EMILY DICKINSON
Earth to Emilie. Come in.” Mom hip bumps me in front of the avocados.
I look up from my white-knuckled hands on the grocery cart handle. “Um, yeah?”
“Do you want taco salads for dinner?” She digs around in a bin of tomatoes.
I shrug, propping a foot on the metal basket beneath the cart. “Sure.”
She drops two almost-ripe tomatoes into a plastic produce bag and heads over to the lettuce. I follow, racking my brain for an escape plan. I cannot—repeat cannot—enter The Potter’s House. Personally, I’d rather not enter the parking lot, but I know my mom. Nothing short of a natural disaster will keep the woman from her to-do list. So I’d better come up with a good reason why I need to stay in the car.
We’re heading up aisle three when I start laying the groundwork for my master plan. “Is it hot in here?” I ask, pausing behind her when she stops to compare prices on the black olives.
“Not really.” She counts on her fingers, calculating the cost per ounce, her eyes narrowing. When she doesn’t look at me, I clear my throat. She glances in my direction and adds two cans of chopped olives to our cart.
I massage my temple, wincing for added effect. “I’m not feeling so great.”
“We’re almost finished,” she says, sashaying around the endcap and up the next aisle. “You’re probably just tired.”
I sigh through parted lips, trying to gain her sympathy without going overboard. But she’s not biting. She’s totally oblivious as she triple checks her list.
I pray for divine intervention as we navigate the frozen food section. When we approach the register, I’m still praying. The tightness in my gut tells me I’m wasting my time, and my gut is always right. God knows I should’ve listened to it at the game on Thursday.
A few minutes later, we pile groceries in the backseat. As Mom’s butt hits the driver’s seat, her phone rings. “Hey, Rog.” She smiles, clicking her seat belt into place.
Rog? Seriously? Rog? Is that like a nickname or a term of endearment or what?
While I was occupied with Chatham, their relationship moved to a new level, and I blame myself. I should’ve been home with Hitch and Mom instead of spending all my free time in the media center and going on dates. Maybe then I could have stopped this. Or at least understood why Mom was suddenly ready to move on when I wasn’t.
Pressing my forehead on the cold window, I grip the door handle and try to block out Mom chuckling at something Rog said. The woman driving the car is a complete stranger. She doesn’t brake as we cruise through a yellow light. She turns in to The Potter’s House without signaling.
At least the place looks deserted—no black SUVs with bicycle racks or winches anywhere to be seen. I relax until Mom gestures toward the trunk with her free hand.
Uh-uh. No way. Not going to do it. I shake my head. This was her idea. She should suffer the physical loss of tossing Dad’s stuff, not me. When I don’t move, she pinches her lips together. Her brow furrows. I freeze, making no effort to move.
“Let me call you back,” she says to Rog, ending the call and turning toward me. “Emilie, we’ve discussed this. Dad will always be with us. Getting rid of his old clothes isn’t going to change that. He didn’t even care about clothes. How about we do it together—”
Her phone vibrates, interrupting her little pep talk. I recognize the library name and number when it flashes on the screen.
“Just take your call, Mom.” I gesture for her to pop the trunk and step out of the car. My ribs close in against my lungs and heart as I round the back. Her moral support isn’t going to make this any easier. I may as well do something on my own.
I peek into the trunk. Staring up at me are the cardboard boxes of Dad’s clothes I found in their closet a few weeks ago. My blood pressure kicks into Mach speed when it hits me. I could be walking on the beach tomorrow and see some kid who’s into the whole vintage thing wearing one of Dad’s R.E.M. or U2 T-shirts.
I brace myself on the trunk, inhaling through my nose to the count of three like Dr. Wellesley instructed, and contemplate my options: refuse to drop the clothes and risk a scene with Mom right here in the parking lot, or do what she wants and let another little piece of my father slip out to sea.
Reaching into the trunk, I stack one box on top of the other and lift them toward my chest. Tears prick the backs of my eyes.
Daddy, I’m so sorry—so very, very sorry.
Trudging toward the front door, I shift the boxes to my left hip and reach for the metal handle. The door swings open before I make contact. A younger girl with a head full of blonde curls props the door open with her foot. When my eyes adjust to the light, I blink in disbelief. It’s Cindy. I’d recognize that hair anywhere. What I don’t recognize is the glow on her cheeks and the roundness of her face.
“Oh my gosh. Cindy?” I bend down, place the boxes on the ground, and pull her into my arms.
She squeezes me back. “Emilie, hi!”
I hold her at arm’s length to study her face. She looks . . . happy. Younger, somehow.
I pull her in for a second hug. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
An older lady with gray hair and deep lines around her mouth steps out from behind the register toward us.
“Do you know this girl?” she asks Cindy, looking down at us over horn-rimmed glasses.
“Yes, Ms. White.” Cindy clasps my hand like I might float away. “Before I was a hero, she was my neighbor.”
The woman whips off her glasses, her eyes narrowing on me. I stand, smiling and holding out a hand to greet her.
She looks at my hand but makes no effort to shake it. Instead, she folds in the stems of her glasses and hangs them on the long chain around her neck. “Cindy, you know the rule about visitors.” She gestures to a door in back, behind the wall-to-wall clothes organized on racks by color.
Cindy’s face falls.
My outstretched hand drops to my side. “What’s going on?” I ask, placing my other hand on Cindy’s shoulder and forcing myself to meet Ms. White’s penetrating stare. “I’m not a visitor. I’m here to donate clothes.”
“In that case, let me help you.” She steps forward, bending down for the smaller of the two boxes. “Cindy, you know you’re supposed to be helping your mom in the storeroom.”
“Please . . .” I swallow, trying to cover the squeak in my voice. Now that I’ve found Cindy and her mom, I have to know what’s going on. “I was at the house the night the police came.” I drape an arm over Cindy’s shoulder.
Ms. White’s tight lips relax. The right corner of her mouth turns up a fraction of an inch like she’s about to smile, but she catches herself. “You have five minutes.” She shakes a gnarled finger back and forth between the two of us. “No contact information, Cindy. I mean it.”
I pull Cindy toward a sagging hand-me-down couch beside a shelf of gently used shoes. We sit face to face. I tuck a blonde curl behind her ear while Ms. White wrestles the boxes of Dad’s clothes to an already crowded area behind the register.
“I’m a hero.” Cindy squirms on the worn corduroy upholstery. Her eyes twinkle. She’s lost the wide-eyed, ready-to-flee expression I’d become used to.
I place my hand on hers and smile, trying not to rush her but freaking out that Ms. White might run me off before I get the details. “Tell me about it.”
“You know Daddy can be . . .” She lifts her shoulders, pausing for the right word and studying her hands. I don’t speak, careful not to interrupt her train of thought. “. . . mean.” She meets my eyes.
Nodding, I hold her gaze. I don’t actually know much of anything about her dad except what I’ve seen or overheard from next door, but that’s irrelevant. Right now, I just want to hear what happened before Ms. White checks her watch.
Cindy squares her shoulders, puffing out her chest. “My teacher said to call the police if someone’s in danger. I never called when Dad spanked me, even when it really hurt, but Mommy was bleeding. Bad. So I called nine-one-one.”
Her words hit me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I blink back tears, berating myself for not doing something to help Cindy and her mom. I saw the bruises, overheard the arguments, and did nothing. That’s what I always do—nothing. Well, that and make excuses for why it’s okay to do nothing. But this time doing nothing caused both Cindy and her mother harm.
“All the policemen said I’m a hero. Mommy too.” She glances over in Ms. White’s direction and lowers her voice. “Now we live in a big house with other women and lots of kids. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone where it is.”
I shake my head. Here’s this little girl defending her mother and standing up to an abusive father, and I’m too much of a wuss to stand up to Maddie or even to face my peers.
Pulling her against my chest, I rest my chin on her head and smooth her hair. “Oh, sweetie, you are a hero.” And she is. If I had just one ounce of her courage, I’d be hanging out with Ayla or Chatham right now and taking my best friend with me to school on Monday. I’d be facing life head on like . . . my mom, instead of hiding from the world.
A flurry of activity near the register catches my eye. It’s Ms. White waving at someone entering the store from the back. “Yoo-hoo, Chatham, over here.”
I freeze, every muscle in my body contracting. Cindy squirms in my boa constrictor embrace. I can’t look. I can’t look. His SUV wasn’t parked out front, right? There could be more than one Chatham. At least two, right? Please, please, please, let there be at least two Chathams on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.
I can’t not look.
I open my right eye a crack and lock eyes—well, one eye, anyway—with Chatham. The Chatham. The one and only Chatham who will ever mean anything to me. I want to run, but I’m trapped on the couch as Cindy slips from my arms.
He pauses halfway up the blue aisle, his jaw firm.
“Chatham.” Cindy charges him, wrapping his legs in a bear hug. He pats her on the head and smiles, but the dimples I’ve come to adore are nowhere to be found.