Page 108 of The Frog Prince
I’m sorry. C.
I glance up the stairs once more, uncertain if I should go up there and thank her or if anything needs to be said right now. I actually don’t think she needs my thanks right now.
Suddenly I want to go home. I don’t know why; I don’t know what I think home will accomplish, but it’s the one place I most want to be.
I throw clothes into my bag, pen a quick note of thanks for Cindy, and slide the note beneath her door before I head to my car.
Home. Visalia. Mom.
*
It’s not ashort drive home; the trip takes a good four and a half hours without traffic if I’m lucky, and today I’m lucky. I leave my apartment around noon and reach Visalia around four thirty.
I pull in front of the house. It’s a small house, not architecturally interesting, but there are flowers everywhere—Mom’s famous late spring tulips (pinks and purples of course), along with pansies in the front and irises in the back.
Mom’s car is gone, but the front door’s open, and I enter the house.
I’m home. Home. There’s the chintz sofa in the living room, and the acorn-colored framed school photos on the hallway wall. I can see the edge of the kitchen counter as I look down the hall toward the back of the house, the part of the house where we always lived.
Picking up my suitcase, I take it to my former bed room, the one I shared with Ashlee growing up. Her cheerleader stuff is still up all over her half of the room, along with her homecoming tiara and the Miss Congeniality sash she won in the Miss Tulare County Pageant.
My side is sparser. There are books and a silk creeping Charley plant. One old doll still perches next to the table lamp. Photos of high school friends and some of the girls I roomed with at UC Irvine jostle for prominence while dustySeventeenmagazines fight for space with rows of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Danielle Steel paperbacks.
I sit on my twin bed with the white chenille bedspread and see the little girl who grew up here and lay on this bed for hours reading, and who sat for even more hours on the phone in high school, talking to girlfriends. Then there was her diary, the one where she recorded every detail about every teenage crush she ever had.
I wonder if the red diary is still squished between the mattresses of my bed, and I get up, reach between the top mattress and the box springs, and slide my arm around. My fingers bump something rigid and close around a corner.
It’s there.
I pull it out but don’t flip it open. I don’t need to read the entries to remember how I used to pour my heart into it. All those teenage loves and problems, the worries, the hopes, the wishes, the hurts.
I put the diary back. It’s hard being home. It makes no sense; I shouldn’t feel this way all these years later, but Ted should still live here. Bastard Ted should still be our father.
In the bathroom I wash my face, put on some fresh makeup, before leaving a note for Mom in the kitchen. I ask her to call me as soon as she gets home.
It’s after six, and I’m at the Sequoia Mall, getting ready to head to Borders, when Mom calls.
“You’re in town?” she says first thing. “When did you get here? Why didn’t you let me know?”
“It was spur-of-the-moment,” I say, not about to tell her I’m newly unemployed over the phone. “Have you had dinner?”
“I was just going to open a can of soup.”
I shudder. “Meet me for dinner.”
“I can heat some soup for you, too. It’s really good. Progresso split pea—”
“Mom.” I have to stop this, get control of the conversation now. “I’ll take you to dinner. My treat.”
“Oh.”
“Come on, Mom. You love eating out. We’ll go to Estrada’s—”
“They closed, Holly. Years ago.”
That’s right. Why can’t I ever remember that? Estrada’s made the best hot tostadacompuestasin the world. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant; in fact, it was rather dark and plain inside, but the waitresses were so friendly, and they knew Mom, and they knew us kids, and they welcomed us every time with open arms.
Isn’t that just like a small town?