Quickly, I dialed Ronnie’s number, rehearsing in my head what I would say to him. I know you think you can’t care for me right now, Ronnie, but I can help care for you. I can help you keep Marin and Mom alive in memory. I can cook and clean for you. I won’t even complain if you want to remarry.
But he never picked up his phone, and instead I left him a voice mail. “Hi, Ronnie. I just wanted to let you know that I made it down here.” I paused. “I want to come home, though. Please let me come back up. We can get through this together. Please? Call me?” I hung up, then dialed Kolby’s number.
“Hey,” he said, his voice sympathetic and soft, causing homesickness to rip through me. It felt like I had left years ago, not a few hours ago. It seemed impossible that it had only been a week since Kolby and I had walked home from the bus stop together. I’d borrowed his skateboard and pushed myself lazily along as we talked about how glad we were that school was almost over and the stuff we each planned to do over summer break. Neither of us would have ever dreamed we’d be doing this. “Everything okay? You still at the motel?”
“No,” I said. “Ronnie sent me to Caster City.”
“What the heck is in Caster City?” he asked. I could hear the clicking of computer keys in the background, and I could imagine him sitting back in that aloof way of his, a laptop in his lap, Googling Caster City.
I took a miserable, deep breath and let it out. “My biological father.”
There was a pause. Even the keyboard clicking stopped. “I didn’t know you had a biological father,” he said.
“Me either. Well, I knew I had one, but I was a baby when he left.”
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him yet. But if his daughters are any hint, he’s not so whippy.”
“Whoa, wait, you have sisters?”
“Half sisters, yeah. Meg and Lexi, the personality twins,” I mumbled.
“So I take it you don’t like them.”
“I don’t like any of this,” I said, feeling my voice rise, feeling my chest tighten. Why didn’t Ronnie answer my call? Didn’t he understand what he was doing to my life, what this stupid tornado had done to my life?
“How is Milton?” I asked, switching topics before I burst.
“Fine. Dull. But, hey, at least it’s a house, right?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. He had no idea.
“My mom is happy to be with her sisters, and Tracy is happy because we’ve got, like, a billion girl cousins. But I’m kinda sitting around with nothing to do but play games online. And my arm hurts like hell.”
“Why?”
“Remember? I cut it on some glass? Back, you know, the day after.”
“Still? It’s not healed yet?”
“No, it’s gross, you should see it.”
“No, thanks,” I said, but on the inside I was thinking I would totally want to see it if only it meant I could see him, if only it meant that I could see somebody familiar and friendly. If only I could see something I recognized, something that reminded me I had a place to belong. My chest squeezed again and I feared this time I wouldn’t be able to stave off the tears. “Listen, I gotta go,” I said. “But call me later, okay?”
“No problem,” he said. “And, Jersey?”
“Yeah?”
“Hopefully they’ll come around,” he said. “Your half sisters, I mean. This could be good, right? Sisters?”
I doubt it, I thought. “Yeah, definitely,” I mumbled, then hung up, turned the phone off, and stuffed it back into my pocket. I pulled the blanket over my head and bawled into the dirty couch, the sobs reaching so far down into me, they came out dry.
I lay there crying until the sun set and the sky darkened and the noises coming from inside the house slowly dimmed, dimmed, dimmed until they were shut off. Soon all I could hear was the chirping of crickets and the buzzy noise of frogs out in the distance and the occasional shuffle of what I imagined to be wild animals. I wanted to get up and lock the screen door, sure I was going to be murdered on my couch by some madman or a coyote or both, but there was no lock on that door. I might as well have been sleeping right out in the backyard.
But soon I began to tune out the noises and cuddle up in my blankets so much that I felt somewhat cocooned by them. Eventually, exhaustion took over and I started to drift off.
Before I could get into a deep sleep, though, I was awakened by the crunching of gravel under car tires. I didn’t even fully realize that was what I was hearing until the slams of two car doors split the air.
I sat up on the couch, hearing footsteps coming around the house, hushed voices floating over the sudden silence.
The screen door slammed open, knocking my heart practically out of my chest, and then there was a scent of alcohol, and a booming voice. “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” it said.
I blinked and peered through the darkness, into narrow, brown eyes that matched mine.
Standing in the doorway, swaying crookedly, balanced on a pair of beat-up cowboy boots, was my father, Clay Cameron.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
A short woman stood behind Clay, her hands on his back as if to hold him up, a gut hanging over the top of her too-tight jeans.
“Oh, goody,” she slurred, sounding as drunk as he looked. “The sperm donation is here.” She giggled.
“Shut up, Tonette,” he said, his words soggy. He leaned over further, his hands clutching the doorframe tight for balance. He peered at me, his head bobbing up and down and side to side, making me feel seasick. I could smell his breath all the way across the porch. “You Jersey?” he said.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure if he could see me. “Yes.”
“Your mom really did die, then, huh?”
“Yes, sir. My sister, Marin, too.”
“I ain’t got no daughter Marin,” he said confusedly, and the woman smacked him between the shoulder blades. “Your mother lies.”
“You better fuckin’ not,” the woman said.
“She was my half sister.”
“ ’S real shame,” he said, then stumbled across the porch, his boots so loud on the boards I wondered how his footsteps weren’t waking everyone in the neighborhood. He disappeared into the house. “Real damn shame.”
The woman staggered after him, swallowed up in the darkness of the kitchen, her whisper escaping before the screen door could swing all the way shut.
“… always said you wanted the bitch dead,” she said, and I heard them both giggle. I sat for a while and stared out into the dark yard, the noises outside no longer even registering with me. I’d seen my father for the first time that I could remember in my entire life, and he’d been drunk. Of course. He hadn’t even asked if I was okay or said he was sorry I’d lost everything. He hadn’t asked one thing about the tornado, and neither had anyone else in the house. Nobody even seemed to care about it. It had devastated our town, killed our families, and they watched their TV shows and drank their booze like it was any other day.
I considered the nasty woman Tonette, talking about my mom without even knowing her. Coming in drunk on a weeknight. Giggling about someone being dead. Her shirt cut low so that her cleavage, even in the dark, was startling. She couldn’t have been any more different from my mom if she’d tried. What could Clay possibly have seen in that woman that he didn’t see in my mom?
I was wide awake. Sleep wasn’t going to come easily, not for me, not now. I got up and walked around to the back of the couch, digging out Marin’s purse. I grabbed a stick of gum, emptying the first pack, a little startled by how quickly it had gone.