LITMIR.BIZ

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Boy, did he know better. “Find out what her reasons are, and maybe then you can work it out with her.”

      “You won’t help me?” She moaned, as if her life were destroyed.

      “Find out,” said Cooper.

      She moaned again and hung up. Ten minutes later, Laura’s number popped up on his cell.

      “I don’t want her to go alone,” Laura said without preamble in a hard tone when Cooper clicked on. “There are drugs at the school. I don’t want her to be a part of it.”

      “Drugs? This is something you heard?”

      “Yes! There are drugs.”

      Knowing he was putting too fine a point on it based on the tone of her voice, Cooper nevertheless waded in. “Do you mean kids are using during the day? Or just this evening?”

      “Does it matter?” Her ire was rising.

      It wasn’t that he was purposely making light of the issue. He didn’t doubt that a certain percentage of kids were experimenting with drugs. It was what happened at every school. What he was objecting to was Laura’s capacity to come up with excuses to win an argument or have her way, whether she believed what he was saying or not.

      And he didn’t believe Marissa and her friends were users.

      He said, “Marissa goes to school during the day, so the drugs are there when she’s there . . . ? But she can’t go to the school tonight because the drugs will be there?”

      “I don’t think tonight will be chaperoned the same way,” she delivered through her teeth. “Unless you want to go there? Be the policeman for all those teens? You want to do that?”

      Hell no.

      “Sure,” he said. “Just let me know when I should pick Marissa up.”

      She hung up on him.

      * * *

      “We’re not going to spread Mom’s ashes tonight,” Jamie said as she threw together a peanut butter sandwich for Harley and slid it onto the table.

      “Good,” Harley expelled with relief.

      “I’ve got to pick up Emma at five and then you’re going to that party. . . .”

      “Mixer.” Harley fell on the sandwich like a ravenous wolf. “I didn’t eat lunch,” she admitted around a huge bite that was obviously sticking to the roof of her mouth.

      “I gave you money,” Jamie reminded her, pouring her daughter a glass of tap water. That was one thing about Oregon. The water was good.

      “I just didn’t like what they had.”

      Jamie held back further comment. She’d been the same way. Starving herself all day for similar reasons. But why couldn’t growing up, school, be better for Harley? That was all she wanted.

      Harley rolled an eye at her. “Maybe you and Emma can just spread the ashes without me.”

      “No. I called my father. We changed the date. He and Debra are coming over Sunday afternoon.”

      Harley put down the glass of water and stared at Jamie. “I thought you hated him.”

      “Hate’s a pretty strong word.”

      “Yeah? Well . . . ?”

      “Emma and I blamed him for leaving Mom, yes. It was a tough time and he didn’t handle it well. We all thought Debra was a passing thing, but she wasn’t. I wasn’t sure Dad knew Mom died, so I called him this afternoon and left a message on his phone, and he called me back.”

      She’d worked up the courage to even phone her father, calling herself all kinds of a coward for making something that should be so easy, so hard. She’d been relieved to leave a message, and when he’d phoned back she’d been in her bedroom and had answered with trepidation.

      “Hey . . . Dad,” she’d said diffidently.

      “Hi, honey,” he answered with false warmth.

      His tone. She remembered that tone so well. He just couldn’t pull off sincerity. It had spurred her to bluntly give him the news about Mom, which he had somehow already heard, but when she’d explained that they were spreading her ashes in lieu of a memorial service, he’d been eager to drop the whole thing.

      “We’re doing it this Sunday,” Jamie had decided that moment. She didn’t really care if he was there or not, but it had pissed her off how relieved he’d sounded that he couldn’t make the event.

      Apparently picking up on her anger, he’d finally said, “Well, maybe Debra and I can come. What time?”

      She almost asked him not to bring Debra. Nobody liked her. Nobody wanted her there. But Debra had been with her father for so many years that it seemed churlish and pointless to say no.

      Now, Harley said, “I don’t even know what he looks like.”

      “You’re not alone. None of us have seen him in years.”

      “Has . . . uh, Marissa texted yet?” Harley tried to disguise the hopeful tone in her voice, but wasn’t completely successful. Jamie found herself praying Marissa was as nice as everyone was saying. She hoped to God Harley wasn’t left in the lurch on her first day of school.

      “Not yet.”

      Her cell gave off its incoming text tone at that moment. Harley jumped up and demanded, “Where’s your cell?”

      “I’ve got it right here.” Jamie plucked it from her purse and placed it on the counter. She gave her daughter a look that said, Hold your horses.

      “Is it Marissa?”

      “No, it’s Ick . . . it’s the lady I was talking with at the school . . . Tyler’s mom.” She fished Vicky’s card out of the side pocket of her purse. “Vicky Barnes, uh, Stapleton.”

      “Wha’d she say?”

      “Well, I’m going out with her tonight, while you’re at the mixer.”

      Harley frowned. “Really? Why? What about Emma?”

      “She can stay by herself. My mom worked nights, pretty much always.”

      “You don’t want to take care of her, do you?”

      Jamie drew a breath. “It’s all a change. For you, too. And I’m glad, and surprised, that you’re so okay with the move.”

      Harley physically pulled back, as if Jamie had trod into her space. “You’re not both coming to the mixer, right?”

      “Not on your life.”

      Twenty minutes later, Marissa texted: will pick Harley up at 6, k?

      Harley practically yanked the phone out of Jamie’s hands and sent back a thumb’s-up emoji. “When am I getting a phone?” she demanded for about the billionth time.

      “I don’t know,” answered Jamie. Again. “Keep asking and it might not happen at all.”

      “So, you are thinking about it?” Harley perked up, hearing what she wanted to hear.

      “A day hardly goes by that it’s not brought up about six times.”

      Harley narrowed her eyes, as she often did at her mother’s sarcasm, but then she raced upstairs to her room to get ready.

      I need to go back, to remember how it started. I need to recall every detail. To think through each piece. It’s important. It keeps the path I walk on straight.

      I sit in the full dark. I have been sitting here a long time. Days . . . maybe a week?

      I don’t want to hurt anyone, but these women . . .

      They shouldn’t do the things they do. They need to back

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