Dead To You

35. lost in the labyrinth

I found my mother a few minutes later, admiring an azalea bush with fuchsia blooms undulating in the midevening breeze that was becoming cool against the exposed skin of my bare shoulders, the glass of lemon water nearly empty in her hand with a wrinkled napkin tucked underneath one of her fingers, and I realized as I approached that I mistook the concentration look on her face for floral appreciation when she was actually on the phone, spotting the end of her bulky shatter resistant case beside the silhouette of her mouth.

She nodded at me as my heeled sandals clicked on the paved stone in front of the mulched garden beds, an illuminated path branching off toward a gazebo where a few kids I recognized from school were congregated inside, their heels ditched on the ground and their blazers draped over the white painted railings, ties loosened, their legs stretched out in front of them, and their backs slumped against the seats.

I observed them for a moment longer while I waited for my mother to finish her phone call, listening to her occasional uh-huh and right, and I suddenly felt very aware of the fact that I had spent most of the funeral and repast following my mother around instead of with friends of my own, unless one sort of bizarre conversation with Blane Harding counted, which I would be okay if it didn't but Jun had to be around here somewhere, maybe even Dylan.

Even if it we weren't fourteen-year-old freshmen anymore, with dreams of spending every summer rotating through pools and movies and crushes we swore liked us back, the friendship bracelets we never made a little too poignant now, but we had been best friends, all four of us. That had to matter a little, at least in the sense that it did happen, and it did matter, even just once.

I was still staring distantly at the gazebo when my mother ended her conversation on the phone with a sustained sigh from her nose, giving a minute shake of her head while she took the cocktail napkin from against her glass with beads of condensation dampening the paper and stuffed it into the glass beside the black straw.

"That was Nora," she explained, one of her employees from the bookstore, and then she sympathetically tilted her head, something she usually did whenever she felt she was about to disappoint me. She did it when I was eight years old and she told me that because of her allergies we could never get a pet, when she announced the move to Pennsylvania, and then when she and my dad got divorced. I wasn't exactly sure what Nora could've told her over the phone other than the bookstore burnt down that would've compared to any of those. "They're missing a few hundred dollars from the deposit, and they want me to come help them figure it out. Honey, I'm really sorry."

It took me a moment to realize that she wasn't apologizing to me about misplaced money but that what she was really trying to say was that this meant we had to leave early, before I had an opportunity to find Jun or Dylan, or even anyone from Bridgette's family. The thought of attending her funeral and visiting her house for this dinner, only to speak with just her on again, off again boyfriend and Thea Foster, made me blurt out, "That's okay. I'll just get a ride home with someone else."

She hesitated. "With who?"

Probably a cab driver in about an hour and a half. "I know Jun's got to be around here somewhere. I'll ask her to drive me back later." When she didn't respond, instead choosing to press her lips into a thin pensive line, I added, "Come on, please. I don't want to leave yet. We haven't even given her family our condolences yet. Leaving now, after only eating their food, would be pretty rude."

"Well, at least go ask Jun if her parents will drive you home first. I don't want to leave you here if I don't know that you have a way to get back home." 

"Fine," I drawled out, turning on my heel before she noticed how secretly delighted I was that I had been right that if there was anything my mother liked less than a deficient deposit, then it was an ungrateful guest and the thought that she could've been perceived as one. For the next few minutes, I awkwardly slid in between table corners and other guests, mumbling quiet apologies to the servers whenever I came an abrupt stop after nearly walking into one of them, and then laughed politely at an older man who cracked a joke about a traffic jam, but I didn't spot Jun or any of the other Chens in the garden.