“Fine,” Robert said.
I made a fist. “Hello? Aren’t you supposed to be my caretaker? I almost died out there tonight.”
His phone rang. He yanked it from his pocket and with his thumb, flipped open the screen.
“Amy, thank God. Where are you?”
“Let me talk to her,” I said.
Robert ignored me and stood up from the stairs and walked right past me. “Where are you?” he demanded. “Are you coming home?”
“I want to talk to her,” I said again.
“You’re joking.”
“Please, let me talk to her,” I said.
“Go upstairs, Rosemary,” Robert said.
“But she left me on the curb.”
Robert lowered the phone. “GO UPSTAIRS.”
I shrank. He rarely raised his voice. I slogged for the stairs and climbed slowly, each step a slog. Beneath me, he kept pacing, his voice getting louder and louder, the shards from the broken vase crunching underfoot.
“How dare me? After all I’ve given you, this is how you repay me? No, you’re right. It’s not about repayment. No, I’m not keeping track. And obviously neither are you. It’s supposed to be about LOVE. Do I have to spell it out for you? No. I don’t care. I had no choice. You don’t understand. I had to take her in. I made a promise. Stop it. This is not about her.”
I knew exactly where that conversation was going. Whatever anger I was feeling had retreated into the dark recesses of my heart and all I wanted to do was find a cave and crawl into it. I had lived under Robert’s roof for over two years now, but had never seen him this angry, not when Chrissy brought home bad grades, not when she brought home boys with tattoos, not even when Robert came home to see three brand new purses sitting on the kitchen counter.
In my room, I plopped onto my bed. My room (previously the guest room) was right over the foyer and I winced and shrank with every curse and exhalation coming from down below. I wanted to go hide in the closet and pull my clothes over my ears, but Robert was getting so loud, even piling my books like sandbags in front of the crack under the door wouldn’t muffle the shouting.
Chrissy’s old room was at the far end of the hall, directly over the family room. I figured it would be quieter than mine, so I went down the hallway. Her room was still the way she had left it when she disappeared a few months ago. Thinking that she would grow tired of the game and come back home, Robert had refused to touch anything. It was still her room, he had said. And no, I was not allowed to have any of her clothes.
I flipped on the light switch and closed the door behind me. Her room was definitely quieter, my foster-father’s yelling muffled by the woven rug on top of the carpet. But he was still so loud, so caustic, his stomping so heavy, that the Strawberry Shortcake dollhouse on her dresser rattled and Strawberry Shortcake did a little shimmy in the dust toward the cliff at the edge. Even the Strawberry Shortcake Halloween mask hanging on the door jiggled in mockery.
Chrissy’s closet was my only chance for peace. I opened the door, pushed aside her hanging clothing, and sank down against the wall. Thanks to all the clothing, my foster father’s shouting was muffled now, as if he were yelling into a pillow.
It would be even quieter if I closed the closet door. I got up and closed it, cutting off all the light from the room, all except for the crack under the door. I fumbled in the dark for the light switch, found it, and flicked it on.
A figure was standing behind the door.
I jumped backward.
“Oh my God!” I shrieked.
I clawed at the black dresses and black jeans and black shirts to keep from falling. Then I realized there was no one there, just a large plastic garment bag hanging from a hook on the back of the door.
I clutched my chest and took a deep breath. Most of Chrissy’s clothes were black, but this garment bag had a window on the front and I could see a frilly white pattern underneath.
What the heck was this? A new dress? Had she been thinking of next year’s prom already?
I took the bag off the hook, opened the door, and dragged it into the bedroom and laid it down on her bed. My foster father was still yelling, but I was so preoccupied that I could barely hear him.
I unzipped the front of the bag. Inside, there was a deeply plunging neckline with lacy embellishments. I unzipped farther, uncovering the midsection and finally, a long white train.
I swallowed hard.
It was Amy’s wedding dress.
What the heck was it doing in Chrissy’s closet?
Downstairs, the yelling stopped. There was a loud crash and then the house was quiet.
I looked up from the dress. In the full-length mirror, I could see across the front yard, the light from the windows casting long, yellow rectangles all the way up to the iron fence.
That turquoise pickup truck was still parked out front. In the light from Chrissy’s window, I caught a glimpse of the driver’s red beard behind the windshield.
He was looking up at Chrissy’s window.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Rosemary? Where are you?”
I zipped up the garment bag and shoved it under the bed.
“I’m in Chrissy’s room,” I said.
My foster father opened her door. He stood in the darkness of the hallway. His hands were bleeding and the cellphone was smashed to pieces.
His voice quavered. “We—we need to talk about your mother.”
I glanced out the window. The pickup truck was gone.
I could see it in his face: Amy had left him. Just like my real mother, she had given up on me.
“Which one?” I said.
1
Present Day
The whole house rocked. One end shot out of the earth and Chrissy’s dolls jumped shipped and leaped like lemmings off the edge of the dresser.
