mia,
" he says, breathing deeply. "He didn't mean to hurt you."

Holly lets out a long sigh. "Grandpa, I'm sorry, but he's just an illusion. Usually I just go along with you on these things, but tonight I can't. I'm so tired."

"Roberto is a ghost," Aldo says carefully. He's making these words on his own. You see the concentration in his face. The forced clarity.

You whisper some things in his ear.

"Peppermint ice cream. 'Brass Monkey.' Swimming at the Montlake Cut," Aldo says, spilling all your details. "He called you Holly Golightly, from the old movie."

Holly's face pales. "Grandpa. He's here? Rob's here?"

"Yes," he says in halting words. "He comes for you. He wants you to know."

She moves to the end of the couch. "He's standing right there? He's a ghost? It's really Rob?"

"He's been watching over you all this time."

"I thought you were cracking up," she says, her voice broken, on the verge of tears. "I thought you were just getting worse when you talked about Roberto." She points next to Aldo's chair, toward you. "Oh my God. Rob, I can't believe this. What is going on? Are you haunting me?"

"He means no harm," Aldo says before you can feed him any more words. His face is pained, the effort taking its toll. You realize you have to get to the heart of things before Aldo fades.

Holly wraps her arms around herself. "He can hear me?"

Aldo nods. "He's right here with us."

"I miss you, Rob," she says staring toward where you stand at Aldo's side. "I've never forgotten you."

"She needs to," you say. "She needs to forget me and move on."

Aldo gives you a sad smile and then turns to Holly, doing his best to repeat what you've said. You can't believe you're ready to let her go after you've fought so hard to be so ight="0em"with her, even in this afterlife state. All the time you've spent with her, with Aldo. It's time for all of you to move on.

Holly's face crumbles, and tears start to roll down her cheeks. "He's hanging around just to say that? That I should freaking forget him and move on?"

"No." Aldo gives you another look.

This is the hard part. This is the part you don't want to say, but you know you have to. The part that came back to you as you watched your parents. The part that your mind shut away from you because it hurt too much to think about it. Hurt too much to admit to even yourself. But you know you have to let this truth go. You have to let it all go. "I crashed the car."

Aldo's old man voice sounds funny as he forms your words.

"I was there. I know there was a car crash," Holly says. She doesn't understand, so you'll have to get specific. You tell Aldo to lay it all out there.

"He wanted to die," he says.

The secret you were protecting. The truth you couldn't admit. It sounds stark, naked, inadequate for all you were going through. You're past the pity party, though. You're past everything that would separate you from peace.

"He crashed the car," Aldo continues. "He didn't mean for you to be there. He wasn't thinking."

Holly stares at her grandfather. At the piece of space your form occupies. You see the thoughts popping behind her eyes, in her mind. You see the confusion mixing with the pain.

"Oh, God." Holly sinks to her knees, wrapping her arms around her thin body. "It's my fault. At the party ... we were fighting. If we hadn't been—if I hadn't..."

"No," you say. "Help her understand. Tell her it wasn't about her. Things were so screwed up for me. I felt so small, so worthless."

That's a lot of words, kid,
Aldo says mentally, giving me a tired look.

"Sorry," you say. "Just tell her it wasn't her."

"He says it's not your fault. He was sad for a very long time."

Holly raises her head to look toward you again, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm so sorry. Why couldn't you talk to me?"

Aldo nods as you tell him more of the things you want to say. His energy is winding down, you see it in his eyes. "He tried. But he didn't have the words," he manages to say.

Holly's voice is weak. "But I knew something wasn't quite right, and I didn't say a damn thing," she says. "I should have, and I didn't."

"No, no." Aldo holds up a hand. "He needs your forgiveness."

Her face clouds again. "Of course. But tell me what to do, Rob. Tell me where I go from here. I'm so lost."

"Jason loves you," Aldo repeats dutifully. "Trust him."

Holly looks surprised through her tears. "It's all messed up. He probably freaking hates me now. I've been all psycho."

"He loves you. Trust me, I'm a dead guy telling you the truth," Aldo repeats verbatim.

Holly laughs, despite the tears. "That's Rob all right."

"It's his birthday—get your ass over there. Oh, and open the envelope," Aldo says, and then he closes his eyes with exhaustion. You can't explain more. Aldo's done all you can ask of him. All you can expect him to say.

And you're sure that any minute the freaking light is going to come flooding toward you. Any minute you're going to make your ascension and be done with this sphere of pain.

The phone call I made that night wasn't an easy one. It went like this.

"Mom, this is Holly. You need to come home."

"I'm on until eleven." I heard the beeps of the cash registers at the grocery store, the faint sound of piped-in easy-listening music, of people talking.

"I know, but I'm leaving the house. Grandpa's going to be alone until you get here. Lena's sleeping. I'll lock the door when I leave."

"What? Holly, listen to me—you're not leaving."

"I have to go somewhere. I'll explain later."

"Dammit, Holly, don't you go. And don't you dare hang up the phone on me!"

The click was so satisfying. The click was like freaking music to my ears. And I was on the bus a little while later, heading toward the hills. I was scared of what I would find when I got back home later—that wouldn't be fun, facing my mom, who was going to be royally pissed.

Mr. Croft's words came back to me.
When you make a choice, the universe conspires to help you
. Leaving my place tonight was maybe the first choice I had made for myself since Rob had died. Maybe ever. Maybe this was the first step toward whatever life I was going to have. Toward having some kind of a plan for myself. Toward cooking school. How I could do that with Mom relying on me so much I didn't know. At least this was a step.

There were only a few people on the bus with me that night. An older lady in a hospital worker's scrub uniform. A young Asian man with two reusable grocery bags filled to the brim. A white woman with big, thick dreadlocks sleeping against the window two seats in front of me. The bus splashed through the flats and onto Lake City Way, throug a wh>

A new fear crept in on me. Now that we were getting closer to Lake Heights, I was actually afraid of facing Jason's party. There would be people there—people from school—Mark and the jackasses who hated me when I was with Rob and couldn't stand me now. Maybe the people who helped spread the rumor that we had broken up. They were all going to look at me and see poor Holly, who didn't deserve to be there and never had. I'd have to deal with them. And then I would have to find Jason. I didn't know what I was going to say when I got there, but I hoped that he would understand. If I'd been braver, I wouldn't have pushed him away. If I hadn't been so broken, maybe.

As we paused at a stop light, I caught sight of myself reflected in the window. Oh, crap. Seriously—what was I doing? Heading toward a fancy party when I was dressed in scrubby jeans and a dirty hoody, my hair messy, my makeup smeared from crying. This wasn't the way I should go to ask the boy I loved to forgive me. Shit. Also, it was his birthday and I had no present. No card.

Nothing but the mess of me.

I dug in my bag for bus change. I could get off the bus, cross the street, go back home where I belonged. My hand came up with one wrinkled dollar bill, what looked like some granola bar crumbs, and a couple of dimes. That wasn't going to get me off the bus, so I rummaged through all the pockets of my coat and hit the jackpot—a handful of change. But there was also something else, a small blue envelope.

And then Rob's words came back to me.
Open the envelope
.

I glanced around the bus, suddenly wondering if he was there with me, maybe in the next seat. But I didn't sense him there, or maybe without Grandpa I wouldn't have been able to even if he were. There was just nothing. Passengers on a dirty bus crashing through the rain.

Open the envelope
.

It was blue. Square. It had my name printed very carefully, very small, in Jason's handwriting. I turned it over in my hands, scared to open it, because at the back of my mind I worried it was a letter from Jason telling me to go to hell.

Open it
.

That time, I'd have sworn I felt Rob whispering in my ear. A little creeped-out, I ripped open the envelope.

Things I Want to Remember

Sailing on Lake Union with Holly
The way Holly's eyes light up when she smiles
Tomatoes in the greenhouse with Aldo
Fish and chips on the beach with Holly
Kissing Holly in the moonlight
Holding Holly in my arms
To be continued...

Jason's own list. Handwritten. All about me. All about us.

I leaned back in the Naugahyde bus seat, frozen. And then I started to cry, because that's what I felt like doing just then. And sometimes you have to let yourself do those things. To feel what you feel, because it's the only true thing you can do.

The old lady looked over at me with alarm, while the man with the grocery bags stared out the window uncomfortably. The dreadlocked woman kept sleeping. And the bus rolled on toward Lake Heights.

Maybe it's crazy, but when the tears faded I started to smile. I had the feeling, for the first time in a long time, that everything was going to turn out all right. And I knew the choice I'd made tonight, with or without the help of Grandpa Aldo or the ghost of Rob, was the right one.

***

The living room is lit up, but Aldo's eyes are closed. You're hanging out, watching some PBS documentary about Captain Cook. Aldo starts to snore, exhausted, no doubt, from the evening's events.

The door rattles open. Julia, Holly's mom, comes rushing in, dumping her keys in the bowl, her coat and purse on the hallway floor. You've never seen her this crazed, this upset. She charges in to the kitchen. And stops.

On the center of the table, Holly has left something for her. A business card and a Post-it note.

MS. SHIRLEY GRANGER, SENIOR SERVICES COUNSELOR
.

Mom,

I can't do this alone anymore. I
(we)
need help
.

Love,

Holly

Julia leans her hands against the table, bracing herself. Her breathing quickens. Her eyes close. "Dammit." After a minute, she straightens herself and walks toward the living room.

Aldo blinks awake and sees her coming in. "Hello," he says.

"Hi, Papa. She puts on a warm smile.

"Gloria?"

Her face falls. "Julia," she corrects.

Aldo looks confused. He's drifting in and out. "Hello, have we met?"

"Papa, it's Julia, your daughter." She touches his shoulder and sits down on the couch next to the chair.

"Aldo," you prompt. "Come back to her."

"I'm trying, kid."

"Try harder."

"My, pushy, aren't we?"

"Papa?" Julia says, reacting to Aldo's mumbling in Italian.

"Focus," you coach.

"I'm here," Aldo says as he reaches out for Julia's hand. "My daughter."