For you, Marin, I thought, beginning my first game of solitaire. And for Couples Solitaire.
I played hand after hand, winning some, losing others, cheating a couple times so I wouldn’t have to redeal. I played until my eyes were tired and my fingers were lazy and the flashlight beam began to dull, making me squint to see the numbers.
I slapped the cards on the floor, all the while wondering what the next day would hold for me. Kolby would be gone. My cell phone would probably still be useless, if it even had battery left. I would be hungry and thirsty and dirty. I would spend some time digging through broken stuff that used to be our belongings, our treasures. I would worry and wonder and wait for Mom.
Eventually, the storm picked up, the rain hammering against the ground and the wind raking it farther and farther into the basement. I tired of my game and gathered the cards together, stuffing them into the box, then putting the box back in Marin’s purse. As the lightning flashes came closer and closer together, I wound myself up in my blanket and stretched out over the couch cushions, falling asleep almost immediately, trying to push my worries about the next day out of my head.
Hoping for a miracle.
CHAPTER
NINE
I awoke to a voice.
“Dear Jesus,” it said, and I opened my eyes to the underside of the pool table, unsure where I was. I had been dreaming about school—I’d been at the lunch table with Dani and Jane, but none of us could find any food and I was so thirsty—and for a few seconds I had forgotten about the tornado. But then the voice, anguished, got closer. “Jersey?”
I was fully awake then. At first I thought it was Kolby, coming down to say good-bye. But the voice was older, gruffer.
“Ronnie?” I croaked, sitting up and letting the blanket fall off me. It was done raining but was still gray outside, and I wasn’t sure if that was because it was cloudy or because it was early.
“Jesus,” Ronnie repeated, his breath expelling the word in a gush. “Oh, God.”
I slid out from under the pool table and rushed to him, wrapping my arms around his waist, which I’d never done before. Marin was constantly climbing all over her dad, but I’d always sensed a barrier there—he wasn’t my father, so hugging him felt weird and awkward. Too close.
Now part of me needed to hold on to him, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that he was really standing there. It wasn’t my imagination. Ronnie was real and he was standing in the basement. The tornado hadn’t gotten him.
I buried my face in his chest and sobbed with relief. Ronnie rested his hands tentatively on the backs of my shoulders and at first he made shushing noises, like he used to do when Marin was a cranky infant, but after a while I was pretty sure he was crying, too.
Finally, I pulled away, rubbing my blurry eyes. Ronnie turned, his hands on his hips, and surveyed the basement, taking deep, sniffling breaths through his nose.
“Gone,” he said. “Everything.”
“Where were you?” I had so many things I wanted to ask and say, and I wasn’t sure where to begin. “Have you heard from Mom? Is your phone working? Where are they? What are we gonna do?”
He scuffed over toward his workbench—or where his workbench used to be, as it was now covered with most of the kitchen—and kicked something metal. His curses echoed over the clanging, then he kicked something else.
I stepped forward tentatively. What had once been puddles of rainwater on the floor was now one big pool, and Ronnie was standing right in the middle of it.
“Goddamn, everything is gone!” he shouted, and crashed through a pile of broken dishes with the heel of his boot. “All of it!”
“Ronnie,” I said. “Have you heard from Mom? Is she okay?”
He turned, and it was only then that I noticed how horrible he looked. Probably at least as bad as I did. Grungy, sweaty, stubble coating his chin, his hair greasy. His face was red and his nose was running right down over his top lip. His eyes were bloodshot like he hadn’t had any sleep in days. Or like he’d done a lot of crying. He stared at me as if he didn’t recognize me.
“No,” he finally said.
“No, you haven’t heard from her, or no, she’s not okay? Where’ve you been?”
“Ah, God,” he said, turning his face down to the floor and taking a few breaths. Then he looked up at me again. “You’ve been here alone this whole time?”
“Here and Miss Janice’s,” I said. “But I’m okay. I had Kolby.”
This was not Ronnie the way Ronnie usually was. That Ronnie was steady, even-tempered, quiet. This Ronnie was vacant and frantic and seemed ready to bust open.
“Is there anything worth saving?” he asked. “Have you looked through?”
“Some. But no, not really.” I didn’t tell him about Marin’s purse. He’d probably think it was unimportant, anyway. “I haven’t been to the other side. With the bedrooms.”
He rubbed one hand over his chin. “I can’t… I can’t…” he repeated to himself a couple times. “Do you want to look for anything? Clothes or anything?”
I thought about all the rain we’d had. How it had smelled out there yesterday afternoon, with the May sun baking a mildewy stench into everything. I couldn’t imagine that anything I had would be worth saving. But still I nodded.
I followed Ronnie outside, bringing along my backpack, inside of which I’d stuffed Marin’s purse.
Together, we walked around the leaning front wall of the house, to the side where our bedrooms used to be. To my surprise, two interior walls remained standing. One in Marin’s room, and one in mine. Of course, the outside walls were gone, so most of our stuff was tossed and spun and pulled out and torn.
I scaled the mountain of mess to get into my room, and Ronnie walked around the interior wall to where his and Mom’s room would have been. I heard some muffled exclamations, and clanks and thuds as if he was pushing or kicking or throwing things out of his way.
I pulled on some boards and tossed them, the way I’d done with Kolby the day before. I found a couple of old CDs, some clothes that had been stuffed in the back of my dresser, and—thank God—my cell phone charger. I found some old ribbons from elementary-school field competitions, but those didn’t seem important to me anymore—or at least not important enough to keep. In fact, not much of anything in my room seemed all that important anymore. Not after everything that had happened.
But as I stepped over my bookshelf, which had tipped and spilled books everywhere, something shiny caught my eye. I bent to pick it up.
It was a porcelain kitten—a black-and-white one with great staring blue eyes and a big, curvy 6 across its chest. I wiped the grit off it and held it up. It was in perfect condition, which seemed impossible.
I’d had sixteen of them—one for every birthday. Each kitten was different. Each one fragile and shiny, and each holding a large number across its chest. They came in the mail, always a few days before my birthday, always in a plain manila envelope, always wrapped in the comics section of the newspaper, and with no return address.
Marin never got a single one.
Mom’s mouth turned down at the corners every time one showed up, her face deepening into a bitter frown. I assumed they were from my father. Guilt gifts, I’d come to think of them. His way of pretending he hadn’t abandoned me after all.
But secretly I loved those kittens, and hung on to a warm hope that maybe the kittens meant my father did care a little bit. Like maybe they were a secret message that he still wanted to be connected. That maybe he’d only meant to leave her, not me. Sometimes the kittens felt like the only connection I had to half of myself.