Madly (New York 2)

Allie tossed her phone onto the mattress and followed it down. She needed a plan. Not a rescue plan or anything, but some idea of the next step would be useful.

It was just hard to keep going with such a giant black ache in the center of her chest.

She crossed her hands behind her head. The ceiling tiles were ordinary ceiling tiles, white and speckled with holes. One familiar thing among so many unfamiliar ones.

Her father was at least ten percent a stranger tonight. She kept looking at him, surprised by the fact of him in Manhattan.

Bill Fredericks had white hair, short on the sides and at the back, long enough to part and comb on top. It had never thinned or receded, and apparently never would. He’d worked most of his adult life as an engineer at the nuclear power plant in Two Rivers, but the plant was getting decommissioned, so the past few years he’d been involved with that, and this year he’d gone down to part-time.

The day after tomorrow would be his thirtieth wedding anniversary.

He was a big man, but the kind of big like May was, the kind that was just bones and height and breadth. A German body that packed heavy muscle on top of bone like that was its whole job, automatic and without regard to weight.

They looked nothing alike, she and her dad. She’d always looked just exactly like her mother, a younger duplicate, a clone. But her dad was the one who was here, and her mom the one who wouldn’t return her calls.

Her phone chimed with the incoming email receipt for the tickets. She turned onto her side to face her dad. “I’m going to send you the tickets.”

“Just keep them.”

“I’ll lose them.”

“How? They’re on your phone.”

“I lose all kinds of stuff.”

He frowned at her. “Who says?”

“Everybody.”

He just raised his eyebrows at her—the same way he’d looked at her that meant, If “everybody” jumped off a bridge…

“I know, but it’s pretty much true. That I’m always—always screwing up, losing track of things.” Hurting people.

She’d hurt Winston. She’d been trying not to, to disentangle herself from his life so she could move through this next part without dragging him down with her. But she’d hurt him anyway.

“You’ve been tracking an antiques inventory since you were still a kid. Never known you to lose anything.”

“That’s not what I mean, that’s just work. You know I keep most of it in my head, and what’s not in my head—”

“What’s not in your head, you’ve got in a database you paid to have built to your exact specifications. Anyone who thinks you’re always screwing up isn’t paying attention.”

His brusque tone made her mulish. “Matt used to call me flighty.”

“Matt.” He spit the name out. “He came by since you went to New York. Three different nights. First two times, I turned the garage light off and went down the basement. The third time, Ben was there, and I let Matt come in, asked him what he wanted.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“He says he’s worried about you. I say I don’t see why, you’re fine. He says you took off without telling him where you were going. I say I still don’t see the problem. He says you called him up from New York and told him he needs to keep away from our family and learn boundaries. Makes air quotes when he says the word ‘boundaries.’ I tell him that sounds about right. He doesn’t get it, and Ben tells him, ‘He means, “Get the fuck out of here.”?’ So he goes. Makes the saddest face in the whole world, like I stabbed him in the heart. Matt can kiss my ass.”

It took Allie a minute to locate how this story made her feel: proud, and grateful, and immensely relieved. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

“Yeah, but you’da been there, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Tears flooded her eyes. She didn’t know why, really. Her emotional buckets were way overfull, and there was no way to keep them from spilling.

“Hey. No crying.” He stood beside the bed, his knees in her peripheral vision.

“I’m not,” she said, and wiped her face on the pillow. “I’m just leaking.”