After two hours of dying and respawning in Halo and trying to forget the argument I had with Priya, I shut off my Xbox and drag my butt downstairs to find my mother in the kitchen. “When did you get home?”
She’s in sweats, changed from her work scrubs, and her hair is wet. “Not long ago. You upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone with you?”
“Um, no. . . .”
Why would she ask that? Does she know about Priya? Did she see her in the field? My heart begins to pound and I force myself to take deep breaths.
Okay, Matty, tell her. Do it.
I have to do this. I have to ask Mom about Priya. I have to get her help, even though Priya will probably hate me for it, even if Mom blasts me for keeping her a secret.
“So, Mom, I—”
And then I notice she’s got her laptop on the table and an intense, troubled look on her face. The computer is an old Dell that Dad and I refurbished for her about a million years ago. I think she mostly uses it as a paperweight. “What’s that?”
“The blog,” she tells me. “His blog.” Her voice trembles and her finger shakes as she points at the screen.
“What about it?”
“It’s been updated.” She sits back and turns the screen toward me.
It’s a selfie of my dad in front of a nondescript city building. His shaggy sand-colored hair is blowing back in a wind and the too-close camera distorts his nose and chin, making him look like Ginger when she sniffs the phone.
“Read it,” my mother commands.
It’s brief, just a few lines of that god-awful white text on a black background, but the key words I see are: It’s the start of a new adventure.
I scan the rest of the entry but the words blur. I shove the laptop back at my mom. “Whatever. So he’s telling the world he’s gone. So what? We knew that. Now everyone else knows it too.”
But that’s not enough for my mom. She picks up the computer and follows me to the sink, where I’m running the water for a glass. She thrusts the screen at me again. “Where is he? Can you tell?”
“No.”
“Look, Matty. Please.”
“Fine.” I stare again at his photo. Behind him is a stone building, gray with round columns. There’s a blue-and-white bus in one corner and a tree in the other. “A city, I guess.”
“But where?”
Where in the world is David James Jones?
“I still can’t believe he hasn’t contacted us,” my mother says, nibbling on one nail.
Uhhh . . .
I can’t tell her. I need her to let this go, let him go. I want to remind her that he left with another woman, but that would be cruel. Face facts, Lorna.
“Not even a call?”
When she says “call,” the phone number Dad gave me suddenly pops into my brain.
Stupid brain, why are you remembering that, of all things? I can’t seem to remember enough to pass English lit, but I can remember a group of ten numbers I don’t want to know?
2. 6. 7.
267.
Two six seven. I do a quick Google search on Mom’s laptop and come up with the answer: Philadelphia. My heart blips a beat. He’s actually just a four-hour drive away.
That’s it? That’s where he went?
I guess I’d imagined Dad heading for L.A., the sun on his face, salt spray in his hair, with Carol by his side in a shiny red convertible. I have no idea why I would picture this, since my dad drives a pickup truck and his fair skin burns the moment he steps outside.
Knowing he’s in the same state as me is both reassuring and disappointing.
“Is it Hollywood?” my mom asks.
Lie or truth? Which will hurt my mother more? If she knows he’s close by, will she flip out and go there herself? I answer my question and hers at the same time. “Yeah, probably.”
Oh god, this is killing me. I don’t want to know more than my mom. I kind of just want to be a dumb kid. That’s what she expects, right? What everyone expects?
My mother stands behind me and begins to massage my shoulders. “It’s okay, Matty. We’ll be okay, you and me.” She kisses me on the top of my head, something she hasn’t done since I was a baby, probably, the last time I was shorter than her. “I’m going to cook dinner for us.”
“You are?”
“Why are you so shocked?”
I turn in my chair to watch her start the motions of cooking a meal. “Is your name Colonel Sanders? Or Marie Callender?”
“It’s Olive Garden, actually. Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, you’re famous!”
“I am. And cheap.”
“Two things I admire most in a person,” I say.
My mother grins and holds up a frying pan. “Okay, tonight we’ll be serving chicken.”
“We will? And where will we be getting chicken?” My mom is nearly clueless in this kitchen. She has no idea that we don’t have any ingredients besides coffee and mashed potatoes. I start to get up but she waves the pan at me.
“Sit down. I’m doing this tonight.”
“You really are? I need to write this down in my diary.”
She somehow manages to hold the pan and give me the finger.
I give it right back. “Bring it on, Ms. Garden. I’ll take two of everything.”
Mom grins, which brings a smile to my face too. I like seeing her happy. I like being cooked for, although I’m glad we have pizza on speed-dial. We might need to place an order when she realizes we have no actual food with which to make an actual dinner.
“Matty, did you need something from me?”
“Huh?”
“When you came in? You seemed like you wanted to talk about something. I’m sure it wasn’t your dad and his blog.” She rolls her eyes like I do, which makes me laugh.
I hesitate for a fraction of a second. Now is the time to take Em’s advice and get Mom’s professional opinion. Maybe it will be okay.
But then . . .
. . . I hear Mom hum.
God, she’s happy. For once, finally, she’s happy. I shake my head. “It can wait. I’m pretty hungry.”
My mother waves a spatula at me like it’s a wand. “You got it.”
After dinner. I promise I’ll ask her after dinner.