Walk Me Home by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page B

yourself?”
    “Sure.”
    She was disappointed, but she didn’t say so.
    “You going to be around for a while? In case Jen comes home?”
    “Yeah. I’ll be right here.”
    She really didn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to be anywhere else.
    Jen came bouncing in about five.
    Carly was still staring out the window. Well, again. She’d made and eaten a tuna fish sandwich. Gone to the bathroom. Then resumed staring.
    “Where’s Teddy?” Jen asked, hanging up her jacket.
    “Out.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “That’s weird. He always says where he’s going. Oh, God,” Jen added, peering into the kitchen. “It was poker night? I mean, day? They played poker in the middle of the day? How’d he do?”
    “Not well.”
    “Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t tell you where he was going. Maybe he has to go out and borrow some money. Or steal it. Or do something horrible for somebody. You know. To pay off the gambling debt.”
    “Would everybody leave Teddy alone?” Carly shouted. She’d set out to say it in a normally irritated tone, then lost control. “Geez, Jen! He’s the nicest guy mom ever brought home. You’ve seen some of the losers she’s paraded through here. Teddy is the sweetest guy in the world. And everybody dumps on him for it. I’m sick of it!”
    She stared out the window a few seconds more, composing herself. Then she risked a glance at Jen. The kid looked a little shaken.
    Carly looked back out the window again.
    A minute later Jen appeared behind her chair. Carly felt the hard bone of Jen’s chin rest on the top of her head.
    “I’m sorry, Carly. I was really mostly kidding.”
    Carly sighed.
    “I know. I’m sorry I got so upset. I’m just in a lousy mood.”
    “What happened?”
    “Nothing. Nothing happened. That’s just the problem. Nothing ever happens around here.”
    Teddy came through the door at six with a pepperoni pizza.
    “Your mom’s working late again,” he said.
    Carly never thought, at the time, to ask how he knew. Her mom would have called the house before trying Teddy’s cell phone.And Carly had been sitting ten feet away from the phone all afternoon. If that phone had rung, Carly would have known it better than anyone.
    In deep sleep, in a deep dream, Carly was somewhere in the mountains—some mythical and unrealistic mountains—with Dean. She could feel his presence beside her, but the details felt fuzzy and indistinct.
    Then she felt his hand on her forehead. Rubbing. Pushing the hair aside and rubbing her warm skin in wide, smooth strokes.
    She bolted awake, suddenly knowing it was a real hand, in the real world. In her bed in the middle of the night. She instinctively slapped the hand away. Sat up straight, gasping.
    It was only her mom. Carly could see her mom’s bright lipstick in the sliver of moonlight that shone though the filmy bedroom curtain.
    “Sorry, honey,” her mom said. “I didn’t think that would startle you. I used to wake you up like that all the time when you were a little girl. You’d wake up real gentle that way. Guess I have to remember you’re not a little girl anymore.”
    Her mom’s voice was cigarette-gravelly and deep, even though she hadn’t smoked for years.
    Carly breathed deeply a few times, then set her head back down on the pillow. Looked up at her mom in the dim light. It seemed weird to have her there. It felt different. Her mom’s energy felt like something she’d either never witnessed or had long ago forgotten.
    Carly’s mom stroked her forehead again, and Carly closed her eyes.
    “Know where Ted was from three o’clock today to almost six?”
    The question should have made Carly nervous. But the softness in her mom’s tone did not allow it.
    “No. Where?”
    “He was sitting at the restaurant with me. I gave him a free piece of pie, and he just kept nursing the same coffee mug, refill after refill. Probably poured him seven cups of coffee. He might never get to sleep tonight.