Winter's Tide (4 page)

At that moment, our doorbell rang.

“Wonder who that is, on Christmas Day,” Stephanie said.

Norm answered, saying, “Well, hello!” Stephanie and I ran out to the upstairs landing to see who it was and looked down into our front hall. A group of dripping kids dressed in rain slickers stood at our door. Stephanie's friend Colleen, with her pink cheeks and straight blonde hair, was one of them.

“Hi, Mr. Verra. Stephanie texted me and said she'd changed her plans and was staying here over Christmas, right?” Colleen asked. “We're going caroling, and we were wondering if she could come with us.”

“Hey!” Stephanie said, racing down the stairs. “How're you guys doing? You're caroling? Daddy, can I go?”

“It's raining!” Norm said.

“So? Even more need to bring good cheer,” said one of the boys. I looked at him more closely and saw the uncombed blond hair and the silver earring. That new guy, Noah, from my Spanish class!

“Please?” Colleen begged. “She'll only be gone for a
couple of hours. My dad is driving us to the different neighborhoods.”

I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down. It was definitely Noah.

“Hey, and Diana can come too.” Stephanie glanced over her shoulder.

I saw all of them as they looked up at me. I saw the fleeting looks of avoidance and the quick effort to mask the way they really felt.

“Sure, yeah,” said Colleen.

“Yeah,” said Noah.

“No, I don't want to,” I said. I walked back to my room and shut my door. Norm must have then asked the kids to come inside and sing a song for him, because I heard the faint strains of a very-enthusiastic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” One boy's voice was changing, and it cracked all over the place when he sang, “They never let poor Rudolph play in any reindeer games.” I wondered if it was Noah. Then I heard Stephanie running down the hall. A minute later, she peeked through my doorway, holding her raincoat and gloves.

“You sure you don't want to come? We're only doing it for an hour or so. It'll be fun! A chance to get out of the house!”

“No,” I said. I thought about Noah's face when Stephanie had said maybe I could come. Had he seemed like he wanted me to?

“Okay, but I'm not feeling sorry for you!” Stephanie said. “We invited you!”

She closed my door and was gone.

“You kids be careful,” I heard Norm say, and then the front door shut.

I checked my new phone. Still no message from Dad.

Later, after Stephanie had come back soaking wet from caroling and had taken a hot shower, after Stephanie told me about the new guy named Noah, who had an opinion about everything, after Mom fixed Christmas dinner for the four of us, after we sat around and watched Christmas specials and I finally put on Dad's old Heineken T-shirt to go to bed, and after I was under the covers, groggy and half-asleep, Dad finally called me.

“Hey, dudette. How do you like the phone?” Dad sounded really happy, and his words were kind of running together.

I propped myself up on one elbow in bed. “I love it! Thank you so much.”

“Great. I was pretty excited about it. I thought you'd like it. Yep, I thought you'd like it,” he repeated. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas! I tried to call you earlier,” I said, listening to his voice in the dark.

“Yeah, a couple of us went fishing today. You know,
a bunch of single guys on Christmas Day. A cold day out on the water.”

I turned on my bedside lamp. “Did you catch anything?” Now that I was talking to him, I forgave him for not calling me before.

“We got a few pompano and flounder and then cooked them for dinner.”

I didn't really know what kind of fish he was talking about, but pictured him twisting the hook out of a fish's mouth and tossing the fish into a bucket. I pictured him sitting around a scarred wooden table with other men, talking loudly the way he did sometimes, running his fingers over his reddish mustache.

“How's your mom doing?”

I didn't like it when Dad asked about Mom. She told me that he shouldn't ask about her, that he should only be interested in me. “Fine,” I said shortly. Why didn't he ask me how my Christmas was, anyway? I wanted to say something that would make him pay attention to me. “Something happened to me,” I said.

“What?”

“I got suspended for fighting in school.” I waited for his reaction. When I'd imagined telling him before, I'd imagined that he'd be on my side. Now, suddenly, I was apprehensive.

“Fighting? What were you doing fighting?” he said impatiently, running his words together.

“A girl called me a name and I threw a book at her. Then we started fighting.”

“Diana! What's the matter with you? Why can't you control yourself?”

“But she called me a name.” I felt tears coming into my eyes.

“I don't care what she called you! You don't go around fighting with people. This is just another example of you flying off the handle. How many times do I have to tell you? Stop and think before you act. You're such a hothead.”

Anger streaked through my body. “Mom says you're a hothead! She says I got it from you! I thought you'd understand.”

“Your mother thinks I'm a hothead? This is rich. She's sitting there criticizing me to you when I'm not even there to defend myself. Well, I was going to invite you down during your spring break but under the circumstances, maybe that just won't work out.”

He had been thinking about inviting me down to Florida for spring break? Why hadn't he said so before?

“What do you mean?” I could hear my voice rise. I was crying now. “I'll come down!”

The door of my bedroom cracked open, and Stephanie's concerned face appeared. “Are you okay?” she mouthed at me.

“I'm sure you don't want to spend time with a hothead,” he said, “so just forget it. And maybe you don't want to keep a cell phone from a hothead, so maybe I should just cancel your plan.”

“Dad, no!”

He hung up. I threw the phone down on the bed and buried my burning, wet face in the comforter. I hated him, I hated him!

“Diana, what happened? What did he say?” Stephanie was next to my bed, and she put her hand on my shoulder. I was shaking. I just shook my head. I couldn't even put it into words.

I tried to think about last spring when Dad and I had gone parasailing, and we'd flown, attached to parachutes, high above the sound in the Outer Banks. Dad had taken my hand, and I'd felt so very happy.

“Diana?” I heard Stephanie's quiet voice and felt her soft hand rubbing my shoulder. “What did he say to make you cry?”

I sat up, wiped the tears from my cheeks. “I'm so mad. I feel like breaking this stupid phone he gave me. Why does this always happen with Dad?”

“I don't know,” Stephanie said.

“I told him I got suspended, and he just started yelling at me. He didn't even bother to ask me how my Christmas was. He said he'd been thinking about
inviting me down to Florida for spring break but now just to forget it.”

“That wasn't very nice.”

I lay down on the bed. Nobody could make me feel bad the way my dad could.

I
sat with Diana for a long time, until she stopped crying. I don't know how late it was when I finally went back to my room.

I pulled the covers up to my chin and curled up on my side, thinking. Is it bad for me to hate Diana's dad? Once before, I had comforted Diana, when we were at the ranch and Daddy had told her she couldn't ride. I sometimes could feel Diana's emotions like they were my own.

What a strange Christmas it had been, with Diana suspended and Matt in the hospital. And Diana's fight with her dad. I felt like I should be especially good to balance out everything else.

When I woke up, I had a stomachache. Daddy and Lynn had to go back to work today, so Diana and I were here alone. I decided I'd get up and make waffles for us, even though I didn't really feel like eating them, and headed downstairs in my pj's and got out the waffle maker.

While I was mixing the batter, Mama called.

“Hey, sugar,” she said. “How are you doing? I am so sorry we can't go shopping today the way I promised you.”

“That's okay.” I plugged in the waffle maker, then stirred the batter while squeezing the phone between my ear and my shoulder.

“They're still waiting for Matt to wake up,” she said.

“That's awful,” I said. I told myself that nobody deserved to have such a terrible thing happen. What if he never woke up? I shuddered. I poured the batter onto the hot griddle and shut the waffle maker, watching as a puff of steam and a glob of the yellow batter popped out around the edge.

“Barry is just a mess,” Mama was saying, “pure and simple. I have to be the best wife to him that I can. I hope you understand that, sugar.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “We can go another time.”

Diana's footfalls sounded on the stairs, and she wandered into the kitchen. She sat on a stool at the counter, sticking her finger into the bowl of waffle mix and licking it.

“Well, maybe when things calm down a little you can come back and stay with us,” Mama was saying.

“Sure,” I said. Right now going back would mean sitting around the hospital in those orange chairs with the plastic cushions and watching people in scrubs hurry by. Every time they pushed someone down the hall on a gurney, I wondered if it was Matt and my heart would speed up. He wasn't my real brother. He was mean to me. I didn't even want to see him.

And then, the minute I had those thoughts, I felt guilty.

Mama said she'd call back when she could, and we hung up.

“Yum,” said Diana. “You're making some for me too, right?”

“Of course!”

The little light on the waffle maker turned red, which meant the waffle was done. I lifted the waffle onto a plate.

“Me first!” Diana said, holding out her hand.

“Little piglet!” I said, handing it to her, and she gave me a satisfied smile as she opened the syrup. As I was pouring batter for my waffle onto the griddle, my cell phone chirped, telling me I had a text.

Diana picked up my phone and read, “‘Hey, want me to bring my guitar over and play you a song?'” She looked at me. “Who's that from?”

“Let me see.” I closed the griddle and took the phone. “Oh, it's that new guy who went caroling that I was telling you about. Noah. He got a new guitar for Christmas.” He had been friendly toward me the whole time we were caroling. I had been nice to him but wasn't sure what to think of him yet.

“He's texting you?” Diana asked. Her face took on a hard look.

“I guess.”

“Oh. Well, that's nice.”

She was acting weird.

For some reason I felt like I needed to defend him. “You know his mom just married Kevin's dad and he just moved here, right? That's why he was caroling with them yesterday. He hardly knows anybody.”

“Uh-huh.” Diana focused on eating her waffle.

I opened the waffle maker and lifted out the browned waffle. “He said he's in your Spanish class.”

“Yeah. When did you talk about me?”

“Just when we left, after he saw you from the front door. He seems kind of out there, like I said last night. He does not hold back.”

“Norm and Mom won't let him come over when they're not here.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. I didn't even know if I wanted him to. Diana was definitely acting weird. “Is something wrong?”

Diana shook her head. “Nope. Just don't really like him.”

“Okay.” I put butter and syrup on my waffle and sat down to eat it. I still had a little stomachache. There was no telling what was going on with Diana.

Later, Josie picked up Diana to go to the barn, and I was home alone when my cell phone rang.

“Stephanie, honey?” It was Daddy. His voice sounded strained. “I'm going to need you to get your things packed to go to Emerald Isle to Grammy Verra's house for a few days. I'm on my way home right now and Lynn will be there soon. She's going by the barn to pick up Diana.”

“Why? What's happened?” My heart pounded hard.

“Grammy Verra got sick after she came home from
Aunt Carol's this afternoon. She's been taken to the hospital. We don't know what's wrong yet.”

“Oh no! Is she going to be okay?”

“We hope so, honey. I'll be home in a few minutes. Go ahead and get your stuff packed.”

I hung up. Goose bumps traveled all over my body and my heart sped up. Grammy Verra in the hospital!

Oh no!

I raced up to my room and started stuffing my things back into my overnight bag, thoughts whirling through my head.

Had an ambulance taken Grammy Verra to the hospital? Had they had to lift her onto a stretcher like they did on TV? Was there any blood? Was she in a lot of pain? Would she have to have surgery?

I changed my mind. I dragged my big blue suitcase out of my closet.

In my whole life, I had never seen Grammy Verra sick or in bed. I always thought of her as strong and in charge. Thinking of her in a hospital bed made me feel scared. Like some part of the world wasn't right any more.

I sat down on my bed.

The summer that Mama and Daddy decided to separate, I had gone to Grammy Verra's house to stay for a while. She lived in a sunny two-bedroom condo not
far from the beach at Emerald Isle. Even though I'd had my own bedroom, most of the nights I would sleep in Grammy's bed with her. I'd fall asleep with her rubbing my back and talking softly to me. During the day, she took me out on the beach where she sat under an umbrella while I built sandcastles. She also signed me up for a sea-turtle program at the aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and went with me when we strolled the beach looking for sea-turtle nests. Most of all, she talked with me about Mama and Daddy.

“What did I do wrong?” I'd asked her. “Is this because of me?”

“Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with you, honey,” she said. “They may not be able to live together anymore, but they both still love you more than words can say. And that will never change.”

And during those two weeks I stayed with Grammy, I felt like Grammy would be there for me no matter what happened with my parents. Her condo became a safe place for me. When Mama had come to pick me up, I clung to Grammy, not wanting to go with Mama. I remembered those two weeks with Grammy just like they were yesterday, even though it had all happened when I was in fifth grade.

I started packing my sweatshirts and socks. It seemed like all I'd done for the past few days was pack
and unpack. First packing to go to Mama's. Then packing to come back here. Now packing again to go to Grammy Verra's.

Would Grammy need surgery? Grammy Verra was old. Wasn't anesthesia more dangerous for old people?

My phone rang. It was Noah.

“You didn't answer my text message so I decided to call you instead,” he said. “Hope that's okay. I'm learning ‘Hey Jude' by the Beatles, and I was wondering if I could come play it for you.”

Oh no. Could he have a crush on me? Had I led him on? I'd have to be careful about how I talked to him.

“I'm sorry I didn't answer,” I said. “There's a lot going on.” I made a neatly folded pile of my tops and put them in the suitcase on top of my sweatshirts.

“Is everything okay? You sound funny,” he said.

“It's just … my grandmother just got taken to the hospital. We have to leave today to go to her house.”

“Oh, man. Sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. I'm really worried about her.”

“Where does she live?”

“Emerald Isle.”

“How far away is that?”

“About five hours.”

“Oh. So do you think you'll be there for the rest of Christmas vacation?”

“I have no idea. This is all really sudden.”

“Okay, well.” His voice kind of dropped with disappointment. “I hope everything is okay with your grandmother.”

“Thanks. Talk to you later.”

I tossed my phone on my bed. He definitely had a crush on me. He'd been hoping to get together sometime before break was over. Had I led him on? I could feel my cheeks get warm when I thought about it. Maybe I should stop being nice to him. It was good that I was going to be gone for a few days.

By the time the garage door opened and Daddy came in, my big blue suitcase was packed, and I was downstairs waiting for everyone. He said “Hi,” really quickly, pulling off his tie, and hurried back to his room to pack his own things. I had all kinds of questions to ask him, but I knew not to ask them right now.

A few minutes later, Lynn and Diana came in.

“Why do I have to go?” Diana stopped in the doorway and pulled off one riding boot. “She's not my real grandmother. I only met her twice.”

“The whole family is going, Diana. She's Norm's mother, and we love her and want to be there for her.”

“I'm going to call Dad.” Diana hopped around, pulling off a second riding boot. “Maybe he'll let me fly down to Florida to stay with him.”

“No, we're not doing that,” Lynn said matter-of-factly. “Go upstairs and pack enough for at least three or four days. Hurry up.”

“Why not?” Diana dropped her boot on the ground.

“It's a bad idea for so many reasons I can't even list them all,” Lynn said. “I don't have time to discuss this. I've got to go pack my things.” Lynn left her purse and keys on the kitchen table and, taking off her white coat, went back into the master bedroom.

Diana stomped past me and up the stairs.

“I don't care what she says, I'm calling Dad.”

“It's too late to get a plane ticket,” I said, following her upstairs. “We don't even have time to take you to the airport. And what if your dad doesn't want you to come?”

“He just gave me that phone. He would want me to come.”

I felt like Diana lived in a dream world when it came to her dad. Hadn't she just cried herself to sleep last night about him?

I followed her down the hall to her bedroom. The walls were covered with horse posters. An old bridle that was turning greenish hung over the mirror above her dresser.

“I'm already packed. I can help you,” I said.

Diana didn't respond. She had her phone to her ear.
“Dad, I'm sorry I said you were a hothead.” She took a breath and started pacing the room. “I need to come down to visit you because the rest of the family has to go to Emerald Isle because Norm's mom is in the hospital. You said you wanted me to come before. Can you call me back?” She tossed the phone on her bed. “They can't make me go!”

Hot anger flashed through my body. I pulled Diana's suitcase out of her closet and threw it onto her bed. I loved Grammy Verra! I couldn't believe Diana was acting like this. “Grammy Verra's in the hospital! Can't you think about anybody besides yourself?”

Diana whirled around, her hands on her hips. “You have no idea how I feel. I've met her for a total of a week out of my entire life and now I have to go spend my Christmas break sitting around a hospital!”

I did know how she felt. That was exactly what I had been thinking about Matt. But I didn't say anything about that to her.

“You got along with Grammy great!” I said instead. “You talked about how much you both love animals. And she hugged you and you let her, I saw you!”

I thought about Grammy being in the hospital and wondered if she was in pain. I didn't want to see her lying in a hospital bed. Would she have tubes everywhere? What if she died?

Diana marched to the window and stared out. “So what? She's not my grandmother.”

I thought of something that might convince her. “While she's in the hospital, we'll probably have to watch her dog, Jelly.”

Diana turned to gaze at me, excitement beginning to spread across her face. “We'll get to live with a dog?”

She threw two pairs of wadded-up jeans into her suitcase, then tossed in three sweatshirts.