“Well, he’s been helping me move some things around. He said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” she said, smiling at me. “I just hope he wasn’t a bother.”
“No, he was fine,” I said. “But some books fell and hit him in the head. I think he might need some ice.” I grabbed TJ’s arm and guided him up the stairs.
His mom ruffled his hair and inspected the spot he showed her. “It looks okay, but you’re right, it probably does need ice.” She pulled back and looked into his face. “So what were you doing over there that caused books to fall on your head? I hope you weren’t running around and making trouble.”
“Oh no,” I said quickly, “it’s not his fault. The books… they were where they shouldn’t have been, and he was just walking by them. Really, he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If you say so,” she said. “I’d hate to think of him over there making a mess.”
I looked at TJ, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny. Maybe it didn’t look all that weird to him. Kids were sometimes strange that way. “No, really,” I said. “He was great. I hope his head is okay.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. TJ, say thanks to Lucy for putting up with you.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” he said. “Don’t forget about my stuff.” He held his books up to his mom. “They have so much cool stuff over there. Lucy gave me these encyclopses so I can learn about everything that begins with these letters.”
“Wow,” she said. “You got some real treasures.” She backed into the house. “Thanks again for having him.”
“No problem,” I said.
As the door closed, I could hear TJ talking a mile a minute. “They’ve got a whole box of these books, and Lucy said I could have them all. Can I keep them in my room?”
I stood on the porch for just a minute, looking through the filmy curtains at the colored lights twinkling on the Christmas tree branches, before I turned and walked down the steps to my house.
As I reached the end of TJ’s driveway, my heart started pounding, and I broke into a run. Our house was directly across the street from theirs, but it had never looked so far away. Especially with Sara’s car parked in our driveway.
chapter 13
6:30 p.m.
I stuck my foot out to stop the front door from shutting and tried not to look like I’d been running. Sara was still standing in the hallway, so I knew she hadn’t seen anything.
“Hey,” I said, hoping the panic I was feeling was well hidden. Unlike Phil, who had to be dragged back, Sara came over a couple of times a week—not because she cared about me, but because she wanted to make sure she was still Mom’s favorite. “What’re you doing here?”
“It’s still my house too, in case you forgot,” she said, sounding more like Mom every day. “Where were you? The door wasn’t even locked. Anybody could have walked right in.” As far as I was concerned, anybody did.
“Oh, I just had to run across the street for a minute. Babysitting stuff.”
Sara nodded slowly, like she was trying to decide if I was telling the truth. “Well, I called Mom at work to see if she wanted to meet up for dinner, but they said she was sick.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Some sort of nasty flu thing.” I coughed a little for emphasis. “You should probably get out of here before you catch it. I’m sure we’re contagious.”
She held up a shopping bag. “I brought over some Chinese to make her feel better.” Sara stepped back and looked into the living room, but Mom’s recliner was empty. “Where is she?”
I leaned to the side to block her access to the kitchen. I could feel the thoughts whirling through my head as I tried to come up with something that would get her out of here as quickly as possible. If Sara thought that something was going on, she’d call 911 in a second. Sara went along with Mom’s philosophy that there was nothing wrong with the house that a little straightening wouldn’t fix. Mom wasn’t one of those hoarders, she was a saver—saving the planet one stack of newspapers at a time. Now that everything was “eco” and “green,” they had even more backup. It was like she wasn’t even standing in the same house that I was.
“Uh, Mom’s in my room,” I heard myself say. “She was so sick I let her sleep in my room all day.”
“Well, I’ll just stick my head in and make sure she’s okay,” she said. She took a few steps toward the hallway.
“No, wait!” I said, almost shouting. She couldn’t get any farther or it would be over.
She turned around and stared at me. “What?”
“Uh, just be careful when you go in there,” I said, my words coming out just as the plan was forming in my head. “Because of all the puking, I mean.”
That stopped Sara cold. “Puking? You didn’t say anything about puking.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, feeling the idea take shape. “Puking on everything. You know, puking, fever—that’s what the flu is all about. I just now got her cleaned up.”
I could see Sara gag a little from the image. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was other people’s bodily functions, and puking was pretty high on the list.
She turned back toward the front of the house and thrust the bag into my hands. It smelled like pot stickers, and my stomach suddenly started growling. Apparently the eggrolls from earlier were getting lonely down there. “Just tell her I came by, will you?” Sara pulled her coat tighter around her neck. “She is okay, right?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, starting to relax. “There’s really nothing for you to do.” True, in more ways than one.
“It’s freezing in here. Is the furnace out again?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Phil needs to come over and deal with it.”
“Want me to send Mark over tomorrow? He’s pretty good with that sort of thing.”
Sara and her boyfriend-fiancé-whatever, Mark, seemed to have worked out a pact to pretend our house was normal. He’d never spent any real time here, but he’d helped out a couple of times when things were broken, so he was more than aware of what he was dealing with. It made me wonder how she’d done it, because unless she was really good at hypnotism, he was a great actor. Or he was just stupid. “No,” I said. “The space heaters are working okay. I’ve got one in my room.”
“Be sure you keep it on so Mom doesn’t get too cold.”
I followed her to the front door, trying to ignore the irony of that last statement. “Yeah, I will. I’m sure she’ll be okay in a couple of days. Well, I’ll see you later.” I could feel relief flooding my body as she put her hand on the knob.
Sara’s eyes drifted around the big pile in the front hallway to the boxes I had sitting out on the floor by the recliner. “What’s all that about?”
I turned to look at the boxes and bags lined up on the only visible floor space. “Oh, I, uh,…”
Sara marched over to them and peeked inside. She raised her eyes to meet mine with her mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Are you throwing her stuff out?” she hissed, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She picked up a couple of the old photos and junk mail I’d tossed into the bag. “Is this for the trash?”
“Just a few things. I thought I’d—”
“Does Mom know?” She pulled the photos out of the bag. “You’re messing with Mom’s photos? Man, she’s going to kill you.” Sara smoothed the edges of the photos that had gotten crumpled in the bag. She waved them at me. “None of this stuff belongs to you,” she said, her voice getting a little bit louder. “You’re sitting here while Mom is sick and can’t defend herself, calmly tossing out her important things?”
After all I’d been through today I didn’t need one of her lectures. I grabbed the top photo from her and held it out to her face. I was so sick and tired of everything, I was starting to lose my fear. “These aren’t important,” I said. “These are junk. You can’t even tell what’s in this photo—it’s just a tangle of arms that are all out of focus.”