Walking through the café doors is like stepping into one of Rachel’s tarot books. The walls are painted in dark purple and fuchsia, accented with swags of velvet and sparkly silver moons and stars. The smell of fresh coffee and cinnamon wafts over the mismatched furniture as tourists sip their cappuccinos, floating like rafts in the easy laughter of summer vacation.
“Hey, Delilah,” Em calls from behind the counter. “Perfect timing. Patrick’s about to be harassed by his fan club.” She nods toward a honey-haired, C-cup Jezebel seated at a nearby table. “This oughta be good. Watch.”
Patrick sees me and smiles, but before he can cross the room, Jezebel tackles him in some sort of Oh, How I’ve Missed You embrace, and that stupid butterfly bangs into my ribs with a limp wing.
Patrick blushes as he struggles to break free of her lingering and somewhat annoying (to the average onlooker who might care, which, for the record, I don’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s annoying) hug. When he finally succeeds, she looks at him with big cartoon eyes and promises to be back for his show. Then she chews on the straw of her frozen coffee drink and says good-bye with another hug, only instead of using the word good-bye like a normal person, she says, “Ta!” Ta? When she finally makes her exit, it’s a grand show, Jezebel walking so slowly that it’s impossible not to notice the glittered HOTTIE printed across the ass of her pale pink shorts.
“So you have a fan club?” I tease Patrick when she’s finally gone.
“You say fan club, I say stalker.”
“Right. It must be tough having beautiful girls throw themselves at you like that,” I say. “Poor thing.”
“Yes, they’re just throwing themselves, aren’t they? You should see the collection of lace thongs and hotel room keys I have at home.”
I know he’s kidding, but it gets under my skin. I try to think of him as Little Ricky with braces and freckles, but that only strengthens the invisible pull I feel toward him, the sense of entitlement rising in me as though knowing his past gives me some claim to his future, some connecting string between now and the days we played hide-and-seek under the willows when his parents were fighting and he didn’t want to go home.
“I’m sure the older women love you, too,” I say.
“There are a lot of them, huh?” Patrick laughs, twisting his coffee cup inside its eighty-percent-post-consumer-recycled heat sleeve.
“Red Falls wasn’t crowded like this when we were kids,” I say.
“We didn’t have Luna’s. There wasn’t anything to do here but watch the boat races and eat maple sugar candy.”
“I wonder what they’ll finally do with Nana’s house?” I ask, thinking of the new cottages Patrick pointed out across the lake.
“Probably turn it into a hotel for rich people who think ‘rustic’ means you have to wipe your own—”
“Hey, those rich people come out to see your shows, right?”
“Good point. I guess I should be a little more humble. Emily! Another coffee?” he shouts across the counter, waving his empty cup. Em gives him the finger. I think I might love her.
“Humble,” I say. “Good start.”
Patrick needs to finish setting up for the gig, so I find an open computer on the back wall, checking my e-mail for the first time since we left Key.
There are no messages.
I torment myself instead by clicking on Libby Dunbar’s e-mail about the blog pictures on the “Free-4-All Graffiti Wall,” trying to think of a decent response.
Delilah, I’m not censoring anyone. I really thought you of all people would know how important freedom of the press is. Your father died defending it.
When I read Libby’s message now, I realize that most of the anger I’d been harboring over the photo situation is gone, a tiny sailboat tossed on the waves of way more important things. Why respond at all? That stuff about my father… she’ll never get it. She’ll never understand the embarrassment of parent-teacher conference night when my mother asks to do hers over the phone. She’ll never know the sinking feeling of seeing my report card—back when it was still decent—unopened on the counter for weeks.
“You’re lucky,” my friends used to say. “No one bugs you about grades and homework. My father is all over me about that crap.”
No, my father never bugged me about grades or homework. He never scolded me for accidentally stealing lipstick or denting the car or sneaking out with Finn. But I still look at his picture at the top of all of his online news articles, tracing the deep lines in his face and imagining that I put them there, even now, all these years after his death.
I sign out of my e-mail and Google Thomas Devlin again, but it’s the same old list of links and articles, memorializing him for all eternity in little blue letters on a bright white background. Frozen.
“I just finished my shift,” Emily says when I grab my iced latte and meet her back at the counter. “Let’s find a table before they call me back in.”
The café is filling up, but Em and I find a spot right in front of the stage just as Patrick starts the sound check. Emily tells me more about her family—about moving to Vermont from New Hampshire a few years ago, her little brother in middle school whom she loves even when he’s driving her nuts, her parents sending her up to Red Falls for the summer. She asks me about school and my family and what I do for fun back home, picking up the conversation where we left off at the house the other day. I tell her about Mom working a lot, just like she’s doing at the lake house. I tell her that my dad died before I was born, but I keep the conversation light. Flowing. Moving on before the seeds of curiosity about my father’s death take root.
At a round table not far from the stage, an older guy sits with two kids waiting for the show to start. He laughs with them and points at invisible things outside so he can sneak bites from the pastries on their plates.
Usually, I don’t miss my father. But times like this, I wonder. I play those pointless games—What If and Maybe. What if the National Post didn’t give him that assignment? Mom wouldn’t have had to raise me alone. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone to work full-time. Maybe she wouldn’t be unhappy. What if Mom could’ve had with Thomas what Stephanie had with Casey? What if they got married? Maybe he’d be here with us now, helping Mom and Rachel with the estate, or sitting here at Luna’s, giving us a brief history of the British Invasion as we await Patrick’s performance.
“Wait till you hear him,” Emily says as Patrick plugs in another amp. “He’s amazing. I’m not just saying that because we get better tips on show nights, either.”
I stir the slush of my drink with a straw. “I can’t wait,” I say. “It’s so funny to see him up there.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“The last time I saw Patrick before this summer, we were jumping off bleachers and rolling down the hill to make ourselves dizzy. Everything’s so different now. In a good way, I mean. It’s cool.”
“Definitely,” she says. “He’s been practicing all week for you. But as usual, I didn’t tell you that.” She smiles.
“What do you—”
“How you all doin’ tonight, Red Falls?” Patrick’s opening chords interrupt, alighting the Luna’s crowd in a blaze of cheers and whistles. I wave away the question and sit forward in my chair, ready to clap and cheer and join in on the big Red Falls welcome as Patrick dives into the first song.
And oh my God.
Patrick can sing.
I don’t mean la-la-la sing. I mean, sing sing. Goose-bumps, holding-our-breath, lumps-in-our-throats, tears-in-our-eyes, all-we-need-is-love kind of sing.
He belts it straight out, his voice like milk and honey and everything rich and warm and good. I want to drink it. To take off my clothes and slip into his music like a hot bubble bath. One song leads into the next, graceful, flawless, Patrick holding back just enough to build up the anticipation in us, thick and heavy and stretching into every corner and shadow. Luna’s is packed, all of us singing along as we learn the
words, hands and fists and coffee cups pumping in the air, chanting and whooping and clapping with every note. Jezebel the stalker-slash-fan-club-president is back again as promised, right next to the stage, whistling and cheering in a sequined halter top with no bra, watching him as her girlfriends snap pictures with their cell phones, and I don’t even hate her anymore, because now, I get it.
Patrick’s voice finds its way through the crowd, over the cheers and the hum of his guitar, right into me, right down through my feet. He’s beaming and crazy and so natural up there. He was made for this, the way some people are made for motherhood or medicine or art. In his face, there is nothing but music and life and the radiant light of camera flashes as the whole crowd claps for him. When he winks at me during the last song, watching me through it all, it’s like he’s let me in on a precious secret, mine and his, and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never give it up, not even if another eight or eighty or eight hundred years pass before I see him again.
“Okay, when you told me you could sing, you didn’t tell me you could sing.” I shake my head, eyes feeling big inside of it as we walk toward Maple Terrace after the show. “Not like that.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m glad you were there.”
“Patrick, I mean it. You’re amazing.”
“I know you do. And thank you. I mean that, too.” He smiles, stopping beneath the moon at the end of our street and turning to face me. “I’m glad you’re back. I’m…”
He lets his thought fade as his eyes sweep over mine, down to my mouth. His hands cup my face, and the ground—in the sneaky way that grounds have—drops from beneath my feet. I can’t hear anything but the sound of my own breath, needy and hot and a little suffocated. I feel my body pulling to him, everything uttered between us building to this, magnets on the fridge, and I don’t consider the possible complications, because his eyes are right now on my face, closing, eyelashes casting half-moon shadows on his skin, and—
Bzzzz.
“Oh!” My phone vibrates in my pocket. “It’s me. Sorry! It’s my phone.”
Let it go, Delilah.
“I should get it.”
Are you serious?
“Just because, I don’t know, it might be important. Or something.”
Oh my God! You’re just like your mother! Stop! Stop now!
“One second.” I ignore the succession of voices in my head and flip open my phone without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”
“Lilah.”
“Heyyy…” It’s a breath more than a word, everything in me rushing out on a feather of a sigh.
“What’s up?” Finn asks. It’s the first I’ve heard from him since I left Key.
“Just… out for coffee. This place near where we’re staying. You got my text about Vermont, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sucks that you’re all alone in the middle of nowhere, huh? I could be good in this situation.”
“I’ll be okay.” I try to ignore the guilt bubbling in my stomach because Patrick and I aren’t even together and Finn’s not my boyfriend, so why should I feel bad for talking to him? “How are you?”
“Wishing you were here,” Finn says. “Seven Mile is just a creek without you.”
“I think we’ll be here pretty much all summer. My grandmother died. There’s a lot of stuff to take care of.”
Here’s the part where you say, “Delilah, I’m so sorry to hear that. How are you handling everything?”
“Shit, seriously? Well, just call me when you get back, okay? I just wanted to say hi. I gotta jet. Party tonight. You know how it is.”
“Um, yeah. Sure. I—”
But the conversation is over. “Bye,” I say into dead air. I snap the phone closed and slip it into my pocket. Patrick doesn’t ask about the call, or try to pick up the threads of where we left off. It’s like he’s a different person now, like five minutes ago someone else possessed him and left and now the magic is gone and here we are.
I don’t say anything as we continue our walk home. I just keep smiling at Patrick and shaking my head and mumbling words like amazing and unbelievable over and over, and he laughs and puts his arm around me and makes me promise I’ll come to Luna’s and cheer for him always, for as long as he has a guitar and I’m here in Red Falls.
“I promise,” I say, waving when I reach the door of the lake house. He waves back, turning up the path to the blue-and-white Victorian.
Chapter thirteen
At the end of the upstairs hall, the door to Nana’s bedroom is shut, undisturbed as far as I can tell since Mom returned from Shane’s with the urn. I took her advice and stayed away from it, but tonight is different. Maybe it’s the universe Rachel’s always talking about, trying to send me another message. Maybe the ashes are calling to me, or maybe my heart is just full of love and hope and nostalgia after hearing Patrick sing, because tonight, I don’t want to read Stephanie’s diary. I want to be with my grandmother.
The door isn’t locked; it opens easily when I turn the knob. There’s no creaking or moaning or shifting shadows to warn of poltergeists or haunting doom, and when I flick on the light switch, I find only a regular bedroom with regular bedroom stuff, two big windows, and the lingering scent of medicine, hand lotion, and perfumed powder.
The room is wallpapered as I remember it—same neat rows of tiny yellow tulips on a white background. The beige carpet looks new, but the fluffy yellow comforter and curtains are the same, faded now from years of washing and warming in the sun beneath the windows. A glass of water sits on the night table next to one of those plastic pill boxes with individual compartments for each day of the week, S M T W T F S, and it occurs to me that this is where she took her last breath.
On top of Nana’s oak dresser, the urn rests as if it’s always been there: a simple black box etched with pink-gold flowers and vines. Two china dolls with shiny black silk for hair and painted-on eyes guard the box, watching me as if I owe them an explanation.
Can we help you, Miss Hannaford?
I ignore the dolls, resting my hand atop the black box, fingers tracing the grooved vine at the edge.
It’s cold. I pull away.
In front of the dolls, the dresser is piled with randomness: Receipts. A watch that doesn’t work. Four gold bracelets. A mini-book about the U.S. first ladies. A silver sculpture in the shape of a hand with costume rings stacked on each finger and a glass bead bracelet draped over the thumb. A small hinged metal box with pink glass jewels on the outside. A loose photo of a Saint Bernard lolling in the front yard with his tongue out—Ollie, I guess.
I slide open a dresser drawer, so hoping that I’ll find letters or her diary or photographs or keys to a hidden chest that holds all the answers—so expecting it, even—that the plain ordinariness of her socks and stockings, tucked neatly into rows of white and black and beige, surprises me. The next drawer is lined with slips and underwear in the same basic palette. The next is for clothes—sweatshirts, T-shirts, nightshirts. Pants. Shorts. Back on the top, behind the dolls and the black box, there’s one more drawer, small and neat. I tug on the center handle, careful not to disturb the urn. The drawer is mostly empty. Just some pastel-colored hand lotion samples. Loose change. A box of Q-tips. My grandmother’s prescription cache.
The bottles are see-through orange with printed labels from a chain pharmacy in town. I recognize the names of most of the drugs from the commercials that show people talking to their doctors and then dancing or swimming or fishing with their grandkids. There’s a pill for cholesterol and one for blood pressure, and another I think for calcium and bone density.
But there are others, too. Three bottles half-empty, their forebears probably already allocated into their appropriate slots in the S M T W T F S box near the bed. And as my mind again connects the names with the commercials, the symptoms with the side effects, the befores with the afters, I understand.
My grandmother was being treated—medicated—for clinical depression.
Through the translucent orange of the pill bottles, some of my memories clarify, while others shift slightly out of focus. I think about my grandmother that day with the cardinal—how little she was affected. I remember during some of the summer festivals and parties, Nana would make excuses to retire early from neighborhood gatherings or dinners with friends.
Not now, Delilah. Why don’t you and Ricky go outside so I can rest?
I roll one of the bottles in my hand, fingers rocking it against my palm as the pills slide back and forth inside the plastic. Imagining her here in the bedroom, alone at night, taking a dozen pills before bed, falling asleep with nothing but her blue regrets—well, considering she never tried to get in touch with me after that family fight, I shouldn’t even care. But I do care, and all the soft parts beneath my ribs squeeze together when I think about it.
The china dolls still watch me. Next to their long, lace-and-velvet dresses, I’m practically naked in my white tank top. I unfold a thin beige sweater from a shelf next to the dresser and pull it over my head, static crackling through my hair.
There’s a pile of books under the table next to her bed. I sit on the floor in front of them, pulling out several horror novels—Pet Sematary and Thinner by Stephen King. Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews. I read a few random passages aloud, convinced that a combination of particularly haunted phrases will summon her ghost and induce a message from the other side.
None comes.
Still wearing her sweater, I move to the vanity table and sit on the small wicker stool in front of it. I rummage through her makeup and jewelry, hoping to catch a side-glance at her through the mirror—the looking glass to the great beyond. I clasp a delicate necklace around my neck—a tiny silver heart suspended from a wire-thin chain—and dab a bit of her talcum powder on my face with a soft, pink poof.
“What would I say to you, anyway?” I ask the air in front of me, staring in the mirror at the silver flash on my collarbone.