He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
We sat in the sand for a while. I had never felt more lost. I cried a little more, and Jeremiah didn’t say anything, which I was grateful for. There was nothing worse than your friend watching you cry after you just got in trouble with your mother. When I was done, he stood up and gave me his hand. “Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet.
We went back inside the house. Conrad was gone and the living room was clean. My mother was mopping the kitchen floor. When she saw me, she stopped. She put the mop back into the bucket and leaned it against the wall.
Right in front of Jeremiah, she said, “I’m sorry.”
I looked at him, and he backed out of the kitchen and went up the stairs. I almost stopped him. I didn’t want to be alone with her. I was afraid.
She continued. “You’re right. I’ve been absent. I’ve been so consumed with my own grief, I haven’t reached out to you. I’m sorry for that.”
“Mom—,” I started to say. I was about to tell her I was sorry too, for saying that thing before, that awful thing Iwished I could take back. But she lifted her hand up and stopped me.
“I’m just—off balance. Ever since Beck died, I can’t seem to find my equilibrium.” She rested her head against the wall. “I’ve been coming here with Beck since I was younger than you are now. I love this house. You know that.”
“I know,” I said. “I didn’t mean it, what I said before.”
My mother nodded. “Let’s sit down a minute, all right?”
She sat down at the kitchen table and I took a seat across from her.
“I shouldn’t have hit you,” she said, and her voice broke. “I’m sorry.”
“You never did that before.”
“I know.”
My mother reached across the table and took my hand in hers, tight as a cocoon. At first I felt stiff, but then I let her comfort me. Because I could see it was a comfort to her, too. We sat like that for what felt like a long time.
When she let go, she said, “You lied to me, Belly. You never lie to me.”
“I didn’t mean to. But Conrad and Jeremiah are important to me. They needed me, so I went.”
“I wish you would have told me. Beck’s boys are important to me, too. If something’s going on, I want to know about it. Okay?”
I nodded.
Then she said, “Are you all packed? I want to beat Sunday traffic on the way back.”
I stared at her. “Mom, we can’t just leave. Not with everything that’s happening. You can’t let Mr. Fisher sell the house. You just can’t.”
She sighed. “I don’t know that I can say anything to change his mind, Belly. Adam and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. I can’t stop him from selling the house if that’s what he’s set on.”
“You can, I know you can. He’ll listen to you. Conrad and Jeremiah, they need this house. They need it.”
I set my head down on the table, and the wood was cool and smooth against my cheek. My mother touched the top of my head, running her hand through my tangled hair.
“I’ll call him,” she said at last. “Now get upstairs and take a shower.” Hopefully, I looked up at her and I saw the firm set of her mouth and the narrow of her eyes. And I knew it wasn’t over yet.
If anybody could make things right, it was my mother.
chapterthirty-fourJEREMIAH
There was this time—I think I was thirteen and Belly was eleven, about to turn twelve. She’d caught a summer cold, and she was miserable. She was camped out on the couch with balled-up tissues all around her, and she’d been wearing the same ratty pajamas for days. Because she was sick, she got to pick whatever TV show she wanted to watch. The only thing she could eat were grape Popsicles, and when I reached for one, my mother said that Belly should have it. Even though she’d already had three. I got stuck with a yellow one.
It was afternoon, and Conrad and Steven had hitchhiked to the arcade, which I wasn’t supposed to know about. The moms thought they were riding their bikes to the tackle shop for more rubber worms. I was going to go boarding with Clay, and I had my swim trunks onand a towel around my neck when I ran into my mom in the kitchen.
“What are you up to, Jere?” she asked.
