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—Amelia Barr
I have never known how to cope with the leaving. Any leaving—my dad, my stepmother, my best friends. Especially my best friends. The worst part is that my best friends and I have left each other so many times. Each time I hope it's going to be the last, and each time it never is.
The first time was eighteen years ago, the summer we were all fifteen, turning sixteen. Lena went to Greece. Bridget went to Mexico. Even I went somewhere that time—South Carolina. Tibby was the one left behind in Bethesda, and she never forgave us for that. Or maybe she did. It was one of the things we never thought to ask Tibby, one of the things we thought we'd have a lifetime to talk about.
That was the first summer we ever spent apart. At the time I thought it would be the only one, but it was just the opposite. It set the tone for the future. Since then, we've never stopped going. Bee went to Alabama, Pennsylvania, Turkey. She disappeared into California for a long time with Eric. Lena went to Greece more than once, though the place wasn't really the important thing. Lena disappears into a feeling where you can't follow her. Tibby went someplace that none of us could follow her. That was almost five years ago, and there are still days when I look for the blink of a text message or the flash of her hair before I remember.
And me, Carmen. I haven't gone anywhere as dramatic as Bee, Lena, or Tibby. I went to Vermont. I went to New York City. Unlike Bee and Tibby, I've stayed put, mostly in New York. Four years ago, when Brian moved to the farm, he invited me to live there for as long as I wanted whenever I wanted. He invited all of us, actually, but I was the only one who didn't take him up on it. I tried it for a while, but it was too much work: the commuting back and forth, dashing for the city at a moment's notice, explaining that I actually liked living in the middle of nowhere. People in the business pretend it's charming when I can tell they're really thinking, "What is wrong with that Carmen Lowell girl?"
So there are Bee and Eric, Lena and Kostos, Brian, and the little ones living together in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania. I go when I can, but it's hard to take a weekend away. It's hard to remember how to drive on the wide and lonely roads. Most of all, it's hard to know that I am the one who did the leaving this time, that it will never be the last time one of us disappears.
—Ogden Nash
Lena sometimes wondered what she was doing with herself. The problem was, she knew what she was doing with herself. Right now, she was standing on a shaky wooden platform four feet in the air, tilting a wooden beam this way and that. "Is that straight?" she called down to Brian.
"A little to the left."
She tilted it to the left. "Now?"
"A little to the right."
"Brian!"
"Just a little more, Lena. That's good."
She balanced the beam on her shoulder while she pounded a nail into place, then looked inquiringly down at Brian. He nodded. "That looks great."
She hoped so. She patted the beam skeptically and jumped down from the platform. "Brian, why are we doing this? Couldn't you have paid for delivery and setup?"
"I thought we could do it ourselves," Brian said. She gave him a look and he shrugged sheepishly. "Okay, I really thought maybe Bee and Eric could do it."
Lena couldn't argue with that. Of the five of them, Bee and Eric were definitely the handiest with a hammer, a level, and all those other tools that Lena had never touched before she moved here. She was an artist, talented with a brush and a palette but not a power drill. This was the sort of thing that made Lena wondered what she was doing with herself.
On the other hand, she thought, turning as the farmhouse door opened and three people spilled out, there were times when she knew exactly why she was here.
"It looks great!" Bridget said cheerfully, shepherding the little girls over to them. Lena tilted her head and tried to see the start of the swingset. It looked something, but great definitely wasn't it.
"Can we play on it, Daddy?" asked six-year-old Bailey, breaking away from Bee and heading for her father.
Brian picked up his daughter and set her on his shoulders. "It's not finished, honey. You can't play on it yet. As soon as we're done, we'll tell you, okay?"
Bailey grabbed a handful of her father's hair in each hand and rested her chin on the top of his head. "Okay."
Lena turned to Bridget, who had just scooped up little Tibby. As always, it gave Lena a jolt to see them together. At almost four, Tibby looked so much like her mother—she had the same hair, like a crown of white feathers, almost invisible in the early summer sunshine. On the other hand, she also had Lena's enthusiasm for art and Carmen's saucy stubbornness. You couldn't say that little Tibby was like just one of her mothers, because there were days when she had three of them. Lena was aware that every day, she and Bee watched Tibby to see what else she had in common with the first Tibby.
"It would look better if you put it together," Lena said to Bridget. She wasn't trying to sound accusatory, but she saw something cross Bee's face, a flash of annoyance or maybe guilt. "You know I'm no good at building things. I'll watch the girls, and you can finish putting together the monkey bars."
"Do you have class today?" Bee asked. She looked at Lena expectantly.
Bridget didn't wear a watch, of course. Lena checked hers out of habit. "Not till evening," she said. Lena taught four days a week at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. She wasn't the youngest faculty member by a long shot, but she was the youngest tenure-track professor, which was one of the reasons she'd agreed to teach through the summer. She expected tenure decisions to be handed down within the next two years, and taking on some extra classes couldn't hurt. Kostos had groused, but she'd resisted, wanting to spend the summer at home this year. More importantly, she wanted to spend the summer with Bee and the girls.
Bridget handed Tibby over to Lena without another word, and Lena watched her climb up the rickety wooden structure. She hoped it would be a lot sturdier once the monkey bars were complete. She shifted Tibby onto her hip, then walked over to Brian and Bailey. "I think we'll go out to the barn and paint," she said. "Want to come, Bailey?"
Bailey only shrugged, but Brian nodded, grabbing her hands and swinging her down from his shoulders. "I've got some work to finish up," he said, transferring Bailey's hand to Lena's. Lena smiled at the gesture. It was so protective, as if they were standing on a crowded city street instead of in the middle of their own rural property. Brian's, really, but they all felt that it belonged to all of them. "Why don't you take her for a while and then bring them both up to the house before you leave for work?"
"Sure," Lena said, and they headed for the barn. It was really a house—Lena and Kostos's house—but they all referred to it as "the barn." It made things easier. Brian and Bailey lived in "the house." Eric and Bee lived in "the little house." Carmen lived in "the cottage." Lena had noticed long ago that no one ever referred to Eric and Bee's house as "the icehouse" or Carmen's cottage as "the hay barn," even though they were no more an icehouse or a hay barn than Lena's house was a barn these days.
Lena set up the little girls with miles of white paper and finger paints, which Tibby attacked with gusto. Bailey was more cautious, spreading neat lines for houses and trees with one finger at a time. She tore off a piece of the paper and carried it to the corner of the studio, guarding her space protectively. When Tibby got too close, Bailey shifted her position, causing Tibby to let out a shriek. "Tibby," Lena said firmly, heading over to prevent a fight or, worse, a waterfall of paint all over the floor.
"I want to see!" Tibby protested, two paint-covered hands on her hips.
"Not till I'm done," Bailey said.
"I WANT TO SEE NOW!" Tibby repeated, her face turning red. Bailey flinched and moved over without another word. Fights with Tibby generally involved volume rather than variety of words. It didn't usually work with any of her parents, Bee and Eric included. It seemed to bother Bailey a lot more than anyone else.
As usual, Tibby was fine once she'd taken a look at Bailey's picture and was happily ensconced on the floor next to her. Lena brought over the paints so that the two girls could work side by side.
It occurred to Lena that like yesterday's fight over who got the last cookie and Saturday's fight over who got to go in the pool first, Tibby didn't care as much about what Bailey had as she did about Bailey herself. She just cared about being with her, around her, near her. Lena couldn't remember Effie being like that as a child, but then, Bailey and Tibby's relationship wasn't much like Lena and Effie's. If anything, they reminded Lena of the first Bailey and Tibby more than anyone else.
—Richard Bach
Carmen was on her way home from the set that night when she got a text from her agent, Lynn. It was short, just two words: Congrats, Tilla! Carmen laughed aloud and came to a halt like a stone in the middle of the sidewalk, which caused several people behind her to grumble and swirl around her. She knew it was extremely uncool, not the sort of thing a polished, professional actress did. She didn't care.
Carmen's career as an actress had had its ups and downs over the years. Most recently, she'd finished a film with Grantley Arden, whom she'd met a few years ago. He'd promised to keep her in mind for a role that could "tear us all to pieces," as he'd said. Carmen had been flattered by his words at the time and even more so when he remembered her while casting for his new picture. That was an up.
On the other hand, there was the way her gig on Criminal Court had come to a sudden end two years ago, in an embarrassingly melodramatic story arc involving a murderous, long-lost twin sister. The producers had sworn up and down that they liked her, they really did, but they thought this would be the most interesting direction for the character … Carmen had been in the business long enough to recognize a lie when she heard one.
She hoped the new project would be another up. It was a children's movie, the basic storyline a very basic one involving magic and princesses and quests and all those things that kids liked. Carmen was looking forward to something that didn't involve a lot of political disasters and crying (or worse, murderous long-lost twin sisters and crying).
As soon as she got to her apartment, she called Lena, forgetting that she had a class tonight and wouldn't be home. She tried Bee, crossing her fingers that Bee was home and would actually answer the phone. Bridget was a lot more settled these days, now that she had Tibby and was surrounded on all sides by Eric, Brian, Lena, and Kostos. Still, she could be annoyingly slippery over the phone. Nine times out of ten, it was faster to call Lena or Brian first and then ask one of them to find Bee. Carmen tapped her fingers impatiently on her granite kitchen countertop and took bets with herself about where Bee's phone was.
She'd narrowed it down to either the silo or the bathtub when Bridget finally picked up. "Hello?"
"Bee!"
"Carma! How are you?"
Bee sounded genuinely interested. Carmen gave her the basic run-down as quickly as she could, trying to gauge the situation from Bee's voice. It was eight o'clock. Tibby was probably in bed. Bailey probably wasn't yet. Eric wouldn't be home from work. Lena was teaching. Brian was probably with Bailey. Carmen could visualize all these people in their own little corners of their Pennsylvania world, and she felt equal parts relief at knowing where they were and sadness that she wasn't with them.
"So my agent texted me tonight to tell me I got the part in the Shaw movie," Carmen went on. There was silence at the other end of the phone. "The children's movie?" she prompted. "Being produced by Vance Shaw? Directed by Maury Litvin? About the magic and the princess and the quest and …"
"Oh! Right. Sorry," Bee said, sounding both apologetic and frustrated. "Sorry, I know you said something about that. Right, so, that's great, Carmen! When do you start shooting?"
"A couple weeks, I think," Carmen said. "We're going to start with the set scenes, so that'll be done here. Then in about eight weeks we move out to the UK for some of the location shooting. Which is why I'm calling. It's a kids' movie, so I'd love for you and Tibby to come visit on the set. Do you think Brian would let you bring Bailey, too?"
Both Lena and Bee had visited Carmen on the sets of her various projects in the last three years. Lena had even been there during the filming of one of the disastrous Lara-Brennan-evil-twin-sister episodes. Until now, though, Carmen had never done a project that was good for kids to visit. Bee loved Carmen, but she wasn't about to let her daughter go to the filming of a movie about terrorist bombings and political coups.
"I'm not sure." Bridget sounded uncertain. "I'd have to ask him."
"Well, will you go ask him?"
"Now?" Bee sounded startled, as if she thought Carmen had maybe meant three years from now.
"Yes, now."
Bee hesitated. Carmen bounced on the balls of her feet. Carmen was a typical youngest child. She didn't wait very well. She and little Tibby had that in common.
"I don't know, Carma," Bee said finally. "I'm not sure it's going to work out this summer."
"What's wrong?" Carmen asked, instantly on her guard. Bee sounded much vaguer than usual. Not cagey, as if she were trying to hide something, but lost.
"Nothing," Bee said. "We're just busy. There's a lot going on."
Carmen watched herself in the mirror that was hanging on the opposite wall. She could see that her forehead was wrinkling. She smoothed out her face as quickly as she could. "What do you mean, a lot going on?" she asked.
She always tried to tread gingerly here. Many people said that raising kids was the hardest and most important job you could do, and Carmen certainly agreed. On the other hand—she glanced at her watch—it was 8:07 p.m. Carmen had left the apartment at 4:03 a.m. If that wasn't a long day, she didn't know what was.
At any rate, there was no point in engaging in competitive lifestyles with Bee. Carmen cleared her throat. "I talked to Lena the other week," she said. "She said she's not going to London this year. She's going to be in Pennsylvania all summer. What else do you have going on?"
"Nothing," Bridget said again. "Just the usual. Kostos is in London, you know, and Eric is working a lot—sometimes he only gets home for the weekends—"
"Wait, what?" Carmen said, appalled. Eric was a lawyer. He worked in New York City, the same as Carmen. The difference was that he commuted and lived in Pennsylvania on the farm. Carmen had known that there were times when he spent a night or two in the city, but not every night. "Is he living here now?"
"No," Bridget said. "He just stays for maybe a week at a time. It's better because then he can come home early on Fridays and not have to worry about work."
There was a faint defensive tone in Bee's voice. Carmen knew to choose her words carefully, which was not one of her strong points. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know. Should I call and see if he wants to go to dinner sometime?"
This was trickier, Carmen knew. She loved Bee, and she had spent more time with Eric in the last three years, but she still felt she didn't know him well. It was the same with Kostos. She loved Lena—she knew the length of her toes and the celery-colored rings of her eyes as well as she knew the angle of Bee's nose and the curves of her calf muscles—but that did not mean that she loved Kostos.
"Don't bother," Bee said testily. "He's working, remember? That's why he's staying in the city. He's not moving there."
"Oh. Right. So, no dinner," Carmen babbled. "Sorry, I just thought he might be … lonely or hungry. I can tell him the names of some great places." Actually, now that she thought about it, she might not be able to. Carmen knew a lot of great places that big-shot directors and producers, not an immigration lawyer, could afford.
"Don't bother," Bee said again. "So, listen, about your movie. Congratulations, Carmen. I'm really excited for you, but I don't think we're going to be able to make it. Maybe next time, okay?"
"Okay," Carmen said. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror as she and Bee finished their conversation, which was perfunctory and half-hearted at best. When they'd hung up, Carmen sat down to a very late dinner of salad and Diet Coke. She picked at her lettuce and found herself wondering, not for the first time, what she was doing here when her best friends in the world were together on a farm in Pennsylvania.
—Brand Gamblin
The next time Bridget got a phone call that she had to fob off gracefully was two days later. Her twin brother, Perry, called from California, where he lived in Davis with his wife and son. Violet was thirty-seven and Joseph was two. Bridget loved them all. Her only regret about Perry and Violet's satisfaction with their veterinary careers was that she didn't get to see them as often as they all would have liked.
"So what do you have planned for the summer?" he asked once they'd caught up on the various other people in their lives.
"Not too much," she said, watching out the window as the sun set along the roof of the house. "Taking care of Tibby and Bailey most days. Putting up a swingset." The sun dipped a little more and winked at her as it caught the edge of the slate shingles. "Um, Carmen invited us to go to England while she films a movie." No need to mention that they wouldn't be going.
"Wow. That's great for her," he said. "When does it start?"
Bridget wrinkled her forehead. She was sure Carmen had told her when filming started, but she couldn't remember. "September," she said.
"So you'll be around till then?"
Perry wasn't usually this obsessed with dates and times. Bee wondered what was going on. "Yes," she said cautiously.
"Because Violet and I are thinking of taking a little vacation. Not long, just a week or so. We thought we might fly to D.C. and see Dad, then rent a car and drive up to you. Then we could fly out of New York. How does that sound?"
Her brother? Here? Bridget found herself looking around the little house, almost frantically. There was the stain above the front door that they kept meaning to repaint. There was the side door that didn't quite shut. There were the low ceilings and narrow doors because after all, this place was built for ice, not people.
She tried to imagine Perry, Violet, and Joseph visiting her in this place, her home. The new family of Vreelands, three perfectly normal, happy people, and Bridget, who still felt that she had to work at it sometimes.
Did she want them here?
"Um, I don't know, Perry," she found herself saying, trying to fake exactly the right note of excitement and disappointment. Carmen could do it, but Carmen wasn't here. "I mean, we'll be around, but we'll be really busy. Brian has all these projects he's working on, so I've been taking Bailey a lot more"—not true—"and Eric is working all the time and hasn't been home for weeks"—also not true—"and I'm just not sure this summer is a good time." True.
"Oh, man, that's rough," Perry said with such genuine sympathy that Bridget felt even worse. "I didn't know Eric was having to work that much. I don't know how he does it, with the commute and all."
"Oh, uh, yeah," Bee said. She wasn't sure what to say next, but Perry seemed especially sweet and vulnerable right now, so she decided to push that as hard as she could. "So, maybe not this summer. But how about in the fall? Have you talked to Dad already?"
"Yeah," Perry said. "We may still go to D.C. to see him. Spend a week at the museums. But I don't know. It's a long way for a short trip."
Bridget realized that her heart was pounding. She wasn't sure why. She exchanged a few more pleasantries with her brother and hung up the phone.
What was she doing?
She glanced out the window. Brian's lights were out. He was probably wandering around the fields with Bailey. Lena's lights were out, too, though that didn't mean she was gone. Knowing Lena, she might be in there, talking on the phone with Kostos in the dark or sketching in the dark or sleeping, even though it was only—Bee checked her phone—eight-forty-five.
She tiptoed into the blue-and-green room where Tibby was sleeping deeply and peacefully. It was hard to believe that only an hour ago her daughter had been awake, alert, and loudly protesting that she didn't need to sleep. Then, the instant her head hit the pillow, her eyes closed. Tibby was good at changing her mind, just like the Tibby before her, but she hadn't quite gotten to the point where she was willing to admit it.
Bridget stood with her hand on the high wooden headboard of Tibby's bed, hardly daring to breathe in case she might wake her.
I love you so much, she thought, watching the blankets rise and fall. Her daughter slept with a denim hippo and a very uncuddly-looking armadillo, which were tucked in against her sides like sentries. Her hair looked white in the last gasp of nighttime sun through the curtains. For a second, Bee wondered if this was how Greta and Marly had felt, each looking down at a sleeping blonde baby through the years.
Bridget loved Tibby. She loved her more than she had thought possible when she first found out about her, when she walked away from Eric and slowly walked back. She wondered sometimes if this was how Marly had loved her and Perry when they were small.
Had Marly loved them too much, or not enough? Either one seemed terrifying, and either one seemed possible.
—Winston Churchill
Over the Independence Day weekend, Lena flew to London to visit Kostos. It wasn't a holiday for him, of course, but she decided to put her five-day weekend to good use.
Lena loved Kostos, but she never really felt comfortable in his London house. It wasn't the house where he'd been living with Harriet—he had been eager to sell that one, as if to prove the strength of his love for her—but it was just as impressive, and, in some ways, just as cold and foreign to Lena.
She told herself it didn't matter. Kostos didn't really live in London. Lena certainly didn't live in London. For most of the year, he worked out of New York City so they could live together on the farm. They usually spent the summer together in England, and he worked from his European office for three months. Lena knew that he still wanted that connection to his London team, even though his summers here had been getting shorter and shorter.
That was part of her problem with his house, Lena knew. Even though she'd spent two summers in it, it didn't feel like hers. Their little barn in Pennsylvania felt like hers, but of course it made no sense for Kostos to fly to the United States for the weekend when Lena could much more easily come here.
They made love on the rainy summer evenings and went out to dinner at restaurants where Kostos could name all the principal investors. On the Fourth of July, he brought out a DVD of fireworks exploding behind the Houses of Parliament, and even though they both laughed hard enough to make their stomachs hurt, they still watched it.
"I miss you," Kostos said, his hand skittering up and down her bare back as they watched the fireworks from their king-size bed in the master bedroom. Sadly, the DVD did not include any music with the fireworks show, so Kostos had put the "1812 Overture" on the stereo. It was almost like having the music synced up with the explosions.
Lena smiled against his shoulder. "How can you miss me? I'm right here."
"I mean at the other times. While I am here, and you are in Pennsylvania." Kostos rested his chin on her head and she could hear and feel the rumble of his voice.
He always said "in Pennsylvania" or "in the United States." Never "home." She knew that to him, "home" meant Santorini. Perhaps their little barn in Martins Creek would never be home to him, but it still made her sad sometimes.
"I miss you too," she said, stretching her arm across his chest. "But it's been good, being home for a summer. The farm is beautiful at this time of year."
He nodded. "I know it is." They were both quiet for a moment while the orchestra worked its way up and down the scale. "I've been thinking," he said, "that since you did not come with me in June, you might think of spending July and August here."
"Here?" she repeated.
"In London," he said. "With me," he added unnecessarily.
She got a funny feeling, one that she couldn't explain. It was equal parts pleasure and horror, the instinctive kind that made her want to recoil from his words. "Kostos, I can't leave for the rest of the summer," she said. "I have classes, students …"
Lena could feel him smile, but his voice was sad. "I know," he said. "I just wanted you to know that I want you here with me."
She thought about it for a moment. It would be nice to spend the next month and a half in London. His house was beautiful and he lived in a lovely, posh part of the city. He had many business associates and employees who were polite, even friendly. She could take classes and work on her painting. She could decorate this house and make it more hers, not just his. But she could not imagine picking up and leaving home today. It wasn't just the idea of being away from school and her students that bothered her, although those were important. It was everything else—being away from Bee and Tibby and Carmen, even Brian and Eric. Kostos was important, but he was just one person. Her little family in Pennsylvania needed her.
Lena didn't know how to explain all this to Kostos, nor did she think he was really waiting for an explanation, so she merely moved over his body, covering him like a quilt. He sighed, and she could hear both disappointment and acquiescence in the sigh.
Her iPod, which was sitting on the bedside table, chirped with a message. It was even nice enough to show her a preview of the message, which was from Carmen. Lena smiled and turned her attention back to Kostos. One of the great things about iPods was that it didn't matter which continent you were on. As long as she was hooked up to Kostos's (ridiculously fast) wireless network, she got emails and messages much faster than phone calls. He even had wireless in the house in Oia, even though they were rarely there.
They were just starting to think about dinner when Lena's iPod chimed again, this time with a message from Brian. Lena glanced at it in a perfunctory way, expecting a hello or a short story about something cute that Bailey had done or maybe even a picture. Instead, the words she saw made her stomach go cold.
COME HOME. IT'S BEE.
She was nude and hungry; she was one part soft with contentment in the visit with Kostos and one part chilly with fear. Her clothes were all over the house. Her sketchbook had been abandoned in the kitchen. Lena saw none of these things, only Brian's words, and Kostos's face when she turned to him in horror. "I have to go home," she said.
Where do you go?
Are you looking for answers
To questions under the stars?
—Dave Matthews
It was not the way that Carmen liked getting called off the set, and Maury Litvin's face made it clear that he didn't like it either. Still, her PA was under strict instructions to bring Carmen any important calls and to consider any calls from Lena or Bee important. In practice, this meant that Rebecca was often stuck with the job of weeding out the "I just saw a rerun of Criminal Court on TV" calls from the truly important ones, but that was why Carmen paid her a lot of money every week.
"Hello?" Carmen said. She turned her back to the crew and took the opportunity to scratch her side. The corset she was wearing was not the least bit comfortable, and she'd been wearing it for several hours. That was one of the drawbacks that no one ever mentioned about a period piece.
"Carmen, it's Lena," Lena said unnecessarily. Her voice was rushed and tremulous. "Have you seen Bee?"
"What?" Carmen asked, confused. "No, of course I haven't seen Bee. Why would I have?"
"Because she's missing."
Carmen had experienced unadulterated, abject horror a few times in her life. There was the time they'd lost the Pants. The time her mother went into labor with her half-brother, Ryan. The time they'd lost Tibby. This ranked right up there, worse than losing the Pants. Worse than losing Tibby, even, because now she knew it was possible. Now she knew what the worst possible outcome might be. "Oh my god," she said. "What—where—I don't even—what happened? Where are you? Where is she?" As the words were out of her mouth, Carmen realized how stupid they were. "What's going on?"
"I don't know." Lena's voice was shaking. "I was in London with Kostos over the weekend, and Brian sent me a message. It turns out she left Tibby with him on Saturday, and then she just … never came back."
"Where would she go?" Carmen asked. Her mind was racing. She pulled herself away from thoughts of water, the rivers and lakes of Pennsylvania, and tried to think logical thoughts. She told herself that Bridget was not hurt. She was fine. The water in Santorini was harsh and greedy, but Bridget was in Pennsylvania, and the creek for which the town was named was slow and lazy and gentle. "Have you talked to Eric?"
"Yes, I've talked to Eric," Lena said, a little snappishly. "He was the first person Brian called. He hasn't seen her or talked to her, but he came home from the city last night."
"What about … well, what about her dad? Perry?" Carmen knew even as she spoke that there was no way Bridget would be with one of them. The first place she would go was to her best friends, and they were all right there. Carmen and Eric were an hour and twenty minutes away by car, but they were still a lot closer than Maryland or California.
"I called them," Lena said. "But neither of them have heard from her either. Perry said he talked to her last month and she sounded sort of distant, but he hasn't talked to her since."
"And she didn't leave a note?" Carmen asked. When Bridget had left Eric almost four years ago, she'd left him a note. Not an explanation, but a small pathetic request that he not worry. Eric still had that note. He kept it in his sock drawer and sometimes Bee caught him rereading it. Each time he would hug her tight, as if he never wanted to let her out of the room, never mind out of his sight. Carmen knew all these things because Bee had told her. She could not imagine Bee doing that to Eric again.
"No note. No nothing," Lena said. Her voice was strained. Carmen could hear different emotions vying it in—frustration, anger, fear—and at the moment, it sounded like frustration was winning. "Her bike is gone, but the car is here."
"Wherever she went, she can't have gone far," Carmen said with more confidence than she felt. Over the years, Bee had proved that a steady walk was the best way to put distance, both physical and emotional, between yourself and any situation you didn't want to deal with.
On the other hand, Martins Creek wasn't like New York City. It could take hours of cycling to get to anything remotely resembling civilization. If Bridget was just going for the sake of going, they might never find her. If she was going someplace in particular … where would she go?
"Well, anyway, I know you're in the middle of something," Lena said. "I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to ask if you … if you …" She trailed off because she didn't actually sound sorry, nor did she seem to have a clear idea of what she'd wanted to ask Carmen.
"I'm sorry," Carmen said. She glanced over her shoulder. Litvin and even Rebecca were now giving her the evil eye, and she was conscious of the fact that she was on the clock. "I'll call you after I'm done tonight. Keep me posted."
"I will," Lena said and hung up. Carmen was left staring at Lena's name and the picture that accompanied it. She knew she had to turn around and go back to being Tilla, but she needed a second to mask her horror and fear. Mostly she was thinking that as sorry as she'd been to be the one who left her friends, she'd never wanted anyone else to do it. She'd never wanted Bee to think she needed to do the leaving.
You're not afraid to go in
You're not afraid of going under
But I don't know how to swim
When the time has nearly come I remember I can run
Run
—Catie Curtis
On her back, Bridget had her pack. On her feet, she had sturdy shoes. On her legs, she had heavy denim jeans. They were too hot for July, but she thought she might need them when she got where she was going. She thought she could be more confident about this logic if she knew where she was going.
When she'd left Eric, nearly four years ago, she'd taken very little: her pack, her sleeping bag, her bike. This time, she didn't have any more luggage, but what she did have seemed much heavier. Her passport. Her debit card. Pictures of Tibby. These were the things a grown-up carried.
They were also, though she didn't want to think about this, things that would enable her to leave forever. She wouldn't need to call Eric and borrow money this time.
The sun hovered above her right ear as she biked away from Martins Creek, away from Lena and Tibby. Far behind her, off in the distance behind her left shoulder, were Eric and Carmen, and she was leaving them too. She pedaled fast, as though one of them might come after her and try to snatch her back. She didn't know why, but she didn't slow down.
—T. S. Eliot
Lena felt like she was stuck in a whirlwind. Bee's disappearance had made her crazy. Far worse, the effects of Bee's disappearance—Eric coming home in the middle of the week, Carmen's frantic every-two-hour calls from New York, Tibby's tantrums, Bailey's bewildered silence—were making her crazier by the minute.
Lena liked a nice, ordered life. She took the same roads to work every morning. She ordered the same sandwich in Sandella's every day. Yet, for a girl who liked her routines, she seemed to get caught up in tornadoes that threw her routines off completely. Usually these tornadoes were Kostos's fault. Sometimes they were Effie's or Tibby's—the first Tibby's.
Lena supposed she should have been prepared for something like this from Bee, but the truth was, she hadn't. Bee had been fragile for years, but Lena had grown accustomed to her fragility. She had been treating it as a matter of course rather than something that could break apart at any moment. Now that it had, Lena wasn't sure what to do.
Unfortunately, neither was anybody else. Eric was here, but there was nothing he could do. Brian would have done anything to help, but he still had a business to run. And the truth was, there wasn't anything Lena could tell him to do. If Bridget were a lost dog, they could call vets' offices and put up fliers and run a classified ad in the newspaper. Because Bridget was a lost person, all they could do was file a missing persons report with the Martins Creek Police Department, who were not very helpful.
"What did you do last time?" Lena asked, sitting with Eric on the steps outside the little house. An exhausted Tibby had finally been wrestled into bed, shrieking and crying, and Eric looked equally exhausted. The lines in his forehead and around his mouth made him look a thousand years old. Lena had always known that Eric was a few years older than they were, but as they'd all gotten older, it mattered less and she noticed less. Now she noticed it all over again.
"Last time?" Eric asked.
"The last time she did this," Lena clarified. Eric looked at her oddly, not saying anything. "When she was pregnant," Lena prompted.
Eric looked down at his hands. "I didn't do anything."
"What do you mean, you didn't do anything?"
"Just that. I didn't. I knew—" Eric shrugged a little, a defiant shrug. "I knew it's just how she was. I knew nothing I did would change that."
Lena felt her mouth open a little bit, then a little bit more. "Are you kidding? You didn't—you didn't—"
He was glaring at her now, open annoyance on his face. "Can you think of anything I should have done?"
"No," Lena said, which was true. At least it had been true that time. Bridget had come home then. Would she come home now? "But weren't you worried?"
He stood, and Lena realized how tall he was. How old, and how powerful. How upset. "Of course I was. I'm worried now. But I thought—" He hesitated, and his voice cracked. "I mean, back then, I understood. Tibby had just—and she was so upset. Now, I just don't understand." Lena stood, too, but he turned away from her. "I mean, she seems fine now. She has Tibby. She has all of you. I thought—I thought she would be fine now that she had all of you."
He walked away, and Lena did not follow him. He needed to be alone, and he was correct in saying that neither of them could make a suggestion that would bring Bridget back right now. Instead, Lena sat back down on the step, wrapped her arms around her legs, and thought.
It was true, what Eric had said. Lena had thought that with all of them being more or less in the same place, they would be fine. Bridget would be fine. Bailey would be fine. Little Tibby, when she joined them, would be fine. The Sisterhood had spent their first almost-sixteen years together, barely a phone call or an IM away, and they were always fine. Shouldn't the same thing have applied now that they were adults?
Well, clearly, it hadn't, or Bee would be home with them right now, where she belonged. Somehow, something about their friendship had been lost. What was it? Who had fallen down on the job? Was it Bee's fault? Was it Carmen's? Was it Lena's?
She leaned her head back against the screen door and stared up at the vast canopy of stars. One of the things she loved about this home was the expanse of stars in the sky, the sweet-smelling air and the quiet of day and evening. They were not that far from the city, but Martins Creek was much more rural than Bethesda, where they'd grown up, or Providence, where Lena had lived for so many years. It was nothing like London. Perhaps Lena had lost something by not agreeing to spend the summer with Kostos in London, but hadn't she gained things as well?
She thought about lost things and people. Some were small, like the glittery pink bouncy-ball that Effie had thrown down a sewer grate when Lena was six. Others were big, like the Traveling Pants. Still others were so big that she knew she would never get over them, like Bapi and Valia and Tibby, their third-born sister.
Despite the heat of the summer day, it was getting cool now that the sun was down. Lena shivered a little and rubbed her arms. Her thoughts chilled and stilled and began to smooth out. Where had she lost all those things? The bouncy ball in Bethesda. Her heart in Oia that first summer. Her virginity in a bedroom in Providence. Valia and Bapi and Tibby and the Pants, so big in spirit that they were almost like another person, in Santorini.
Lena sat up straight in the dark. She stood up and looked around for Eric. She had no idea where he'd gone, so she walked up to the farmhouse, where she found Brian tucking Bailey into bed. "I'm leaving in the morning," she said, going around him to kiss Bailey good-night. "I know where Bridget is."
Was blind, but now I see.
—John Newton
Lena's sense of time and place were hopelessly scrambled by the time she got to Fira, the principal city of Santorini. She'd taken three flights, each with their own complicated mix of security and delays and layovers. Then she had to hire a cab to take her from Fira to Oia. You could still rent mopeds, as she and Effie had done that first summer, but she hardly trusted herself to change her American dollars into euros, never mind drive a moped.
Bapi and Valia's house was still there, closed up, waiting patiently for its owners to return. Lena knew it was there, but she didn't go up the hill. Instead she walked down, toward the beach.
It was a warm summer day. The last time they'd been here, nearly four years ago in October, it had been cool and the beaches were mostly deserted by then. Today that was not true. The sand was crowded with people, blankets, towels, umbrellas, books, sunblock, clothing. Lena always thought of Oia as being the place where her roots were, but looking around, she was reminded that to other people it was simply a vacation destination.
She was sure she would find Bridget on the beach, but she didn't think Bee would be anywhere near these crowds of sunning swimmers. She walked down along the water, looking for the least crowded spot. It took her quite a while, but finally she got to the stony precipice overlooking the water where they'd all sat together. It was the only time they'd all been in Greece together, and it didn't surprise Lena that she found Bridget there.
Bee's pack was on the rock behind her. She was leaning back on her arms and had one leg dangling off the rock. She didn't look up as Lena approached in her big noisy shoes. "How'd you find me?" she asked.
"I knew," Lena said simply, hauling herself up on the rock next to Bridget. It took some effort. She sat down next to her. "I lose everything here," she said by way of explanation, looking out over the water. "But Kostos once said I gain things, too." Bee still didn't look at her. "Also," Lena admitted, in the spirit of full disclosure, "I waited until the charge showed up on your debit card. Eric checked for me."
Bridget made a noise then. It might have been a laugh or a sob. She scooted over on the rock so Lena could sit down.
Lena gathered up a handful of Bee's long, lovely yellow hair. It was dry and stiff, like it had been dunked in salt water many times without being washed in between. She rolled it around her wrist like a bracelet and felt it soften. "Bee, come home," she said to the twist of hair. "Please."
Bridget looked down at her knees, and her hair slid out of Lena's grasp. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because …" Bridget shifted, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I don't think I can do this."
"Do what?"
"This. Any of this. Being a mom."
"You're a great mom," Lena said automatically, though she doubted that that was going to convince Bridget. She knew there was more to the story than what Bridget was giving her right now, but she also knew she'd have to wait for the rest as it came.
"I don't know," Bee said. "I look at Tibby and I think … I'm so scared sometimes, Lenny. What if I'm like my mom? I think about it and I worry about it and I don't know what I can do …"
"You're not like her," Lena said, even though there was no denying that in ways, Bridget was. To start, there was her hair, the hair of Marly and Greta and now Tibby. But in all the important ways—"You're stronger than she was, Bee."
"How do you know that?" For the first time, Bridget looked at Lena. "You don't see me all the time, Len. You're not always there—"
"What are you talking about? We're together all the time, Bee—"
"I mean really there." Bee rested her chin on her knees. "I love Tibby, but every day I'm afraid I'm going to hurt her. I love her, and Eric says if I love her, I won't hurt her. But if my mom loved me—"
"She hurt you anyway," Lena finished. She was beginning to get a sense of the circles that Bee's fears had been running in the past four years. "Sometimes we hurt the people we love, Bee. But you have to try not to. You can't expect running away to fix the problem."
Lena was thinking, too, about the other night, when she had wondered if something about their friendship had been lost. Now, looking back, she realized that it was true. She'd been expecting their physical closeness to take care of the rest, to make everything the way it was when they were growing up. Instead, had she gotten so focused on building swingsets and cooking dinner and taking day trips to visit Carmen that she'd forgotten to pay attention to what Bridget was really thinking and feeling?
In a way, she realized, watching the war of emotions on Bee's face, their little farm in Pennsylvania was like the Pants. They'd expected the Pants to keep them together, and in the end, they'd done too good a job. Three years ago, they'd expected that living together would keep them together, but it was more complicated than that. Friendship, Lena realized, didn't keep on going simply because you'd been friends once. Friendship was something you had to work at every day.
She thought of Kostos in London right now, probably at work, looking solemn and handsome and steady in his suit. You're right, she told him in her heart. This is what I've gained.
"Come home," she repeated, and remembered the year she'd gone to Mexico to bring Bridget home. How long ago that seemed now. She held out her hand to Bee, who stared at her for a long time before she took it.
—A. A. Milne
By the time she and Lena had landed in New York, picked up Lena's car from the parking garage, and arrived home at the farm, Bridget was feeling pretty exhausted, not to mention a little sheepish. The way everyone treated her—Brian relieved, Bailey cautious, Tibby jubilant, Eric distant—confirmed that she was right to feel the way she did. It didn't help that Lena kept hold of her wrist and led her into the little house like a found dog, who needed first a bath and some food and then a sound scolding.
Brian and Tibby hugged her, Brian long and wordlessly, Tibby with gleeful abandon. She hardly seemed to notice that her mother and her extra mother had been gone. Bailey came solemnly to Bee and petted her dirty hair as if to be sure that it was really her, then hugged her too. Bridget might have been worried by her reaction, but Bailey had always been the quiet one. She'd spend some time with her tomorrow, see what thoughts were spinning around behind those serious eyes.
Eric was the unpredictable one, the one who looked like he wanted to simultaneously smother her with kisses and chain her up in a doghouse. He waited until she'd had a shower and dinner and they'd put Tibby to bed together before starting in on her.
"What were you thinking?" he asked angrily, pacing across the lawn next to their little house. He sounded angry, which was new to Bridget. Eric had addressed her in many ways over the years; most often the emotion that won out was resignation, a combination of impatience and amusement. He had been sad before, worried, angry, guilty, regretful. Tonight, maybe for the first time, she was witnessing the depth of his anger, that fire that drove his success at work. She shrank back from it. She was relieved not to be the opposing counsel in a courtroom right now.
"I don't know," Bridget said to his back. He spun around and marched toward her for another pass. "I'm sorry." She knew it wasn't good enough, but she wasn't sure where else to start. "I'm sorry. I know it was wrong. I know I shouldn't have left."
"No, you shouldn't have," Eric agreed, his voice stiff. "So why did you?"
It was a complicated question. Too complicated, Bee thought. She'd told Lena, but Lena knew her as well as she did. On the other hand, Eric knew her too. He knew about her mother. She'd told him almost the first time they met.
She tried to explain. She told him the same things she'd told Lena; there wasn't a longer or better explanation to give him. It sounded clumsy to her own ears, and eventually she ran out of words that made sense. They were too jumbled to mean anything.
She stopped talking for a while and took long, slow breaths; she felt like there might be tears in the bridge of her nose. She sank down in the evening-damp grass and just watched him for a while, until he finally ran out of steam and came to sit next to her.
"Bridget." He touched her equally damp hair, washed clean of the salt of the Caldera. "Why didn't you tell me how you felt?"
"I'm sorry," she said again, wondering how many times she would have to say it. The list of things she could keep apologizing for was long, possibly endless.
"Don't tell me you're sorry. I don't care about that. Just tell me. Why didn't you talk to me?"
"You weren't here a lot," she said. She knew it was a poor excuse. She saw that now. She wondered why it hadn't occurred to her then.
"So why didn't you talk to Lena or Carmen? Or Brian? Or even Kostos?"
Bridget was silent.
"Did you talk to anyone?"
She knew the answer was no. She knew he knew it, too. She'd blamed Lena for not noticing her private sorrow, but then, it went both ways. Bridget had people here with her twenty-four hours a day. What excuse did she have for her silence?
It occurred to her then. This is how my mother felt. Marly had cut herself off from the Septembers, then Greta, then Franz. She'd chosen to isolate herself so effectively that by the time she was actually gone, hardly anyone remembered that she'd been there.
It was like a gap had opened up in Bridget's stomach. She could see what Lena had meant. She had to try as hard as she could to make things right, today and tomorrow and the day after. Bridget might feel like her mother, she might even be like her mother, but that didn't mean she had to do the same things that her mother had done.
Eric inched over toward her. "Bee, I'm sorry too. I know I've been working more this year. I'll change that. I can be home more." He picked up a handful of hair in each of his fists, clutching it gently, like it was precious stuff. "If that's what you want."
She put her hands on either side of his face, pressing her forehead against his. "It's what I want."
—Carmen Lowell
For the next couple of days, Bridget was hardly ever alone. Eric, it seemed, had been serious about coming home more, and he was actually in the door by seven o'clock each day. Lena cancelled a couple of her classes to stay with Bee, and even Carmen made it to Pennsylvania for the weekend. It made Bridget feel guilty, like they thought they couldn't trust her, but then, that was probably what they thought.
About a week after Bridget's unceremonious return home, Brian came over to the little house with Bailey. He had a big project to complete by the end of the week, so Bee had agreed to watch Bailey for the day. Bailey gave her a good-morning kiss and ran upstairs to wake Tibby—who, from the sound of it, was already up and dismantling the furniture.
Brian greeted her with a little hug. "Thanks for taking Bailey today," he said. "She was a little tired of sitting in front of the TV while I debugged."
"No problem. I think we might go down to the pond," Bee said. She waved toward the kitchen table. "You want some coffee?"
"No, thanks. I need to get started. Oh, and I brought you some stuff." Brian scooted a trash bag across the kitchen floor toward Bee. "Just some of Bailey's old clothes. Things she's outgrown. If you want anything, keep it, and if not, I'll send the rest to Goodwill."
"Oh, thanks," Bee said, dropping to the floor and upending the bag of clothes. Most of it looked like cold-weather stuff, which was good. It would be fall before they knew it. There was a soccer uniform from last fall, the first and only time Bailey had played. That had been Bridget's suggestion. Bridget loved Bailey, but now she had to admit that a career in soccer did not seem to be in her future.
She tossed aside a fleece hoodie printed with reindeer and came across a pair of jeans. They were stamped with red hearts on the back pockets. She blinked for a second as memory assaulted her and then laughed. "Oh, Brian …"
He smiled too. "I know. As soon as I saw them, I knew she had to have them."
Bridget picked up the tiny jeans and cuddled them to her chest, breathing in the smells of laundry detergent and sunshine. "Thank you," she told him. She sized them up with her eyes and set them in the pile to keep. If they didn't fit Tibby now, she could save them for her to grow into. But without needing to check, she knew they would.
Will the fire still burn on my return
Keep the path lit on the only road I know
—Emily Saliers
When I went to the farm at the end of the summer, we held another Pants ritual. Eric came home with me; we drove together. He's been commuting to the city more often, trying to spend more nights at home. When we got there, we found that Kostos had flown in for the weekend, too. We left the girls with the boys while we escaped to the hayloft in the barn. Kostos had been a good sport about vacating his own house while we did this in privacy.
We had everything—the Pop-Tarts, the Cheetos, the gummi worms—even if we didn't eat it all. We lit the candles and sat in our circle, now more of a triangle. We didn't have a video camera, because none of us cared enough to use one. Bridget has no patience for technology. Lena wouldn't have known how to turn it on. I could have used the video camera on my iPhone, but there was no place to set it up. In the end, we decided we didn't need it. We would remember these things ourselves.
Bridget showed us the pants—which, of course, had fit Tibby perfectly. "They're not like the Traveling Pants, though," Lena pointed out. "They don't fit Bailey anymore."
"I know," Bee agreed. "But not all pants can be magical."
"And they do travel," I pointed out. "They traveled to the little house."
Lena rolled her eyes. "All the way from the farmhouse, huh?"
We laughed together, and in that moment, I didn't want it to stop. I knew my friends' laughter as well as my own. I knew Lena's quiet breaths and Bee's open-mouthed roar. In fact, I probably knew my friends' laughter better than my own, because I hate to watch myself on camera.
There should have been one more sound in there, Tibby's gasping chuckles. As always, when the three of us were together, I felt her absence even more strongly. When we are all together, there should be four of us. There are times when the three of us are taking care of little Tibby and it feels so wrong, because she's not the Tibby we expect to be there with us.
But there are times like tonight when we're growing together more and more as a sisterhood of three. There are times when I feel like it's going to be okay for us and for little Tibby, too. She and Bailey are a lot more than seventeen days apart in age, but they'll have their own sisterhood, one that is both the same as ours and also different.
"I can't believe you're going back to New York tomorrow night," Lena said.
"I can't believe it, either," Bee said accusingly.
"You know what?" I surprised myself by saying. "I can't believe it either." I stretched my arms over my head, then stood up and starting doing jumping jacks. "But you know what?" I suggested, bouncing around like a woman doing bad eighties aerobics. "Maybe I'll come back next weekend."
Because the thing we've all learned this summer, I hope, is that it doesn't matter which one of us leaves or how many times we disappear. What's important is that we always come back.
—Attributed to John Allston