Around the Bend Read Free Page B

pitched whine and tornado-force winds, shaking the sports car.
    “Your father and I never had an opportunity to go anywhere outside of Massachusetts. We even honeymooned on the Cape. But he always said he wanted to travel, and tried to talk me into taking time off to see more than the state of Massachusetts. One day, I kept telling him, I would. Then one day passed, and it was too late.” She watched a moving van rush by, its white rectangular belly shimmying. “I want your father to experience this with us.”
    “But, Ma, he’s gone,” I said, as gently as I could. I slipped into the driver’s seat and gripped the leather steering wheel, right then missing my father and the way he could intercept an argument between us, serve as the mediator, the cushion between our personalities. I wanted him to come along and cajole my mother out of this insanity with one of his “Oh, Rosemarys” and give me that secret smile that said he and I were on the same side in some battle neither of us had asked to fight. But he wasn’t coming and I was left alone, not quite sure how to deal with her. “You do know that, right?”
    “That doesn’t mean I stopped loving him.”
    “That doesn’t answer the question.” My paper father grinned back from the rearview mirror. I remembered when the picture had been taken. I’d been twenty-five and my mother had talked me into taking a beach vacation with them, in Truro. At the time, I’d just ended another crappy relationship and blown my paycheck on a beater box that redefined the state lemon law. A parental-funded vacation sounded like a really good idea, until a once-in-a-zillion-years cold front had moved in, forcing us all indoors for the better part of the week.
    But not my dad. He was, as he always had been, determined to have a good time, regardless of the weather. The photo onthe cutout was one of my father standing on the beach in shorts and a T-shirt, ignoring the biting wind sweeping along the coast. When I’d taken the picture, he’d been happy and laughing, daring me to dip a toe in the Atlantic.
    It was a good memory, one I’d tucked into my mental files and pulled out from time to time.
    But that didn’t mean I wanted a two-dimensional version in my backseat.
    “I need him along,” my mother said, her voice soft and quiet for a brief moment before she stiffened and slipped back into being Rosemary Delaney, lawyer.
    I glanced over at her and knew, even though she was not the type to show it, that she missed him, too. I wondered sometimes if the ache in her heart bordered on that same fierce knife edge as mine. If the same questions haunted her nights, the same what-ifs rolled around in her head, playing a game that couldn’t be won, because he wasn’t there to fill in the blanks.
    Their marriage may not have been perfect, but she was alone, more alone than I because he’d been her spouse, her other half, and if it gave her comfort to have a pig and a six-foot picture of my father along for the ride, who was I to argue?
    I had Nick, after all.
    “Okay.” I reached for her hand. It felt cold beneath mine, and I realized I could count the number of times I’d purposely touched my mother. Either way, this was the right thing to do, and the right time to do it. Our ivory skin was nearly a perfect match, long thin fingers blending one into the other, lacing together for a brief moment of bonding. “It’ll be nice to have Dad along for the ride. Kind of like a guardian angel.”
    She smiled at me and a flicker of a tear shone in her eyes. “Thank you, Hilary.”
    I nodded because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Then I buckled up and steered the car back into the busyness of I–93.
    A few more miles passed, with neither of us saying anything. Reginald lay down in the backseat, let out a piggie yawn and went to sleep.
    But the peace didn’t last long. My mother and I were pretty much like two Middle Eastern countries. We’d get along for a while, then