“I don’t know for how long.”
“Did you buy a return ticket?”
“No,” she said.
“But you will?”
“Of course I will,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “I love you. Even if I don’t know what to say, I can tell you that.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said.
They hung up and she put the phone back on its cradle, and then she lifted her suitcase from the bed and set it on the floor. She climbed onto the bed, lay down, interlocked her fingers and placed her hands on her flat stomach, and closed her eyes.
It was full dark in Colleen’s bedroom when she opened her eyes again. She was lying on her side, curled into the fetal position, her hands still cupped to her stomach. It took her a few moments to recognize where she was, but as soon as she realized she was in her bedroom back at her parents’ house, she was able to hear the sound of their voices drifting upstairs from the kitchen below. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the dark ceiling. She had lain right here in this bed and listened to those voices for more than half her life, but this was the first time they had felt strange and foreign. She did not feel like she belonged anywhere or to anyone, and in that moment a glimmer of freedom slashed through her like a knife.
When she sat up, she realized that her head was pounding, and she left her room and walked into the bathroom and sipped water from the sink. She splashed water on her face and opened her eyes as wide as she could and looked at herself in the mirror. She smiled a grotesque smile. She frowned. She whispered, “Oh, I just felt like coming home. I thought y’all would enjoy the surprise.”
Dinner was being made downstairs, and she knew by the smell of it that her mother was making country-style steak, mashed potatoes, and some kind of green vegetable. She knew they would all sit down at the table, where a green plastic pitcher of sweating sweet tea would be waiting. She knew her mother would ask her everything she could think of except How are you and Scott? and Colleen would do her best to answer without rolling her eyes or crying or staring into her lap until her mother got the hint, and the whole time she would be thinking about borrowing her mother’s car and driving to the store for a six-pack of Budweiser and parking by the beach and climbing into the dunes and drinking every single one of them before burying the bottles in the sand and driving home.
But first Colleen would go downstairs. She would eat dinner and drink sweet tea. And she would answer the questions that she was able to answer. And she would say over and over, “We’re fine, Mom. I’m home now. Everything’s fine.”
She turned the water on in the sink again and splashed it over her face. When she turned it off, she heard the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She dried her face and hands with the towel hanging by the sink, and then Colleen peeked into the hallway and saw her mother carrying a tray toward her bedroom.
“Mom,” she said. She turned off the bathroom light, and the hallway fell into near darkness. She could see her mother’s hands where they gripped the tray; the boniness of her arms made her hands appear monstrous. “Mom,” she said again, “are you bringing dinner to my room?”
“Why not?” her mother said. “You’ve been traveling all day. You don’t need to sit downstairs with two old people and listen to them gossip.” She turned and pushed Colleen’s bedroom door open with her foot. Light cut into the dark hallway. She looked back over her shoulder and gave Colleen a nod. “Come on,” she said, “before it gets cold. I’m not carrying this down the stairs to reheat it.”
She set the tray on Colleen’s bed. It was just as Colleen had expected: country-style steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a glass of sweet iced tea. Her mother had wrapped a knife and fork in a paper napkin and left it resting beside the plate.
“You didn’t have to do this, Mom,” Colleen said. She sat down on the bed and picked up the glass of tea and took a sip.
“No, I didn’t have to do this tonight, but I did,” she said. She sat down beside Colleen. “You didn’t have to fly all the way home from Texas today, but you did.”
“That’s true,” Colleen said.
“And I’m glad you did,” she said.
“I feel bad. I should eat with you and Dad.”
“Why?” her mother asked. “So you can hear him grumble about driving back to the Wilmington airport tomorrow morning? Listen to me annoy him with my theories on that crashed airplane?”
“Why’s he going back to the Wilmington airport tomorrow?” She unwrapped the silverware and scooped up a forkful of mashed potatoes. They were salty and warm.
“There’s an FBI guy from Florida who’s coming up to fly that airplane out of here,” she said. “Your father’s picking him up tomorrow morning.” She sighed. “And he’s staying with us for a few days.”
“Here? Where?”
“In the office, I guess,” she said. “I’ll tidy it up in the morning. We’ll worry about it then.”
Colleen cut a piece of steak and swirled it through the potatoes.
“I’m glad to see you eating,” her mother said. “It doesn’t matter how old you get, you’re always happy to see your child eat the food you’ve made for them.”
“It’s good,” Colleen said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had food like this.”
She could actually feel her mother wanting to ask what she and Scott ate for meals in Texas. Colleen had never been a very good cook, and Scott wasn’t either. She would’ve been ashamed to tell her mother that they heated up foil-covered TV dinners in the oven or went out for dinner on nights when Scott didn’t work too late. At that moment, Colleen couldn’t picture a single meal they’d made together in the kitchen since they’d moved to Dallas. Colleen imagined Scott coming home to the empty house and opening the freezer and turning on the oven. She wondered if he was feeling the same heavy loneliness she felt, or if he felt anything at all. It was too much to take with her mother sitting on her bed watching her eat, so she shook the image of Scott from her mind.
“You said Dad doesn’t want to hear your theories on the plane,” she said. “What are they?”
“Drugs,” her mother said. She sat up straighter. “I think it’s a drug plane.”
“You think Rodney Bellamy was flying a drug plane?”
“No, I don’t think that,” she said. “I don’t know how he was involved. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Me either,” Colleen said. She wanted to bring up what her father had told her about Rodney and his wife having a little boy, but she didn’t. She didn’t want her mother to read her face and turn the conversation toward her and Scott and what had happened to them.
“Do you remember the story I used to tell you when you were really little about the Magic House?” her mother asked.
Colleen laughed, more out of surprise than humor. The story of the Magic House had lingered in the corners of her memory since childhood, and she knew she might never have thought about it again had her mother not just mentioned it. “Yes,” Colleen said. “I remember it.”