TWO
Days passed before Hayden contacted me again, and even then, it wasn’t to tell me information about Carla, it was just to say that he wouldn’t be home for a few more days. Feeling completely demoralized when Hayden ended the brief call, I pocketed my phone and went back to feeding Chrissy her dinner of pureed chicken and mashed sweet potatoes, soon realizing that for about the fourth or fifth time, I’d forgotten to tell Hayden that she’d spoken her first word. Our calls had been so short as of late that I’d barely had any time to remember, let alone tell him.
Repeating her first word right then, Chrissy burst out with an “Ah-Zhen,” making a mouthful of mashed sweet potato spray out of her mouth, when Jen came in the house and walked into the kitchen.
Jen grinned, came over to Chrissy’s high chair, and gave her a kiss on the cheek before examining her dinner, which sat on the high chair tray in two little dishes. “What is it tonight, Syd? Sweet potatoes and chicken?”
I answered in the affirmative, and Jen asked if there was any more.
“I think I could go for some myself…just to help Chrissy, anyway.”
When Chrissy had started on solid foods, Jen had gotten the idea that she’d be more likely to eat if she saw someone else eating the same foods. “Just so she won’t feel like a freak or something if she’s the only one at dinner eating mashed-up things,” Jen had said. I’d humored her, serving her a dish of pureed green beans right along with Chrissy, and it actually seemed to make a difference.
With Jen chowing down beside her, eating with a plastic baby spoon no less, Chrissy ate more of her green beans than she ever had before. Since then, whenever I made homemade baby food for Chrissy in the food processor, I always made extra for Jen.
Once they’d both finished their dinner of chicken and sweet potatoes, including second helpings for both of them, I asked Jen where she’d been all day. Truth be told, I’d really missed her and kind of wondered what activity had been more interesting to her than spring flower planting around the house, which is what Carol, Mel, Chrissy, and I had been doing all day.
Sitting on a bar stool up to the island, next to Chrissy’s high chair, Jen shrugged in response to my question. “Oh…I was just out doing stuff. Just out doing random different things with Wanted.”
“Well, what kind of ‘stuff’ and ‘random different things?’ And, by the way, where’s Wanted?”
He hadn’t followed her into the house.
Shrugging again, Jen said that she’d left Wanted outside so that he could “stretch his legs” a bit after the car ride home. “And, in fact, I bet he’s stretched his legs enough now, so I should probably go get him.”
Jen hopped off her bar stool and began heading through the kitchen to the front door, but I asked her to hold up, and she stopped.
“Where did you guys go in your car? The two of you were gone an awfully long time.”
In response to my questions, Jen slowly turned to look at me. “Well, it’s all kind of a long story.”
“Well, you can tell your best friend.”
Just for the briefest of moments, Jen made an expression that appeared to me to be something like a grimace. “Well…I just don’t want you to worry or anything.”
“Why would I worry?”
“Well…I don’t know. You are my best friend, and you’re nothing like my dad or Mel, but…you know how you all can get all worried about me sometimes and junk.”
Wondering just what in the heck Jen had been doing that day, I finished lifting Chrissy out of her high chair and held her on my hip, asking Jen to please just tell me where she’d been.
Coming back over to the island and then leaning over it on her elbows, she heaved a long sigh. “Look. I met some strangers today, all right? And I basically hung out with them all day. We hung out in their RV for a bit, and we all had lunch together, and then we all did a bunch of other stuff, and went some different places.”
A little alarmed, I worked to keep it out of my voice. “You got in the RV of people who were complete strangers?”
Again, Jen heaved a sigh, straightening up from her lean over the island. “Don’t forget who you are, Syd. You’re my best friend. You’re not my dad or Mel. Unlike them, you don’t think you’re the boss of me. That’s part of what makes our friendship so special. Remember?”
“Well, I’m just a little concerned that you—”
“And, besides…I’m a legal adult, which means I can do whatever I want without anyone having the right to question me or judge me. No matter how little I am, or how young I look, I’m a full-on legal adult. I can prove it with my birthdate on my driver’s license, as I discovered today. I needed it for proof of the fact that I’m a legal adult who should never be questioned.”
“What did you need to prove you’re a legal adult for?”
Horrified, I was thinking of nightmare scenarios, like whoever had lured Jen into their RV had somehow gotten her to consent to have pornographic pictures taken of her, or maybe had gotten her to consent to something even worse.
Possibly seeing horror written all over my face, Jen immediately put my mind at ease by laughing, then saying that she hadn’t had to prove her age for anything “dirty.”
“First, it was just to prove to Bucky that I was old enough to get in the RV without asking my parents or anything.”
“Who’s Bucky?”
Seeming to forget all about letting Wanted in the house, Jen hopped up on a barstool. “Oh, he’s just this really nice man I met. He’s super old. He’s like, probably sixty-five or something. Same with Phyllis. That’s his wife. They’re both now my really good friends.”
With a sleepy Chrissy still in my arms, I sat back down on my own barstool, asking Jen how she’d met Bucky and Phyllis.
She said she’d run into them in the Box-Mart parking lot. “And I do mean I almost literally ran into them. See, when we got out of the store, Wanted was in a super-hyper mood, and he went tearing off through the parking lot, with me holding his leash. Just before we got to our car, we almost smacked right into Phyllis and Bucky, who were trying to load groceries into their big old RV. Bucky was like, ‘Whoa there, little girl!’ And I was like, ‘Well, sorry for almost wiping you out, but I’m not a little girl. I’m actually legal voting age, and I can even buy cigarettes and lottery tickets, too.
I could even join the army if I wanted to. I could be an actual soldier.’ And then Bucky was all like, ‘Oh, you’re pulling my leg!’ And I kept saying, ‘No, sir, I’m really not.’ And, then…well, me, him, and Phyllis all kept talking, and I showed them my age on my driver’s license to prove that I’m really an adult, and then we all kept talking some more, and then after a long time, I told Bucky and Phyllis that I wish they were my grandparents, because they’re so nice, and I’ve never had any grandparents.
Well, so then Phyllis started getting the tearful sniffles, and she said she wished that I was her and Bucky’s granddaughter, because I’m so nice, and they never got any grandkids, because their son died in a motorcycle accident some decades ago before he could have any kids.
Well, so then I gave Phyllis a big long hug, and Wanted even kind of gave her a hug, too, and then Phyllis told me that she and Bucky just bought a ton of groceries to make deluxe turkey sandwiches with, with bacon, and avocado, and tomatoes, and a bunch of other stuff, and she asked me if I wanted to come inside their RV to have lunch with them, in the little kitchen part of their RV.
See, they have a little table and everything in there. A sink, too, and even a full shower and a bed in the back, and a nice little couch thing, too, in the middle part of the RV. I lay on it a while after lunch, just because I was so stuffed, and it was actually one of the most comfortable couch things I’ve ever lain on in my life.”
“So, you and Phyllis and Bucky all had a nice lunch together?”
Jen paused to eat the last bite of mashed sweet potato still left in Chrissy’s dish, washing it down with a swig of iced tea from my glass. “Oh, yeah. We all had an awesome lunch together. Phyllis even made Wanted his own little sandwich made from turkey, bacon, and lettuce, and she even gave him some baby carrots to eat, too. That’s when I knew that I wanted her and Bucky to officially become my adoptive grandparents.”
“So, what did you all do after lunch?”
“Oh, well, first, we all walked to the art carnival thing that was going on in downtown Sweetwater. We saw all this different art stuff, and Phyllis bought this little painting of a tree by a stream with little fairies sitting by the stream, and her and Bucky bought me a caramel apple when I stopped being so full from lunch, and then we all started talking to this lady who was selling handmade jewelry made from quartz, which is a special kind of rock.
And, actually, I started talking to this lady first, and I introduced Phyllis and Bucky to her as my official adoptive grandparents, and she thought that was pretty neat. Phyllis bought me a quartz pendant thingy from her that I’m supposed to tuck behind the visor in my car, because the pendant was blessed by real angels, and it will keep me safe while I drive. I told Phyllis I barely need it, though, because I’m such a safe driver. I told her I’ve never even had a single ticket, unlike Mel.”
Chrissy had now fallen asleep, and I carefully shifted her from one arm to the other without waking her up.
“Well, it sounds like you all had a really fun time at the art carnival. Did you guys stay there all afternoon?”
Jen said no, curiously shifting her gaze from my face to the island. “Oh…no. We left after an hour or two, and then we went and did something else.”
I wondered what that “something else” was, because Jen had been gone from the house for about eight hours. I’d honestly been about to call her and ask if all was okay when she’d finally shown up at home. I asked her what else she, Phyllis, and Bucky had done that afternoon, and she just shrugged, keeping her gaze on the island.
“Oh…you know. Just a bunch of stuff. Just, things.”
“Jen, please just tell me what else you did. You’re making me think it was something strange or something.”
Jen finally lifted her gaze from the island. “All right. Just don’t think it was stupid what we did, okay? See, Phyllis and Bucky took me to play paintball, and we had a blast.”
Thinking of two senior citizens playing paintball with Jen, I smiled. “That sounds really fun. Why did you think I’d think it was stupid?”
Jen said she wasn’t sure. “I guess people are always just judging me so much around here that I guess I’m just used to it. I should have known you’d be nice about it, though.”
“Well, of course.”
“Well, anyway, so that was the second time I needed my driver’s license today. They wanted to see it at the paintball place to make sure that I was old enough to shoot a paintball gun.”
“Well, that seems funny. Don’t little kids play paintball? In fact, I remember going to a birthday party at a paintball place when I was maybe only eleven or twelve.”
Reminding me of Hayden when he was stressed, Jen suddenly raked a hand through her hair, avoiding my gaze. “Oh…yeah. Well, they probably had your mom sign a form for you or something. See, I think the paintball place just wanted to see if I was an adult because I didn’t have a parent present or something. And I told them right up front that Phyllis and Bucky haven’t legally adopted me as their granddaughter yet, so they couldn’t sign a form for me. So, that’s probably why the paintball place just wanted to make sure I was an adult.
I think I even saw a sign there on one of the walls. It said something like, ‘If we think you’re a kid, you have to have a parent sign a form for you to play paintball. You can have a grandparent sign, too, but they have to be a legal grandparent, not someone you just met. And if you look like a kid but don’t have a parent or a legal grandparent with you, we’re gonna have to check your driver’s license to make sure you’re an adult.’ Something like that.”
Something about a teenager with two older people having to prove she was an adult to play paintball still seemed off to me, but Jen spoke again before I could ask any further questions.
“Anyway. So, Phyllis and Bucky are my new friends and my official adoptive grandparents, too. They’re even gonna stay my grandparents all summer long, because they’re parking their RV at the Sweetwater Lake campground until they head down to this one place in Virginia in September. Then, they’ll stay there for the fall months, and then in winter, they’ll park their RV down in Florida, and they’ll live in their little house in Florida, until early spring.
Then, they’ll start their trip back up to Michigan in the RV, stopping in all these different states, and having all sorts of little adventures, along the way. Maybe they’ll even pick up some souvenirs along the way, to give to me when they come back up to Michigan. After all, I’m their official adopted granddaughter now.
Bucky and Phyllis even said so, and Phyllis even gave me a kiss right on the forehead when they brought me back to my car, and she even gave Wanted a kiss on the forehead, too. Wanted wagged his tail super hard, meaning that he loved it. See, just like me, he’s never had grandparents before, but he’s always wanted them.”
With my heart thoroughly warmed, I smiled and said that Phyllis and Bucky sounded like really nice people.
Jen smiled in return. “Yep. They totally are. They’re just really nice adoptive grandparents. They’re taking me out to lunch in Sweetwater tomorrow, and then after that, we’re going to rent a paddleboat at the lake and cruise all around, and then after that, we might even go play paintball again.”
Jen started to say something else but was interrupted by Wanted barking loudly at the front door. She went and let him in, then hopped back up on her barstool.
“So, anyway, how was your day? I meant to ask you earlier, but the baby food you made tonight was just so good that I guess I just got too hung up on it to do much talking.”
I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to understand how Jen could actually eat baby food, and not just eat it, but love it. I’d had a few bites of Chrissy’s pureed food myself when I’d first started making it and had found the texture to be a little off-putting, to say the least.
To answer Jen’s question, I said that my day had been okay. “We got all the flowers planted around the house, and they look nice, I guess. The petunias, especially, are really pretty.”
“Well, then, why do you look so sad about them?”
I wasn’t aware that I was looking “sad” about them.
Sighing, I glanced down at Chrissy’s angelic sleeping face before returning my gaze to Jen. “I guess I’m just still really wanting Hayden home. This whole ‘hunting for Carla’ thing is just really taking a toll on me. Hayden can’t give up now, though. He’s following her up to Michigan from Mexico, and he’s going to find out exactly what she’s up to once she gets here. Then he can come back home and be with me and Chrissy.”
That didn’t happen that night, or the next. Or the next. Now that Jen wasn’t getting up in the middle of the night to play with Chrissy anymore, Chrissy once again began sleeping through the night, although this hardly even mattered to me. I was now the one who was waking up a few times a night, not even sure why. I just missed Hayden. That was all. I just need him here, I thought every night, while curled up with the part of the blanket that still held just a faint trace of his scent. It was a faint trace that was getting fainter by the day.
It was the first day of June when he finally came home. However, my elation at his return soon turned to dread.