What Every Girl (except me) Knows by Nora Raleigh Baskin Page B

walked in. He didn’t look so good, either, but he never does.
    “Cleo’s gone?” Ian said.
    “She left last night,” Dad told us both. “It’s all for the best. She wasn’t ready to get married.”
    Cleo was gone?
    “Is she coming back?” I asked. I pushed my bowl as far away as I could reach.
    “No, as soon as she can get a flight she’s going to her sister’s in Colorado. Yeah, it’s Colorado, I think.”
    The coffee was apparently ready enough, and my dad poured some into his mug as the rest of it dripped down onto the burner and spattered.
    “She’s coming back to say good-bye,” I told my dad.
    My dad turned to me. His eyes were puffy and his hair was uncombed. Something about him was so unfamiliar it made me feel unsafe, like the time I reached for my dad’s hand at the gallery so long ago, a hand that turned out not to be his hand. I felt lost again.
    “No, sweetie. I don’t think so,” he said. Then he spoke out loud, as if for someone’s benefit, though not mine. “I tried to get her to change her mind,” he said. “I tried till two in the morning.”
    “You’re lying!” I screamed.
    Then I cried. I don’t remember for how long. I ran into my room and flung myself on my bed. I cried such sobs that my body hurt. My nose ran freely. I couldn’t even think what it was I was crying about. My body was crying, my eyes were crying, my nose was crying. It didn’t matter what I thought anymore. Crying had taken over and when it was done it left me empty.
    My dad didn’t know what to do with me. He sat on my bed for a while, and then he went away. He came back with some tea. Then he left again.
    Taylor called me, but I couldn’t talk.
    Finally, after an hour or so, I got up and walked out of my room. I went straight down the hall to my dad’s room. All of Cleo’s stuff was gone. Her books by the bed, even her little reading light. The piece of Brazilian lace she had put on the bureau was gone, as well as the bottle of hand lotion that had been on top. She had two little mirrored boxes she kept her jewelry in. They were both gone.
    I went into the bathroom. Her hairbrush and toothbrush were gone. Her Tom’s Natural Toothpaste was gone. Her razor, her women’s shave cream, even the Woolite was gone. Then I remembered the antique cigar box that Cleo used to hold Q-tips and cotton balls in the linen closet. I walked out into the hall and opened the closet. It was gone, too.
    She had been so utterly thorough, I thought.
    It was like she didn’t want anyone to know she had ever been here. Ever.
    I suddenly ran back to my room. I flung open my door and headed straight for my night table. Under the hanging piece of material I had my three notebooks and by my bed a fourth, the one Cleo had given me. Slowly I lifted that one into my hands. The ribbon was undone, although I was sure I always retied it whenever I looked at it. I hadn’t written anything in it yet. I was saving it. But I often flipped through the empty pages, thinking about what I’d write.
    Now I lifted the red cover with the dried flowers pressed inside.
    The first page was missing.
    I held the book closer to my face. Tiny rips were all that was left of the page where the inscription had been written. The page had been carefully torn out.
    Your mom-to-be.
    Mom-to-be. Mom-to-be.
    It was if she had never been here.
    I didn’t cry. I wasn’t ever going to cry again.

Part II

Chapter 25
    It took me a real, real long time to even open the red journal Cleo had given me. At first, after she left, I was so upset I couldn’t touch the book—not even to throw it out. Then I got this dumb note from her about three weeks after she left saying her leaving had nothing to do with me and she only tore out the inscription in a moment of panic and confusion, that I’d understand when I got older, or maybe I’d be lucky and never have to.
    I never wrote back.
    After a while the red journal seemed like just another blank book. But I would