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She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. When she turns around again, she’s smiling. She doesn’t want me to know she was crying, but I already saw, and her eyes are still red. “Hey sweetheart,” she murmurs. “I thought you were in your playroom with Aidan.”
“It’s Aidan’s playroom. I’m not a baby.”
That makes her smile. “Okay.”
I go to pick the receiver from the floor and place it on the coffee table. “You were fighting with Dad.”
She smiles again. “Don’t worry about it sweetheart. It was just…” she sighs. “It was nothing.”
I nod. “He’s coming home today,” I remind her, hoping it will cheer her up. “You can make up when he gets here.”
The smile disappears from her face. “No,” she says, her voice changing. “By the time he comes, we’ll be gone.”
MOM is speeding. She hardly ever drives, except when we’re at our house upstate and she doesn’t want the chauffeur. She didn’t want him today. She made Donna pack up a case each for Aidan and me, and she put them in Dad’s green Ferrari and buckled us in the back.
Aidan is looking at me, his eyes wide. His tiny hands are tight around Alfred, his bear. Even he knows that something is wrong. “Are we going to see Daddy?” he asks hopefully.
I can’t think of anything to tell him, so I ruffle his hair. He likes that. “Where’re we going?” I ask mom.
She doesn’t reply. We’re already out of the city, but we’re not going in the direction of our house.
“Where’re we going?” I ask again.
“For God’s sake,” she snaps at me. “Keep quiet and let me drive.”
“You’re scaring Aidan,” I tell her. I’m scared too. I don’t want my parents to get a divorce.
Mom doesn’t reply. Instead, she starts to drive faster, till it feels like we’re flying over the highway.
Aidan peers out of the window just as we zoom past a big truck. “Mommy?” he cries.
“Now you’ve upset him,” Mom snaps.
I fold my arms. “I didn’t upset him. You upset him.”
“Landon…”
“I want to go back,” I announce, hoping she’ll turn around. “I want to wait for Dad.”
She glares at me in the mirror, and I frown as deep as I can.
“Well, we’re not going back,” she says.
“I don’t want to leave. If you’re getting a divorce, I want to stay with Dad in the hotel.”
“I want daddy,” Aidan cries.
Mom starts to cry. I can see the tears running down her face in the mirror. I know she really doesn’t want to leave. If we go back and wait for my dad, everything will be okay.
But she keeps on driving, and I start to wish that anything would happen, anything at all, to make us turn back.
GOODBYE Rachel.
Landon’s last words to me before he drove away. They keep playing over and over in my head, and with every second that passes, I can feel the distance between us stretching, growing wider, triggering a frantic desire to run after him, to tell him I was wrong, that he’s everything I want, everything I need.
You can’t give me what I want.
Regret floods me, deep and painful, at the thought that I said those words to him.
