As our visitors became fewer and further between, some of the helpers began to depart, until finally it was just me, Dan, and Michael, tidying up the yard and putting the house back together.
I was picking up dropped candy when Michael approached me, the ghostly lighting making him seem almost ethereal.
“Listen, Addie,” he said, his voice soft, raspy, almost like it pained him to talk.
“Michael, don’t.” I didn’t think I had the strength for almost anything he might say. But there didn’t seem to be any stopping him.
“I can’t just let you leave,” he went on, undeterred. His strong hand wrapped my wrist, as if to keep me from running, and warmth shot up my arm, making me feel hot all over. And confused. What was I doing?
“I need to tell you why I said what I did, why I acted that way. I was confused. It’s just, I’ve lived my life one way for a long time, thought about things one way,” he paused for a breath and I pulled my arm away. I couldn’t think when he was touching me. “And then Shelly—“
“I know,” I said. “Listen, I can’t do this. I just can’t. I can’t talk to you right now. It’s all too hard.” I turned away from him and practically sprinted out the front gates and down the hill to where I’d left Mom’s car at the curb. I couldn’t get away from Singletree fast enough. I needed a fresh start.
Another one.
33
Ghostly Departures
Michael
I watched Addie walk away, her white dress almost mocking in its ghostly beauty, it’s symbolism of a fated love between a Tanner and a Tucker. Maybe something like that only happened once, I figured. And our love was closer to the Romeo and Juliet kind than the Lucille and Robert kind. Star crossed, for sure. Maybe Filene just didn’t understand the complications that would arise between us.
“Where’d she go?” Daniel asked as I came back inside the house, which was still draped in cobwebs and fucking creepy.
“She left,” I told him.
“But I thought you were apologizing.” Daniel’s eyes were big and sad, and I realized that he had become very invested in my relationship with Addie—he wanted this to succeed. I’d believed it had upset him when he saw us kissing, that he’d thought I was betraying him somehow, but the opposite was true. And now I was failing my son again because I didn’t have what it took to get the girl back.
“Some things are just too complicated to work,” I told him. “Sometimes it just isn’t as easy as you want it to be.”
He shook his head, his big eyes widening farther. “She loves you, Dad. I know she does.”
Did Addie Tanner love me? I didn’t know. There had been moments when I’d held her close, felt her wrap around me, body and soul, and thought it could be true. But we hadn’t had a chance. We’d never said those words, or anything close to them.
“No,” I told my son as we sat at the kitchen counter. There was a little pile in the center—my watch, the missing ring, a few other shiny items. “It’s for the best. I can focus on you and me now,” I said, but I heard the hollow mistruth in those words.
“That isn’t what either one of us wants,” he said. “I want you to be happy. And I want to eat pizza with Addie and watch movies.” His big eyes shone, filling with tears. “I think maybe I love her too, Dad.”
My heart twisted inside my chest, aching and pulling, trying to find a quiet corner to curl up in to escape the pain. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that white dress disappearing again. Addie disappearing from my life.
“I know you love her,” Dan said, his tone almost accusatory. “And if you say you don’t, you’ll just be lying.”
I stared at him. He was right, of course. In the weeks spent cleaning and painting, hammering and tiling, I’d lost parts of myself. To this house, to the process, to the chance at something new. But mostly, to Addison Tanner. I did love her. But of course I’d been too afraid to even acknowledge it to myself.
“Maybe,” I admitted to my son. “Maybe I do. But it’s too late tonight to do anything about it. Let’s go to bed.”
“Does that mean you’ll do something about it tomorrow?” Dan asked, bouncing on his chair as one of his hands reached forward and gently pushed the old ring out of the little pile to rest in front of me. I ignored it.
“We’ll see.” The oldest Dad answer in the books came out of my mouth without me even thinking about it. It was second nature, routine. And maybe that was part of the problem. I’d been stuck in this routine for so long I couldn’t even see the way out.
As Daniel’s face fell—because all kids know ‘we’ll see’ usually means no—I stopped myself and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Dan.”
He looked up at me. And I saw then the way his cheeks were starting to sharpen, the dark eyes that were becoming deeper, older even. The chin that no longer had the little boy softness. My son was growing up. Maybe it was time I did the same.
“Yes. Tomorrow I’ll do something about it.”
His face broke into a wide smile then, and my son said, “I’m proud of you, Dad.”
34
The Train to Crazytown
Addison
Taking the Amtrak into Penn Station on Halloween had been a mistake. I’d changed out of my wedding dress, but I would have fit in better had I left it on, along with the ghoulish makeup I’d been wearing. The Amtrak was populated with ghosts and zombies, vampires and more Avengers and Superheroes than I could stomach.
I stuck my nose in a book and pretended to read, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart, in fact, was broken.
Part of me thought I shouldn’t have left at all, that if I wanted Michael Tucker, I could tug up my big-girl pants and just tell him so. But the sting of rejection was just too fresh, and he’d basically already told me there wasn’t a place for me in his life. I couldn’t risk being told, once again, that I wasn’t worth choosing.
The closer I got to the city, the more I missed Singletree and all the charm my little town held, even without a certain Tucker. I’d come back because I knew I’d been happy here once. I’d designed a life for myself here once. And now I was trying to fit myself back into that life, but I already knew we’d both changed shapes and I wasn’t going to fit. There were new angles and curves to me that hadn’t been there before Luke left me, before I’d fallen in love with Michael Tucker.
Still, I had committed. I’d had to do something.
So I stepped onto the platform at Penn, immediately swept up in the fecund subway steam, the swell of humanity pressing up the escalators to the concourse. I let the crowd carry me along, up to the subway entrance, and then I rode the red line up to Eighty-Sixth Street, where my couch awaited. Janet had said I was welcome to come tonight, though she and her boyfriend would be out until late.
And as I stood in the crowded subway car after midnight, swaying as the train jolted and turned, I realized I might be the only person not going out that night. New York City was always pulsing with life, but any opportunity for publicly sanctioned costume wearing was a special day—and the citizens took full advantage of the chance to let freak flags fly high and proud. There were far more costumed subway customers than non-costumed folk at this hour, and it made the entire world feel surreal and a little bit insane.