The Moment Before

Chapter Twenty-One

TWENTY- ONE

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In the end, Natalie couldn’t take the stepkid thing. But that’s not how it was spun. The version of Johnsaffair that hovers on the mantel above the Asian crockery mother ship of Sabine’s ashes is the lie that Mom and Dad settled on. One that was acceptable because it allowed Dad to move back in and life to go on as if Natalie never happened. And the kernel of the lie was, John and Sonia loved their girls too much to split up.

            For us, for Sabine and me, it was a free pass. They’d put us through hell that summer, and so, all that fall, Sure, why not? was the party line when we asked to stay out past curfew. Mom and Dad had various date nights and took photography and cooking classes together—trying to reinvigorate their relationship. He taught her how to golf, and she hauled him along to her open houses. They stopped short of a ceremony to renew their vows, thank God, but all we had to do if one of them refused to let us go to a party or a school event was to pout and shed a tear about the crappy summer just past, and, like magic, the verdict of no was reversed.

            Walking up to the park to meet Connor, I wonder more about whether Mom is trying to even the score. Eye for eye, like Nona says. Is Mom seeing someone to get even with Dad? And, years ago, did she marry Dad, a non-Catholic, to punish her parents? Did Bowerman contact the Portland Journal reporter to get back at Greenmeadow’s administration? Is Martha trying to prove something to Sabine, even now that she’s gone? And Nick. Did he tell me that lie about Connor to ensure my silence, or because he really believes it? It can’t be true, after all. I want to believe it isn’t true. I need to believe that Nick is the liar. That Connor wasn’t lying when he told me he never had sex with my sister.

The sidewalks are still covered in fallen blossoms, but now, instead of fresh pink, they’re greyish or brown. It’s all so fleeting, how beauty screams loud, then withers and dies. How one day everything seems possible, and little cubes of happiness tinkle around inside you like ice in a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade, and then, just like that, the ice melts and the beverage grows a skin of mold. My backpack is grinding into my shoulder blades. My feet are the next round of blisters. I’ve done so much walking these past weeks.  

The park is full of dog-walkers and joggers. An entire track team from Lincoln High School runs down the trail in a line. Rhododendrons bloom their ridiculous hues of magenta, fuchsia, and clot the edges of the park. A bee hovers over a patch of tiny daisies. Warm spring evenings, Forest Park is as busy as a mall at Christmastime. Boy Scouts earning badges tear ivy from fir trunks. Moms trying to burn off belly fat push all-terrain strollers up the path, their ponytails bobbing and wagging behind them. Everyone in Portland is here today, it seems.

I trudge the half-mile up to the Witch’s House, and instead of Connor, there’s a little kid’s birthday party. A blanket spread out, and helium balloons tied to the lower branches of a nearby tree. Small children with missing front teeth, cone-shaped party hats on their heads held tight by elastic bands on their chins, are playing hide-and-seek all around the demolished structure. Their anxious moms yelp,

“Be careful around those metal spikes.”

“Tommy, tie your shoe.”

I reach in my pocket for my phone, and text, It’s a zoo up here. Where are you?

But he doesn’t text back, because he’s coming up the path now, and I hear his voice, that perfect blend of tenor and baritone, low, soft. “’Bout time.”