“We don’t have to do it this week.”
“No,” she said. “I can make it. What day?”
“Tuesday is what we’d planned.”
“Okay.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, as if imprinting the information directly onto her brain. “I can do that.”
Man, I felt like a total dick. The friendly thing to do would be to insist that she stay home, deal with her stressors. But, selfishly, I wanted her to get away from this place, to come up to the cabin and decompress a bit. I was self-centered enough to believe that I could keep her thoughts distracted from whatever she worried over.
When the movie ended, Navy picked up the blanket and immediately began folding it. “In a hurry?” I asked, not wanting to press but feeling concerned anyway.
“I have to leave in about twenty minutes.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and looked sheepishly at me.
“Oh.” I pressed a hand against my chest. “Are you kicking me out, Navy Jane?”
Putting her hand over mine, she laughed. “Yes. Sorry, giving you the boot.”
“The Adorables will be here alone? I can stay if you need me to.”
“No, I’ll only be gone a couple hours. Besides, I can tell from the loud music,” she pointed to the ceiling directly over our heads, “that Jade at least is already fast asleep.” She shrugged away, turning off the television and removing the DVD from the player. “Thanks, though. Call you tomorrow?”
At least she was telling me she’d call me. “Sure.”
I packed up the remainder of the Chinese, putting it into the fridge and then wiped down the table. I was unsettled. Navy didn’t not tell me things. But there she was, waiting by the front door as if getting me out was the only thing she wanted to do.
Despite the emotional distance that had suddenly appeared between us, I grabbed her and hugged her tightly. “You’ll call me tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Her voice was muffled against my shirt.
As I started to pull away, her hands gripped momentarily tighter, so I stayed, holding her, until she was ready to let me go.
12
NAVY
A fresh rain had covered the ground in puddles, filling in the potholes that I kept accidentally driving into as I made my way across the parking lot of the bus station. I was fifteen minutes early, but since I hadn’t spoken to Violet since her stop in Salt Lake City, I was worried I was already late. There were a half dozen other cars in the parking lot waiting, their windshield wipers beating against the downpour. I wished I could call her, ask what mile marker she’d passed, but she would be there—I knew. Mostly, I just was impatient to hear her voice again. The fact that she didn’t have a cell phone anymore was incredibly inconvenient, and we’d need to remedy that first thing in the morning before I went into work.
Five minutes until arrival, a bus pulled into the parking lot and came to a stop in front of the building. I watched tired bodies climb down the steps, holding my breath until I saw her.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d known her for her entire life, I might not have recognized her at first. She wore baggy sweats and a sweater, and the shock of bleached hair caught the lights under the awning. This wasn’t my sister.
I exited the car, making my way to her. She hadn’t seen me yet among the other bodies swarming the bus and its passengers.
“Violet!” I called out, holding a hand up high. Her head turned and in less than five seconds she was in my arms.
It was nearly impossible to tell, but when I hugged her, she felt somehow smaller than the last time I’d hugged her, eight months before. My hands grazed up her back, meeting shoulder blades that seemed to protrude more than I remembered.
Violet pulled back, her bleached hair scratching my nose.
“Was the ride cold?” I asked as she pulled the hoodie up to cover her hair. She must have been wearing multiple layers, judging by the sleeves that peeked out from under the sweatshirt’s wrist holes. It was late spring and not unseasonably warm. There was no need for the layers.
“Where’d you park?” she asked, looking everywhere except at me.
“I have Aunt Isabel’s car,” I explained, leading her to it with a hand across her back. “You hungry or anything?”
“Yes,” she said on an exhale. “I’m starving. Twenty bucks doesn’t buy you much over two days of traveling.”
“I could’ve sent you money.”
“I didn’t have a phone and had no way to get the money before the bus ride.” She said it like I was dense, for not thinking of that, and she refused to look at me. I was used to my sisters being mouthy and rude, but Violet wasn’t normally like that with me.
I bit my tongue to keep from saying, if you had told me what was going on, I would’ve figured something out. It wasn’t a promise I knew I could grant for certain, though.
I unlocked the car and opened her door. “Wait, where’s your bags?”
“Just this.” She patted the side pack that was so empty, I hadn’t noticed it pressing against her. She climbed into the seat and buckled immediately.
Our ride home was mostly silent apart from the quick stop at a fast food restaurant for a couple cheeseburgers and a soda. After inhaling both, Violet settled into her seat so that she was angled away from me, looking out the window. When we exited the highway and were stopped in town at a red light, I saw the streetlights flash over her face. As if sensing I was staring, she turned and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Home. Auntie’s house. She’s out of town.”
“That’s right. The twins are there too?”
I nodded. “They should be asleep.”
“Where am I sleeping?”
“Auntie’s room, with me.”
“I’m guessing Jade and Rose finally got their own rooms after I moved out.”
“Yep. Now that they have their own rooms, can you guess whose room is cleaner?”
The faintest curve of a smile lifted her lips. “That’s a trick question.” She turned to look back out the window. “They’re both disgusting.”
I laughed, confirming that she was right. Since my aunt’s house was a three bedroom, the twins had always shared one bedroom, leaving Violet and me to share the other. When I moved out, Violet got the room to herself. And when Violet moved out, Jade was already bringing her stuff into the room before Violet had even backed out of the driveway.
“I have to work in the afternoon,” I told her. “But we can go to the store in the morning and get you some stuff.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“You need a phone and at the very least a change of clothes.”
“I can just wear yours.”
“Violet…” I gripped the steering wheel as I mulled over how to talk about the elephant in the room. “Are you back back? Or is this just a visit?”
“I’m back back.”
“Okay.” I exhaled a breath I’d been holding. “Then you need your own stuff. It’s going to be summer soon, and you can’t live in hoodies forever.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m plenty comfortable wearing my hoodie. Besides, this is freezing compared to L.A.”