The backseat was full of those cardboard file boxes I was sure she’d swiped from work. You couldn’t see the floor because of the pile of discarded clothes that reached as high as the seat. The front seat could still hold a passenger, as long as that person was willing to wait for her to clear the empty CD cases, tissue boxes, clothes, shoes, and fast-food bags that covered both the seat and the floor.
Sara didn’t seem to notice me staring. “I’ll be back tomorrow to see how Mom’s doing,” she said as she climbed into the relatively clear driver’s seat and grabbed at a water bottle that was rolling around by the brake pedal.
“Tomorrow?” I asked. I could feel the panic rising in my throat. I could never get it all done by tomorrow. Three days was bad enough. Tomorrow was impossible. “Aren’t you working tomorrow?”
She glared at me. “I have a personal day coming, not that it’s any of your business.”
“What time tomorrow?” I could tell I said it too fast, even as the words burst out of my mouth.
Sara turned the key in the ignition. “That’s for me to know,” she said. “Stay away from her stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I was sure I had enough worry growing in my stomach for both of us.
“Oh, but I do,” she said.
I watched her back out of the driveway and take off down the street. It seemed like I exhaled for the first time since I’d seen her car in the driveway.
As I turned back toward the house, I realized that even when the mess was all cleaned up, it wasn’t over. Mom was gone. But Sara was still very much around—and she was getting to be exactly like her.
chapter 14
7:00 p.m.
I twisted the dead bolt into place and leaned against the secure door. Between TJ, Mrs. Raj, and now Sara, this place hadn’t seen so much action in years.
The smell of Chinese food still lingered in the hallway, and I realized how hungry I was. It was almost seven thirty, and all I’d had was a blueberry scone and a couple of eggrolls. Tomorrow for Sara probably meant somewhere around eleven at the earliest, which meant I had about sixteen hours to put things right in this house. My stomach would have to wait.
The house was quiet even though I could hear the stereo still playing faintly in the kitchen. Mom’s TV sat almost buried in papers and clothes near her chair, but of course the remote was nowhere to be found. It could be buried just about anywhere, so I stood still and tried to think like Mom. If I needed the remote, where would I put it so it wouldn’t get lost?
I couldn’t see it anywhere around the chair or on the boxes that were next to it. Maybe underneath? If I wanted to be sure that I’d know where something was, I’d probably shove it underneath the one thing I knew wouldn’t move.
I sat in the green chair and pushed it into a reclining position with my hands on the armrests, and then reached between the footrest and the chair. Touching something hard, I took a deep breath and stuck my hand as far under the chair as it would go. By flicking whatever it was to the side, I worked a corner of it out until I could grab it with one hand and drag it into the open.
Before I even pulled it out all the way, I realized it wasn’t the remote. It was just a thick spiral notebook with a black cover. I could see from the bulge in the front there was something in it, but there wasn’t anything written on the front. Her diary, maybe? I’d never seen Mom writing in anything, let alone a fairly large spiral notebook, but I had to admit that in the past few years we hadn’t really paid that much attention to each other.
The book was pretty heavy, and it must be important if she kept it separate from all the other piles of junk in this place. If it was her diary, it would be wrong to open it. More wrong than leaving her dead in the hallway for the better part of a day? I shrugged my shoulders as I opened the black cardboard cover. It was all relative.
It wasn’t a diary—not really. Carefully pasted onto the pages of notebook paper were magazine pictures of different houses. There was a picture of a wide, green lawn with a house perched way off in the distance and a family having a picnic on a postage-stamp-sized blanket. There were dining rooms with long tables where people could linger after a meal and talk about politics or sports. A bedroom with a white canopy bed big enough for a mom and kids to curl up on a Sunday morning and read the newspaper. Every now and then on the page would be something written very carefully in her sprawling handwriting. She’d written “cabinets” next to the page with the rustic kitchen and “knobs” next to a picture of some latches.
I flipped quickly through the rest of the book. Every picture showed a house in pristine photographic condition, the people who lived there smiling at their good luck. There were no clogged sinks, no green bins, and no giant stacks of newspapers.
The notebook wasn’t her diary—it was more intimate than that. They must have been pictures of the house she wanted to have someday. Except that someday never showed up. I ran my fingers over a picture of a wide porch with a swing that was perfect for sitting with an iced tea on a hot summer night. She must have been doing this for years—cutting out pictures of what might have been. This book of possibilities completely ignored the reality of what our lives had become. I knew how she felt because I felt the same way when I thought about my after. Hopeful—which was an emotion our house didn’t see a lot of.
I closed the cover and stared at it. How dare she have dreams while making all of us live like this? She was the parent—she could have done something about it. She was the one with the power to make our lives like the people in the notebook, but instead she buried us all under tons of filth and shame.
I crossed the room, the notebook heavy in my hands. It made me angry and sad at the same time to picture her sitting in her chair late at night carefully pasting other people’s rooms into her dream book. It was a small satisfaction when I tossed the notebook unceremoniously into the trash bin. That’s how much her dreams were worth in the face of my reality.
As I walked back toward the living room, my phone rang. “I’ve been trying to call you,” I said as I flipped the phone open.
“What in the world did you do to Sara?” Phil asked without even bothering to say hello.
“Hey, Lucy,” I imitated, ignoring his question. I was so angry at Mom right now that I needed to take it out on someone. “How are you doing? Was the rest of Christmas okay? Sorry I couldn’t stay longer, but I have my own life now and can’t be bothered with you people anymore.”
“Ha, ha,” he said flatly. “Point taken.” I could hear him draw in a heavy breath, and the sound of some music in the background. “Okay, so how are you? And what in the hell did you do to Sara? I’ve spent the last half hour with her on the phone screaming in my ear about how ungrateful you are, and how I must have put you up to it.”
I should have known Sara would call him. There was a green bin over near the wall, so I went to sit down on it. “I didn’t do anything to her,” I said. “She just came busting in here and started freaking out. You know how she always acts like she owns the place.”
“So you’re not doing what she said?” he asked. I could tell somebody was nearby because he was practically talking in code.
I looked around at the half-full garbage bags. “No.” I hesitated for a second. “Maybe.”
His voice cut out, and I could picture him switching the phone to his other ear. “What do you mean ‘maybe’? Have you been… messing with her stuff? You know better than that.”