What did I really feel? Heather deserved to hear it. Joey deserved to have it said, even if it showed me for what I was.
I stared at my boots, thinking, looking past them, and then really saw them, my right boot, my savings account. My bank, where I stuffed all my hopeless hopes.
“Joey was a song I wanted to sing,” I said. “It was like I was in themoodto sing, maybe it’s a great weather day, early spring when it’s beenso cold, one of those days? Everyone’s windows open for the first time and a radio is playing, oh, I know this song, right? What a great song. But I don’t know the lyrics. Ineverknew them. They might as well be in a different language. The music plays on, the song keeps moving, and I can’t sing along.”
Heather was staring at me in disgust. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I thought we were having fun,” I said. “We argued a lot. About music stuff, you know? What was authentic country and what wasn’t, and whether a kid from, like, Oak Park could play bluegrass—but that’s just aconversation, right? I thought we fit together, that we were kind of, I don’t know… To say on the same wavelength—air quotes—really sounds far too, uh, directional? We were who we were. In one place. I mean not necessarily, you know, going anywhere? But together. And that was enough. It seemed like enough.”
That was the truth but also a lie. It had never seemed like a final destination, not to me. My heart hadn’t been fully in it with Joey, and I’d felt stretched between where I stood with him and where I wanted to be. Some future he wasn’t necessarily a part of.
Heather pulled a tissue from the box at her elbow and pointed it at me. “That’s not enough! Not, even, close!” The tissue, punctuating each word. “You could have been— Did you call itdirectional? God. Howoldare you, Dahlia?”
“Honey?” Sachin said.
“You could have had goals, and built something together, not justhang out,” Heather continued. “Not justhave fun—”
“Hon,” Sachin said, “come on. Dahlia lost Joey, too.”
“It doesn’t seem like she did!” Heather said. “Hon. Seems like she misplaced him, and he spent the week with us, moping around and talking about how he was finally getting it together, how his life was about to change, and he’d quit that ridiculous trampoline place. All the timepretendinghe was here to help set up the nursery.”
Sachin looked at me apologetically. “It’s a boy.”
“Congratulations,” I said, because humans said things like that. I would have said it, either way.
“Pretending he wasn’t waiting for you to call,” Heather said.
I’dcalled. Okay, maybe not until I’d realized the rent hadn’t been paid, but I was still insulted. He could have calledme. “Actually, my phone is—”
“Pretending that when he finally gave you our mother’s ring, you’d wear it.”
We all sat with that for a moment. Somewhere outside, I could hear someone talking, and then there was a sudden bang at the front door, and we all jumped.
“The postal carrier,” Sachin explained. “She talks on her phone through a, you know.”
“Earpiece?” I said.
“Right,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He looked exhausted, but he reached with his other hand for Heather’s, and she let him. His thumb rubbed across hers, a small, tender moment that made me think about all the ways, yes, it hadn’t been enough. For anyone. “Yes,” Sachin agreed. “That.”
31
Hold up. Rewind on what Joey’s sister just said. Joey’s life had been about to change? He’d quit the trampoline place? And—
“There’s… a ring?” I said finally, when it seemed as though neither Heather or Sachin would say anything more.
“I have to pee,” Heather announced, and struggled to wedge herself out of the couch. Sachin tried to help, but she slapped him away.
He watched her until she was far down the hall and then shifted his attention to me. “Their mother’s ring. Dark sapphire, white gold band? You don’t have it?”
“You’re sure he brought it with him?”
“He didn’t bring much with him at all, except his banjo,” he said. Rather darkly, I thought. Maybe Joey’s welcome had worn thin over a week, help with the nursery or not. “This is bad,” he said. “Do you think he was robbed for it?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “I mean, maybe?” If he’d been carrying it, and someone just happened to mug him, then the rock was gone. I had the tiniest bit of relief at the thought, that there was a reason, and it had nothing to do with me.
Shut up! At least Irecognizedthat was the wrong emotion and tamped it down.
“Or he left it in the apartment,” I said.
