“I did! Can I go get my notebook? I have all the details in there.”
Her mother nods, wearily. “Sure.” When Jasmine has bolted upstairs again, she says, “She’s so full of everything right now. She carries this notebook with her everywhere—school, swimming lessons, the grocery store, everywhere.”
“It’s exhausting to be a working single parent,” I say, but see immediately that it’s exactly the wrong comment. She can be so prickly and defensive. I don’t know where it came from. Then again, maybe that’s me, too. Not that I like admitting it.
“Oh, yeah, Mom, as I was always very aware.”
“Steph. That’s not what—”
“Whatever. I really do need to go.” She pushes back from the table.
Suze covers Steph’s hand. “Finish your soup, darling girl. Your mom didn’t mean anything.”
Steph settles. Gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry, I’m just . . . freaked.”
“I know.”
Jasmine sails from the foot of the stairs to the table, notebook in hand. “Okay! This is about the tsunami in Japan.” She regales us with a dozen bullet-point details.
“That’s amazing,” I say. “It reached all the way to Oregon!”
“But the big problem is, there’s a really big fault off the coast of Oregon, and when it has its next earthquake—”
“Okay!” Steph says, raising both hands. “That’s enough. I’ve got to get going, and I don’t want to have earthquakes and tsunamis in my head while I drive.”
Jasmine pouts. “I was just telling you. They taught us in school.”
“I know, baby,” Steph says. “I have a lot to think about. Can you write it down and send me a letter?”
She shrugs. “I guess.”
Steph blots her lips with a napkin, then pushes back her chair, and all at once my heart aches hard, in worry and loss and a million other mother things. She won’t be gone that long this time, only a few weeks, but then she’ll be gone for ages and very far away and I hate that idea so much, even as I know it’s a great opportunity. Her expression is blank, which means she’s feeling all kinds of things she doesn’t want to feel. “I’m off, then,” she says, standing.
“We’ll walk you to your car.” I hold out my hand to Jasmine, but she has tears in her eyes suddenly, and flings her skinny self into her mother’s body.
“I don’t want you to go!”
Steph breaks ever so slightly, tears welling in her eyes, too, before she can blink them away. She curls around her daughter, kissing her head and then just resting her cheek against her hair. “It won’t be long, sweetheart. You love being at Nana’s house.”
“I want you to live here, too. I want us both to live here, not far away in London.”
“I know,” she says, not disputing it, or arguing, or presenting all the good reasons it will be great, just validating Jasmine’s feelings. “I promise there will be things you love about our new house, too, okay?”
“Okay.” Jasmine nods and pulls away.
Steph rubs her back and looks at me. “I’ll walk myself out.”
So they don’t have to do it all again. I nod. “Give me a hug.”
She wraps me up in a big hug, too, strong arms and soft shoulders and a fierce squeeze. “I’ll call you when I land tomorrow.”
“Text me tonight when you get home.”
“Yes, that too.”
She starts to pull away and I say quietly, “She’ll be okay.”
“I know.”
And then she’s gone. Standing in the doorway, I feel a hollowing out, a sadness that plagues me every time I have to part with her. Or Jasmine. It started when I was a child and forced to leave Amma every summer, and it got worse when I had to leave Suze. It always feels like some important thing is being ripped out of my body.
Chapter Six
Suze
The house scares me. It used to be completely by itself up here, empty and lonely. Now there are other houses, too, but I feel scared anyway. Vulnerable. Too many windows and doors, too many ways for someone to get in. Yul Brynner and I are curled in bed, and I’ve done all my nighttime rituals—no devices for an hour, washed my face, meditated—but I’m still lying here in the dark, hearing things.
The wind is blowing, so that’s probably why I hear creaking and slamming and all the other terrifying noises I log in my book of terrors. Yul purrs beside me, low and soft and comforting, but if someone broke in, would they hurt him, too?