Beach Day

30: Jiggity Jig

It's a good enough plan: they drop off Aunt Esther at the old family home to go through family records, let Tiff wrap Andy's present in the car, and go drop it off before she has to walk all the way out to the chapel (unless Drew wants to drive her, and he probably doesn't). She'll probably say the present is from Drew, on the label, so her mom doesn't throw it out. It's a good plan.

She turns down the radio when Drew pulls up outside the townhouse the Sheridans have rented for years on a semi-sleepy, semi-suburban street in East Orlando. He parks at the curb instead of in the driveway, even though there isn't a car there.

No car in the driveway. That means her parents aren't home.She can take it up to the door without the risk of running into them.

She stuffs the near-empty tape dispenser into the glove compartment and looks over at Drew. "Come up to the door with me— Will you come up to the door with me?"

"I thought you wanted to do this yourself."

"Come on!" she pleads. "Come play moral support!"

"I'm not Denny, forehead." He unbuckles himself anyway, and turns off the car. He swings himself out to stand on the street; in tandem, she joins him.

She stares down the house and the front door. She lived here for about two years. She went to ninth and tenth grades at the high school a fair ways away and rode there on her bike all the time (and, briefly, her motorcycle, to the portables for Girl Scouts meetings, after Uncle Mike gave it to her as a sixteenth birthday present); she spent time in those windows, looking out at the world around her and wishing she could be in it. That was the kitchen where she truly learned to fear the stove; that window facing the front was Andy's room, and probably still is. She knows this place.

She crosses the pits and gouges in the driveway expertly. Her parents must not have annoyed the landlord enough about it over the past few years. (He wouldn't listen anyway. Their neighbors and that frat from down the street had to help dispose of that fallen tree when the landlord wouldn't.)

She knocks on the door, then considers stepping away. By the time she decides it might be a good idea, it's far too late. The door is already open and caught on the chain.

Andy stands there, looks out at her, eyes wide with surprise. "Hi, Tiff!"

"Hey, bud." Oh, she's being so normal about this. She's getting a good grade in sibling interaction. "I just wanted to drop off a present for you. From me and Drew. It says Drew, but it's mostly me."

She doesn't need to say that she didn't want their mother to throw it out as soon as it entered the house. He already knows that.

He looks around, from one side of the street to the other. "Do you want to come in?"

There's such hope in his voice, and she hates to let him down, but she has to say, "I don't know if that's such a good idea, bud—"

"They're not home."

"I don't know—"

"Please?"

How can she say no to him? This is her little brother. She has missed him like her own soul for two years. Of course she sees that glimmer in her little brother's eye, and she says yes, sure, she'll come inside, and of course Drew will come in with her. Is there a way to say anything else?

The house is the way it was when she left, but it also isn't. The upright piano against one wall has a festive runner and a different vase on top of it; the couch and TV have been moved. The bookshelves are more packed, though exactly none of Tiff's old music theory books remain on the bottom shelf.