She storms off into Cassie’s bedroom, leaving me and the news report alone in the living room.
22
Two months come and go while I putter around my empty house. I haven’t seen Oliver again. Lola won’t speak to me—or anyone else for that matter. Cassie won’t come home, and Jack won’t make her. My severance is almost up and something’s got to give.
I’m hoping the spirits of Halloween will settle around us and work that kind of magic you believe in as a child when imagination can make you something other than what you are.
Lola is set on Peru now, and not even Chris can talk her out of it. She’s mad at Ray for keeping Michael a secret and seems to be keeping her new mission a mystery out of spite. I want to tell Ray about Peru, but it’s not my place. I want to talk to Lola about Michael, but that isn’t mine either. All this not talking is making my head spin, and I decide that too much silence is enough.
Mom is over at her sister’s house for the night, so I have lured Lola over with the promise of dinner and neutral ground. She doesn’t know I’ve invited Ray, and he doesn’t know she’s here. I wish Mom hadn’t gotten rid of the Halloween masks she made. The devil would be perfect for me tonight.
There’s a knock on the door, and Lola glances at me suspiciously. She looks like she’s about to make a break for it, and I hold my hand out in a stop motion. I slip into the foyer and open the door.
“You don’t have to knock,” I say to Ray when I open the door.
“Is that Lola’s car?” Ray points over his shoulder to the driveway. “Did you do this? Is she still mad at me?”
“I never said I played fair,” I answer. “Get in here. Enough already. We’re not kids anymore. Just talk to her.”
“Is she mad I didn’t tell her about Michael?” Ray asks.
“She’s hurt.”
“That’s worse.” He steps back like my words have hit him in the gut.
I yank on his tattooed arm and pull him inside. Lola is standing by the coffee table, surveying the living room like she’s looking for an escape.
“Knock it off,” I say to them, and I swear I can hear fireworks in my head.
I’m standing between the two of them like I’m about to hold off a fistfight. I feel like we’re back in time—back before Ray and Lola learned to cling to each other for safety, back before they were each other’s breath, back to the day Lola came home from the hospital and any terrible new arrangement of life was possible. I look back and forth between them for a signal on what to do next. Ray makes the first move.
“I’m not going to leave,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Well played. I wish Lola would say the same thing. I step out of the way, and Ray moves closer to Lola. He reaches out to her. She doesn’t step back, but she doesn’t go to him either. He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he says. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to do the right thing.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just lets him fill the space between them with words.
“Don’t turn me away,” he says. “I couldn’t bear it. Be angry, but don’t shut me out. I act like I want to be left alone, but I don’t.”
“I didn’t turn you away before,” she says. “Even after I remembered. You know me better than that. Act like it.”
“Yeah.” Ray’s eyes get glassy. “I know.”
“Don’t make us come banging on the door again,” Lola says, shaking her head at him. “Just open it. We wouldn’t be banging on it if we didn’t want you to come out.”
Ray drops his head and nods at his shoes. Lola steps forward and takes hold of his hand.
It’s a tentative truce, and it’s enough for the moment. We sit around Mom’s dining room table for dinner. We’ve never sat here, just the three of us without either parent.
“It’s like we’re little kids at the grown-up table at Thanksgiving,” Ray says.
“And all the grown-ups are at a card table in the kitchen,” Lola finishes his line of thinking.
We all laugh—better that than the thought of one day being parentless together.
Throughout dinner, I toss softball questions to Lola and Ray, easy leads into the things they need to say to each other. But neither one takes a swing.
Eventually, we move to the living room couch, our feet on the coffee table. I’m probably pressing too hard and should be happy with the progress they’ve made. But being satisfied with what I have isn’t something I’m good at. I’m about to give up when I get an idea. I jump up from the couch and run out of the room. When I moved all of Mom’s hobby projects from the table so that we could sit together, I remember that she had a few games in the mix.
“Look at these,” I say, returning to the living room with a deck of tarot cards.
“Where did you get those?” Lola says, jumping back from the cards.
“Mom’s hobby stash,” I say. “What do you think? Should we play?”
“Absolutely not,” Lola says. “Get those devil cards away from me.”
“It’s just a game,” Ray scoots down to the floor to be closer to the deck.
“Why not?” I ask Lola. “It’s Halloween. The night when the truth comes out.”
“Halloween is when the spooks come out,” Ray says. “Not the truth. What truth anyway—haven’t we spilled all the beans?”
Almost.
“I don’t want to find spooks or the truth,” Lola says. “Those cards freak me out.”
“Ok,” I sigh and leave the room again, returning this time with a Magic 8-Ball.
Both Lola and Ray laugh and reach for the ball.
“Now we’re talking,” Lola says.
“What do we
