Paula DeBoard - The Fragile World

I groaned. “And how long...?”

“Oh, four or five days, and then we’ll be there.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

But Dad was pretending not to hear me. When I stood and tried to move past him, he caught me in a big, spin-in-a-circle hug that felt phony, too. He felt like a different version of my dad than the one I’d been living with for the past few years, as if a stranger had bought a mask of Dad’s face and borrowed one of his polo shirts. When he put me down, he was red with excitement. “This is the right thing,” he whispered. “I know it.”

I didn’t believe that for a second.

But I would have been the shittiest daughter in the world to say so.

curtis

Olivia was sharp; I could feel her watching me that weekend, waiting for me to slip up, or trying to catch me off guard with her questions. But I’d made up my mind. This was the right thing, the best, the only thing. Kathleen and Olivia would be together, Saenz would be dead,and I would finally, finally have done right by Daniel.

“So, we’re seriously doing this?” Olivia asked me the next morning, after I called The Sacramento Bee to put our newspaper on hold.

“You’re not backing out, are you?” I asked.

She glared at me. “I don’t really see that as an option.”

I hauled down two suitcases from a shelf in the garage, where they had aged disgracefully since our disastrous trip to Coronado, acquiring a layer of dust and more than a few spiderwebs. It took a half hour of cleaning with damp cloths before Olivia would consider either suitcase as a viable option. Then she stood before her open closet doors, hands on her skinny hips.

I sighed. “What’s wrong now?”

“It’s impossible to pack without knowing exactly how long I’m going to be gone,” she announced.

I laughed. “Are you kidding me? I know exactly what you’re going to pack. Black pants, black shirts, black sweatshirts, black socks and black boots. Can’t be that difficult.” It was basically her uniform, as much as khaki pants and polo shirts were mine. I wasn’t sure when it had started, exactly, or where all the clothes had come from—but one morning at breakfast a couple of years ago, I realized that I was the parent of a teenage daughter who wore only black.

She glared at me. “But how many black shirts, exactly?”

“What does it matter? It’s not like there are no washing machines in Omaha.” It was better, I figured, to be vague than to tell an outright lie. Telling the truth was out of the question.

There were dozens of small details to figure out, and several major ones. It was almost thrilling to have a plan, to have a specific goal that was further than a day or two ahead, the way we’d been existing since Kathleen left. I had installed a massive whiteboard in the front entryway, and each night Olivia and I had crossed off our completed chores and added new ones. Buy cereal, take the trash out, pay phone and cable, run sprinkler in backyard. Now I was thinking beyond today, beyond this week.

I didn’t find a chance to break away until Sunday night. Olivia had insisted on coming along on all the errands I devised—an oil change, a trip to Target for a few travel necessities, a stop at the ATM. This wasn’t that unusual—Olivia didn’t typically like to be left at home, where she was convinced that all sorts of things could go wrong, like a burglar who assumed the house was empty if there wasn’t a car in the driveway, or a carbon monoxide leak that she couldn’t smell. So I had to wait until she started a load of laundry to say “Why don’t I just grab dinner?”

“Can’t you wait a bit? Twenty minutes?”

“Well, I was thinking In-and-Out. You know how that drive-thru line always takes forever.”

Olivia frowned. “I could stop the washer.”

“Don’t bother,” I said, grabbing my keys before she could jump into action. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

I did go to In-and-Out, and the line was wrapped around the restaurant and through the parking lot, so at least that wasn’t a lie. But while I waited, I made the phone call Olivia absolutely couldn’t overhear. “Pick up, pick up,” I pleaded. It was a long shot; it was Plan A, but there wasn’t a Plan B yet.

“Yeah?” The voice on the other end was suspicious. One of those conspiracy nuts, Kathleen had always said, back when we’d known him, back when Zach Gaffaney had lived a few blocks away and been married to Marcia, half of a couple we bumped into regularly over the years. Privately, I’d suspected that Kathleen was right.

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