Lori felt like Mom had just handed her the last piece of a complicated puzzle. No, she corrected herself—probably not the last piece. But the last piece that Lori needed to see the picture clearly. To understand.
“That’s why you keep telling me not to get married too young,” Lori said. “So I don’t have a stupid fight with my husband someday and have him die without either one of us apologizing.”
Mom frowned at Lori doubtfully.
“But what do I know, anyway?” she said. “People always have stupid fights.”
Mom and I are really talking, Lori marveled. We can do that now. She and Mom probably had more stupid fights ahead, themselves. But Lori would never again feel like she’d felt in Chicago, when Mom was hiding everything and Lori was lashing out, desperate to learn anything. She’d never again feel like she’d felt the whole past year, when she couldn’t even look at Mom without wanting to scream.
Lori glanced up, and the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign had blinked on again. The pilot came on the P.A. system to announce that they were about to land. Mom went back to her speech.
So we can talk in midair, thirty thousand feet above the ground, Lori thought. Will we still be able to talk after we get home?
Lori wanted to think so. But it was hard to think at all, with so much jumping around in her mind. She stared at the seat in front of her, but her eyes saw a potted tree in a fancy hotel, a street full of dark faces, her brother’s drawings. Over the hum of the plane’s engine, her ears still heard her mother’s voice on tape: “By the grace of God, we’ll get by.” How could Lori go home, knowing what she knew now? How could home still be home, if Lori was different?
The plane angled downward. Lori welcomed the pressure in her ears. She thought about leaning over and telling Mom, You know, I really did think we were going to crash when we were landing in Los Angeles. Then she and Mom could laugh about that together.
But they were already on the ground. The wheels hissed on wet pavement, seeming to say, Almost there, almost there. Almost home. This was the landing Lori had been longing for the entire trip. But it didn’t bring the relief she’d expected. It didn’t feel right.
Lori gulped and picked up her backpack, still feeling jangly and strange. She held it on her knees, waiting.
The plane pulled up to the gate and stopped. People stood up all around her, like puppets on invisible strings. Lori waited while business-people pulled rolling luggage down the aisle, while grandmothers tugged shopping bags behind them. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, Lori lunged out in front of a guy with a shaved head and a ring in his nose.
What’s he doing in Ohio? Lori wondered. She imagined him wandering around Pickford County peering at everyone with the same bafflement Lori had had looking at people in L.A. She giggled, and the guy actually smiled at her, companionably, as if they had something in common.
Maybe they did.
In the ramp leading to the airport, Lori stopped and waited for Mom and Chuck, who hadn’t crowded in front of anyone. So the three of them stepped through the door together, and were practically knocked down by a human torpedo.
“Mom! Lori! Chuck!” It was Emma, trying to wrap her arms around all three of them at once. Lori saw Gram and Mike and Joey waiting right behind her.
“I missed you!” Emma shrieked.
Gram had fixed Emma’s blond hair in a single ponytail, practically on the very top of her head. She looked like a Kewpie doll. Lori felt an unbelievable rush of love for Emma, who wasn’t even born when Daddy died, who didn’t remember a time when Mommy didn’t travel. Lori threw her arms around Emma and lifted her off the ground, spun her around.
“Missed you, too,” she whispered.
“What a nice surprise,” Mom was saying to Gram. “You didn’t have to—”
Gram waved Mom’s concerns away.
“Oh, I knew you had the car, and I know I should be home weeding the garden—wait till you see how much it’s grown—but we just couldn’t wait another hour. Could we, Emma?”
Emma shook her head so hard, the end of her ponytail whipped from side to side. She slid her hand into Mom’s and said, “I had to tell you about my piano recital. I played ‘Frère Jacques’ without making a single mistake, and everyone clapped, and Pop said I was the best eight-year-old in the whole show—”
“Dummy. You were the only eight-year-old in the whole show,” Mike jeered.
“And all of the seven-year-olds were better than you,” Joey added.
Lori regarded her younger brothers seriously.
What if you knew what I knew? she wondered. What if Mom told you what happened when Daddy died? Would you feel like making fun of other people then? But they didn’t know what Lori knew, and Lori was glad. She wanted to protect them. And because she didn’t know what else to do, she got Joey in a headlock and rubbed his hair with her knuckles and said, “Good to see you’re as big a brat as ever.” Mike moved out of range before she could reach him, but he stuck his tongue out at her, and she stuck out hers right back.