Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

Lynne wondered if Jake had somehow been to blame for the accident. The police report had been so vague.

Lynne was glad that she hadn’t found any strange or unidentifiable objects in Demeter’s room. No weird altars or vials of tiger blood or voodoo dolls. Of course, she hadn’t looked through the drawers. She would look through the drawers-maybe-once she was done with the bathroom.

No one in the world enjoyed cleaning a bathroom, and this one smelled especially bad. Lynne was generous with the Windex; she tried not to gaze into the toilet bowl as she scoured it with the brush. She checked in the cabinet under the sink and saw that Demeter was down to her last roll of toilet paper and her final two tampons. Lynne replenished the supplies from the stockpile in her own bathroom. The girl was suffering from neglect.

Lynne struggled with the bathtub. She pulled Demeter’s hair out of the drain, then she took down the shower curtain. That could use a run through the washing machine as well.

She checked the medicine cabinet. There was a large bottle of ibuprofen that Lynne knew she herself hadn’t bought. Strange, she thought. She checked the bottle’s contents to make sure it really was ibuprofen, and it was.

Okay, she was feeling paranoid now. Why would Demeter have spent her own money on ibuprofen? Why not just write it down on Lynne’s shopping list?

Lynne went back into Demeter’s bedroom and thought, I have to check her drawers. She didn’t want to check the drawers, but to be thorough, she had to. Then there was the dark screen of Demeter’s computer. Should she check the computer? Would she know what she was looking for? Demeter didn’t have a Facebook page, or she hadn’t the last time Lynne checked, which was some time before the accident. Even Lynne had a Facebook page, complete with 274 friends. Penny had been Lynne’s friend on Facebook, that was the kind of dear child she was, but Lynne hadn’t had the heart to go in and see if Penny’s page had been taken down yet. Lynne collapsed in Demeter’s desk chair and stared at the computer. There were so many places for kids to hide things. How were parents supposed to win at this game?

She would check the dresser drawers, she decided, but would leave the computer alone for now. She would ask Al about the computer, maybe. He had to pull his weight in this.

Lynne slid open Demeter’s drawers. She was holding her breath as though she expected to see a nest of snakes in there. But all she found was a mess of very large clothes-overalls, jeans, T-shirts, and the hooded sweatshirts that made Demeter look like a hoodlum from Jamaica Plain instead of a nice girl from Nantucket. This was Lynne’s chance to surreptitiously remove them, but she was so glad not to have found anything worrisome in the drawers that she let the sweatshirts remain, and even resisted her urge to fold and straighten them. She closed the drawers.

Her search had turned up nothing. Nothing except the Fitzgerald.

Lynne was about to leave the room when she caught sight of the closet door. It was slightly ajar, which seemed like an invitation for her to open it and check inside. Lynne noticed how blank the door was, how blank the whole room was, really. There were no pictures of friends, no pictures of her or Al, or Mark or Billy, no trophies or awards or ribbons or framed certificates of achievement, no maps of places they’d visited, no posters of actors or rock stars. (Even Lynne, yes, straight Lynne Comstock, had had a poster of Lynyrd Skynyrd taped to her wall.)

Suddenly Demeter’s room seemed like the saddest place on earth.

Lynne took a step toward the closet.

“Mom?”

Lynne gasped.

“Jesus Christ,” she said to Demeter. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Demeter stared at her mother. Lynne wondered when the last time was that she had taken the Lord’s name in vain and sworn in the same sentence. College? She hadn’t always been such a straight arrow; she hadn’t always been such an upstanding citizen. She had listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd in the front seat of Beck Paulsen’s Mazda RX4. She had smoked Newports with Beck and drunk Miller beer from cans.

“What are you doing in here?” Demeter asked.

“Cleaning,” Lynne answered honestly. “It smelled awful. I took your sheets…” Lynne nodded at the naked bed.

“Yes, I see that.”

“I cleaned your bathroom, you’re welcome. I’ll return your linens to you by dinnertime, freshly laundered, you’re welcome.”

“Wasn’t this room locked?” Demeter asked.

“Yes, but…”

“How did you get in?”

“I popped the lock.”

“You popped the lock? ”

“With a pin,” Lynne said. Apropos of nothing, she laughed. She had broken into her teenage daughter’s bedroom, and she had nothing to say in her own defense. She had put so much effort into cleaning that she had lost track of time. Now she was busted, as though she were the teenager and Demeter the parent.

“Get out,” Demeter said.

“Honey, really, I just needed to get in here to clean-”

“If you really need to get in here, you ask me,” Demeter said. “You don’t pop the lock with a pin while I’m at work. You’re like a common thief.”

“Thief?” Lynne said. “I didn’t take anything.”

“A spy, then,” Demeter said.

“Honey, I wasn’t spying. I told you, the smell-”

“I like the smell.”

“Your sheets needed to be changed.”

“What happened to my water glass?” Demeter asked.

“I emptied it. It’s in the dishwasher.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing in here!” Demeter’s voice took on the shrill edge of hysteria. She was still in her work boots-which were, naturally, tracking dirt and sand into the newly vacuumed room. She was clutching her backpack to her chest like a shield, just as she had done the other night when she got home from babysitting.

Clutching her backpack. Okay, Lynne wasn’t naive, she wasn’t in the wrong here, this was her house, she was the mother and Demeter was the child and something was going on with Demeter and Lynne wanted to know what it was.

“Do you have a Facebook page?” Lynne asked.

“What?” Demeter said. “No, I don’t.”

“I can check, you know.”

Demeter said, “Fine, check. I don’t have one.” Her tone of voice was both calm and bored. Facebook wasn’t the culprit.

“Let me see your phone.”

“What?”

“Your phone. Let me see it.”

“My phone?”

“Your phone.” Demeter had an iPhone 4S that Lynne had bought for her in the spring. Lynne had noticed that she kept a passcode lock on the phone. Now she wondered, Why would she keep a passcode lock unless there’s something she’s trying to hide?

Demeter pulled her phone out of the pocket of her cargo shorts and handed it to Lynne.

“Unlock it, please,” Lynne said.

Demeter unlocked it. “You’re acting like a psycho.”

“No,” Lynne said. “I’m acting like a parent. Finally.” She looked at the face of the phone. Apps-she knew that those colorful squares were apps, but she didn’t know what to do with them. She was acting like a clueless parent. She had a cell phone herself, but she kept it in her car and used it only when she was on the road or away from home. She didn’t know how to text. Zoe knew how to text, and Jordan knew how to text-the two of them had been texting buddies for years, that was how they communicated. But not Lynne. She was a clueless parent and a fuddy-duddy who didn’t text and couldn’t navigate her way around an iPhone. She handed the phone back to Demeter.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Demeter asked.