Winter's Tide (3 page)

“Me too,” I said.

Mama rushed across the kitchen and hugged me again, rocking me back and forth. “And I've made plans for us to go shopping the day after Christmas, all your favorite places.”

Mama and I always did have fun shopping together. I followed her into the den with my bowl of ice cream, sneaking a peek out the window for Matt's headlights. None yet.

She curled onto the corner of the chocolate-colored leather couch and patted the cushion beside her for me to sit down. “Let's not watch the movie right away. First I want to catch up. Tell me the scoop on everything!”

Mama always liked gossiping. I had grown up listening to her gossip with her friends, and I'd learned that I needed to watch what I said around her. Ever since I was about seven years old, I'd never told her anything that I knew had to stay a secret. Like how I felt about Matt, for instance. It was hard sometimes, keeping things from her, because I wanted to be able to trust her with everything.

She'd probably find out about Diana. She still talked to some of my friends' moms. She might already know about it.

“Maybe you already know … Diana got suspended. She got into a fight with another girl,” I said.

“You're kidding!” Mama's eyes widened as she sucked the ice cream from her spoon. “How long is she suspended?”

“Five days is what they give you for fighting. The other girl got it too.” I ate two bites in a row and then squeezed my eyes shut when I got a brain freeze.

“What were they fighting about?”

“The girl called Diana a name.”

“What name?”

“Animal. It's something that kids in the school have started doing to Diana.” Now I wished I hadn't started this conversation. I felt like I was betraying Diana, even though Mama would find out anyway. And I didn't even want to think about the thing that really made me feel guilty, which was the fact that “animal” had most likely come from something I'd said to Colleen last year after Diana was rude to me. I still hadn't admitted that to Diana. After all she'd been through because of it, I could only imagine how mad she'd get at me.

“Well, that's kind of odd,” Mama said.

“Yeah. And let's see …” I decided to change the subject. “I got these boots from Daddy and Lynn for Christmas.”

“Pretty.” Mama glanced at them and nodded. They weren't by any special designer though, and Mama probably didn't like them. Sometimes she got jealous
of things that Daddy and Lynn got for me or thought they were tacky.

“Oh, and the cheerleading squad is going to Disney World for a competition in a few months. Do you want to be a chaperone?”

“Oh, of course. Give me the dates, and I'll get off work! I can't wait!” Mama works a few days a week at a gift shop nearby.

Barry came downstairs.

“Hi, Stephanie. How's it going?” He's a pilot, tall with salt and pepper hair and a prominent jaw, and he's older than Mama. Sometimes I forget when he's home, because he spends a lot of time up in the upstairs TV room either watching golf or playing on the computer.

“Fine.”

“What time did you tell Matt he had to be home?” Mama asked Barry.

“Midnight.” He looked at his watch. “It's only nine. So he has awhile. I hope he doesn't come in late on Christmas Eve.”

When I heard that, I decided I'd go to bed before midnight so I wouldn't have to see Matt.

“Okay,” Mama said. “I'll have a breakfast casserole ready when everyone gets up.” Mama held up her ice-cream bowl to Barry. “We're having ice cream. Want some?”

“No, thanks. I'm getting a beer,” he said.

“Want to watch
Elf
with Stephanie and me?”

“No. On the Golf Channel they're rerunning a tape of the U.S. Open when Tiger won with a broken leg, and I'm watching that,” he said.

He got his beer from the refrigerator and went back upstairs.

Mama and I talked about cheerleading for a while, and then we watched the movie. Starbucks jumped onto my lap and sat with me, purring. Halfway through the movie, Mama pulled me closer, and I put my head in her lap. She rubbed my head, making light, small circles on my scalp with her fingernails. I closed my eyes, just listening to the movie for a while and petting Starbucks, and then I let my mind wander.

At first, it always felt great to be with Mama. I felt like I was where I belonged. Then Barry would get involved, and then Matt, and everything would change.

Sometimes I was still awake when Matt got in, and he'd make a lot of noise coming down the hall, and I'd know he'd been drinking, though I never said anything to Mama or Barry. I figured they should be able to tell for themselves.

When the movie was over, I hugged Mama good night and went upstairs to my room and texted Colleen and some other friends. I turned out my light and lay in the dark, still texting for a little while.

I don't know how much later it was when the ringing of the phone woke me. I could hear Barry's groggy deep voice down the hall saying, “Hello?” Then I heard him say, “What?” in a loud and frightened voice. A few seconds later, I heard him and Mama talking in urgent voices, but I couldn't hear what they said.

Only a few seconds later, Mama raced into my room in her nightgown.

“Stephanie! We have to go to the hospital. Matt's been in an accident. Hurry and get dressed!”

She rushed out.

I threw back the covers and sat up so fast I felt dizzy. My heart thudded.

I grabbed the same jeans and sweater I'd had on earlier that night and hopped around pulling on my new boots.

Mama came to my doorway, yanking her arm into her red sweater. “About ready?”

“I don't know what kind of staff the hospital has on Christmas Eve,” Barry said as he came to my door. “Let's go.”

I followed them downstairs and slid into the back seat of Barry's SUV, still blinking sleep out of my eyes. Barry skidded out of the garage.

“Barry! Careful!” Mama said. “You'll have an accident too!”

Barry didn't say anything, just backed out, making the tires squeal when he switched into drive.

We raced down our street, past all the Christmas lights. One yard had a Santa and all his reindeer. The Rudolph had a blinking red nose. For some reason, it looked like a warning light rather than something festive.

“He lost control of the car when he was turning into the entrance of our neighborhood and drove into the stone wall,” Barry said. “We'll probably see the car.”

We turned out of the entrance and there, smashed into the stone marker, was the black Mustang, its hood accordioned and top flattened, the driver's door hanging open. The stone marker was demolished, with cracked and broken stones strewn on the manicured ground. A police car and a tow truck stood nearby, their lights flashing.

We all gasped. Barry slowed, then gunned the motor as he turned onto the access road. We sped through the quiet, dark streets and across the highway toward the hospital. Barry's driving scared me. He didn't talk. Daddy would have at least talked to us.

By the time we parked, it was starting to rain. Pinpricks of rain stippled the windshield and water glistened on the asphalt. We ran through the cold rain inside and were sent to the surgical waiting
room, which had walls lined with cushioned orange chairs and two low round coffee tables piled with old thumbed-through magazines. A gray-haired man sat in one corner with his head in his hands.

After we had waited for a few minutes, a doctor in green scrubs came in.

“I'm Dr. Sullivan. Who's the next of kin for Matt Holson?”

“I am,” Barry said, jumping to his feet. “I'm Matt's father.”

The doctor shook Barry's hand, nodding. He was only talking to Barry, but Mama held my hand tightly as we listened. “Matt is still unconscious. He has serious head lacerations, as well as torn ligaments in his shoulder. His arm is broken in several places. It's too early to tell, but there may be neurological damage. He also has several broken ribs. One of the ribs penetrated his chest cavity and punctured his lung, causing bleeding and allowing free air into his chest. Breathing is very difficult for him right now. He's also lost a lot of blood.”

“Is he going to live? Can we see him?” Barry asked, his car keys still in his hand.

“We are doing everything possible,” said the doctor, “but it's too soon to tell how this will turn out. The first forty-eight to seventy-two hours are very
important. We've taken Matt to surgery to evacuate the blood and air from his chest, but we don't know the extent of the damage and will have to determine that when he regains consciousness.”

Mama squeezed my hand. Were we going to be allowed to see Matt? How would he look? Was he going to die?

I'd prayed for everyone in my family except Matt. I'd wished something bad would happen to him. Now something had.

C
hristmas morning. Cold rain pattered against my windows. And I was suspended. I lay in my bed, thinking about other Christmases. One Christmas where Mom and Dad weren't speaking to each other. Five or six Christmases with just Mom and me in our little house. Each time, we'd opened our few presents for each other and then gone to a movie in the afternoon. It was depressing.

I wondered what Dad was doing today. Would he call me? I'd saved the gift he'd sent me to open today.

When I was young, I was so excited to open my presents. I could remember one year I just knew I was going to get a horse or a pony. And I
had
gotten a horse—only it was a plastic toy horse with a toy barn. I could remember my disappointment. It had felt like a stabbing in my heart.

Now I knew that I was probably never going to get a horse unless I bought one for myself when I grew up. But I had figured out that there were things in life a lot more important than the presents you got. Like someone caring about you.

And now this Christmas. At Norm's house. Well, Norm and Mom wanted me to think of it as “our” house. Or maybe Norm had changed his mind since I had gotten suspended.

Last year, Stephanie had been living with her mom but spent Christmas Eve and day with us. I hated to admit it, but having Stephanie here did make it more worthwhile to jump out of bed. But I remember feeling jealous of Stephanie, because having her here was what made it exciting for Norm and Mom. Whereas I was just the resident troublemaker with a mood disorder that they probably wished they could ditch somewhere.

I punched my pillow and turned it over. I heard Mom and Norm downstairs in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher. The phone rang, and Norm answered.

“Hi, Vicki, Merry Christmas. What's up? Is Stephanie okay?” The sound of dishes stopped. “Oh, that's awful!” Norm's voice rose in intensity. He said a few more things that I couldn't hear and then hung up, and I heard the buzz of voices as he and Mom urgently discussed something.

Curious, I got out of bed and went to the landing where I could look down and see Norm and Mom in the kitchen below. Norm was putting on his jacket. Their voices floated up clearly now.

“So she wants you to come to the hospital?” Mom asked.

“Yes. She and Barry are going to stay there. Vicki says Stephanie is exhausted, so she wants me to pick her up and swing by Barry and Vicki's to get her stuff, then bring her back here,” Norm said.

“Oh, that's just terrible. I hope he's okay,” Mom said. “And Diana's supposed to take drivers' ed next semester. I wish it wasn't so soon.”

“That's the truth.” Norm got his keys from the hook by the door. “Okay, I'll be back in about an hour, I guess.”

He went out.

I headed downstairs. “What happened?”

Mom, who was getting coffee cups out of the dishwasher, looked up. I could tell from her face that
something bad had happened. “Morning, sweetie. Stephanie's stepbrother, Matt, was in a bad accident last night. They've been at the hospital for most of the night, and they want Norm to come pick Stephanie up so she can get some sleep.”

“Stephanie can't stand Matt.”

Mom put the coffee cups in the cabinet. “Oh, Diana, don't say things like that.”

“It's true! He treats her like dirt.”

“It doesn't matter. It's still horrible that he's been hurt. I just hope it's not too serious.”

“Once Stephanie told me she'd like to scratch his eyes out.”

“Diana! Now you're just trying to shock me. Stop it. The poor boy is lying unconscious in a hospital bed. Show a little sympathy.”

“I'm just saying.”

Mom got a stack of bowls out of the dishwasher and put them away. “In all the excitement, I forgot to say … Merry Christmas!” She came around the counter and gave me a hug.

“Merry Christmas.”

Mom squeezed me tight and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Well, it will just be you and me for Christmas breakfast. I got a cinnamon coffee cake. Want some?”

“Okay.”

When Norm brought Stephanie back from the hospital, she had big dark circles under her eyes and her hair was messier than usual. She curled up in the La-Z-Boy and pulled the orange-striped afghan that Grammy Verra had made over her. “I'm so tired. I feel like I have sandpaper in my eyes,” she said.

“Are you hungry, honey?” Mom asked. “I have coffee cake.”

“Yes, I'm starving. Staying up all night makes you hungry,” Stephanie said.

Mom started cutting more coffee cake while Norm brought Stephanie's weekend bag back in.

“So what did you find out?” Mom asked Norm.

“He hasn't regained consciousness yet. He broke several bones in his left arm, and I guess he also broke some ribs and one of those punctured his lung. They had to remove his spleen last night. And he has a lot of stitches in his head. They are concerned about nerve damage to his arm, in addition to the fractures. It sounds like Matt is lucky to be alive.”

“Did you see him?” I asked Stephanie.

She shook her head. “He was unconscious and was just getting out of surgery.” She pulled the afghan more tightly over her shoulder. “It was scary.”

“I'm sure it was,” Mom said.

“They did a blood alcohol test on him,” Norm said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “He may have to go to court once he recovers. He could lose his license. We had to drive by the stone wall at the entrance to Vicki's development. It was almost completely demolished by Matt's car,” he added.

“They towed the Mustang away, but you should've seen it. It was completely smashed,” Stephanie said.

“Wow.”

“You think about him being in it when it hit,” Stephanie said.

“What we have to think about right now is Matt getting better,” Mom said.

She set out forks and plates with coffee cake, and all of us sat at the counter while Norm and Stephanie ate.

“It's so scary,” Stephanie said again, taking a bite. I thought about how weird it all was, because we were surrounded with the aroma of cinnamon and the lights from our tree were twinkling gaily, yet she was right—it was scary.

“You don't get along with Matt,” I said.

Stephanie quickly looked at me with knitted eyebrows. Her expression said,
Don't say that!
I wondered if she was secretly glad that something bad had happened to him. But there was no way she'd say anything like that in front of the ‘rents.

“Regardless of how we may have felt about some of the things Matt's done, he's in trouble now, and we want to hope for the best for him,” Norm said.

For a few minutes we didn't talk; the only sounds were the dripping of the rain outside and the scraping of forks against plates. There was a charged atmosphere in the room, as if all of us were holding our breath, fearing that the world was a dangerous place and that random terrible things could happen to any of us any time.

“Why don't you go upstairs and take a nap?” Norm said to Stephanie.

“I will, but first I want to see what Diana's dad gave her for Christmas,” Stephanie said, curling up on the couch again with the afghan. “I think I know what it is.”

“What?” I said.

“I'm not telling. I'll just see if I'm right,” she said.

“Should I open it now?”

“Go ahead,” said Mom.

I picked up the package from under the tree. It was a little smaller than a shoebox and messily wrapped in brown paper for mailing, with my dad's rushed handwriting on it. I ripped off the brown paper and saw a cell phone box. Inside, nestled with a small softcover manual and a bunch of other papers, was a shiny black
smartphone. I looked for a note from Dad, but there wasn't one.

“That's what I thought it was!” Stephanie crowed. “I knew it! He probably got you a plan too.”

“Wow! Can you believe Dad did that?” I was so excited. He gave me a smartphone! Things really had changed. Now I could talk to him as much as I wanted. I checked and the phone worked.

“Very generous,” said Norm.

“Yes, it is,” Mom said.

“I'm going to call him!” I said. “He put his name first on the contact list.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Mom said, with a look at Norm.

I pressed his name and waited while it rang. After a few rings, it went to voicemail.

“I can't come to the phone right now,” came Dad's voice. “Please leave a message.” I was disappointed but took a deep breath and started talking.

“Hey, Dad, I just opened your present, and I'm really excited about my phone. Thank you so much! Merry Christmas! Call me back!”

We spent the rest of Christmas Day sitting around, eating, and talking on the phone. Norm made popcorn, and we watched
Miracle on 34th Street
. After taking a nap, Stephanie helped me program my cell phone.

Norm lit a fire in the fireplace, and we sat around it and let it warm our toes. Norm told stories about some of his favorite Christmas gifts when he was a little boy, like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and a model aircraft carrier. Stephanie talked to her mom several times about how Matt was doing. I heard her say he had had seventy-five stitches in his head.

We called Grammy Verra, who was at Aunt Carol's house in Virginia for Christmas.

“Merry Christmas, Diana. How are you?” she said cheerily when I got on. “Tell me what you've been doing to stay out of trouble.”

“I know you say that as a joke, but I'm not staying out of trouble,” I said. “I got suspended for getting into a fight.”

“You what?” Her voice rose.

“A girl called me a name, and I threw a book at her, and then we got into a fight,” I explained. “The vice principal suspended us both.” There was a part of me that felt proud of what I'd done. I didn't care what Dr. Shrink said, I'd stood up for myself. I'd kept myself from disappearing. Of course, Norm didn't think that.

“Goodness gracious, Diana!” she said. “Trouble seems to follow you around. I don't know what to say.”

“Nothing to say,” I said. “It's pretty much a done deal.”

“I must say this is the first time that any of my granddaughters have been suspended.”

“I'm not really your granddaughter,” I reminded her.

“Now, honey, let's not discuss that again. Of course you are. Well, do something productive during the days you're not in school,” she suggested. “I'm heading back home to Emerald Isle tomorrow. Maybe you could come visit me. The beach in the wintertime is beautiful. So different from the beach during the summer.”

After that, Stephanie talked to Grammy for a long time about what happened to Matt, and then she got on with Lauren, and they laughed and talked for a half an hour. Even though Lauren and I had finally started to get along okay on the cruise last fall, I didn't ask to speak to her. And I noticed she didn't ask to speak to me.

I wished I could go to the barn. I figured Josie was probably there right now, mucking the stalls and letting the horses out to pasture. If I were there, I'd help her and then maybe she'd let me ride Commanche.

By late Christmas afternoon, Dad still hadn't called. All those feelings I used to have about Dad not paying attention to me came flooding back, no matter how hard I tried to make them stop. I wanted to tell Dad about getting suspended. I thought maybe
he'd sympathize. Mom had once told me that sometimes he'd gotten into trouble when he was young.

I went up to my room and called him again. I didn't want Mom to know. Still no answer. I hung up, deciding not to leave another message.

Still, he gave me a phone, right? That showed he cared about me.

I was lying on the bed staring at my phone when Stephanie came in and stretched out across the foot of my bed.

“This is the weirdest Christmas ever. It's like the normal parts of Christmas just kind of fade into the background because of what happened to Matt,” she said. “Mama and Barry are just sitting at the hospital. I feel so guilty.”

“Why do you feel guilty?”

“Well, you promise you won't tell anyone this, right?”

“Promise.”

“I wished something bad would happen to him,” she said, twisting a length of her dark hair around her finger. “And now something did.”

So I'd been right. It made me feel kind of good to think that she wasn't perfect.

“You don't really think it was your fault,” I said. “He'd been drinking, right? It was his own fault.”

“In my head, I know that. But I still feel guilty. You're not supposed to wish for bad things to happen to people!”

“I seriously wish something bad would happen to that Carla girl who called me ‘animal,'” I said.

Stephanie laid her head down and pulled her knees to her chin. “Well, that's different. Matt's my stepbrother. I mean, I'm supposed to love him. But he doesn't love me.”

I looked at Stephanie with her shiny, dark hair and wide brown eyes. “I've found that a lot of people don't like me, and they don't even know me. You can't make everyone love you, Steph.”

Stephanie looked at me and pressed her lips together. “I hadn't really thought about that before, but I do want everyone to love me,” she said. “I didn't know that was bad.”

“Be like me. Don't care!”

“I can't help caring. Besides, you do care!” Stephanie said accusingly, sitting up. “You pretend you don't, but you do.”

“Do not!”

“Do!” She pointed at my phone. “You care about whether your dad loves you.”

I cradled the phone next to my chest. “Okay, I care about some people, yes.”

We were silent for a moment. Stephanie knew me better than I thought. Better even than I knew myself, maybe. I had come to depend on getting her opinion on so many things.