Missing You 1-5 Page 3

  “Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. Rob had lived with his mom in a pretty nice farmhouse—old and small, but well-maintained—outside of town. They’d been pretty close, for a parent and kid. Rob had more or less been supporting her. I wondered if he resented Just-Call-Me-Gary for taking all that away.

  “Well,” I said. Because what else could I say? “I’m happy for her, I guess. For you both. That things are going so well.”

  “Thanks,” Rob said.

  Then Ann came over with our drinks and the chips and guacamole. My “usual” is a frozen strawberry margarita…only without the alcohol, since I’m not twenty-one. I saw Rob look at it in surprise, and couldn’t help grumbling, “It’s virgin.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then he blinked. “It has an umbrella in it.”

  “Yeah?” I shrugged. I took the tiny paper umbrella out, closed it, and tucked it into the pocket of my jeans. I am saving them. I don’t know for what. “So what?”

  “I just never would have pegged you for an umbrella-drink kind of girl,” Rob said.

  “Yeah,” I said again. “Well, I’m full of surprises.”

  Rob didn’t say anything more about my choice of drinks after that. There was a brief discussion over specials, but both Rob and I said we weren’t ready to order yet, and Ann went away again, leaving us with the menus and our drinks.

  I took a small sip of my margarita. I always take tiny sips, to make it last. The margaritas at Blue Moon—that’s the name of the restaurant—are expensive. Even the virgin ones.

  “And your folks?” Rob asked. “How are they doing?”

  This was so surreal. I mean, that I was sitting there in the Blue Moon with Rob Wilkins, politely discussing our families. Like we were both grown-ups. It was sort of blowing my mind.

  “They’re fine,” I said. I didn’t say anything else. Like, “Oh, and by the way, my mom still hates your guts. And you know, I’m not so sure she has the wrong idea.”

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “I see Doug from time to time.”

  Doug? My brother hated it when people called him Doug. What was going on here? Since when had Douglas started getting so pally with my ex?

  “He told me Mike was spending the summer with you,” Rob went on. “Ruth’s brother, too, I see. Or is he just visiting?”

  “No, he’s with us until September,” I said. “They’re both crashing—he and Mike—while they work internships in the city. So did your mom sell the farm? I mean, when she moved to Florida?”

  Which was my subtle way of asking what HIS living arrangements were. Because I was trying to figure out what he was DOING here. In New York, I mean. Suddenly, it had occurred to me that maybe he was here to, like, break some kind of news. Like that he was getting married or something.

  I know it sounds stupid. I mean, for one thing, what would I care if he WAS getting married? I was just a girl who’d had a puppy-dog crush on him since the tenth grade. He didn’t owe me any explanations, even if I HAD made the mistake once of telling him I loved him in a barn.

  And why would he come all the way to New York just to tell his ex-girlfriend he was getting hitched? I mean, who even does something like that?

  But these are the crazy things that go through your head when you’re, you know. With your ex.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve still got the farm. Or, I should say, I’ve got it. I bought it—and the house—from my mom.”

  Which didn’t prove anything either way. You know, about whether or not he was seeing anyone.

  “And,” I said, desperately trying to think of things to talk about, instead of the only thing I WANTED to talk about, which was what on earth he was doing here in New York. “Are you still working at your uncle’s garage?”

  “Yeah,” Rob said, squeezing the slice of lime that had come with his beer in through the narrow opening of the bottle. “Only it’s not his garage anymore. He retired. So he sold it.”

  “Oh,” I said. Lots of things had changed in Rob’s life since I’d been away, I could see. “Well, that must be weird. I mean, working for somebody else after working for your uncle for so long.”

  “Not really,” Rob said, taking a swig from his beer. “Because he sold it to me.”

  I stared at him. “You bought your uncle’s garage?”

  He nodded.

  “And your mom’s house.”

  He nodded again.

  Withwhat ? I wanted to ask. Because when I’d known him, Rob had never really been hurting for cash. But he hadn’t been rich, either. At least, not rich enough to buy out someone else’s pretty profitable business.

  But I couldn’t ask him that. What he’d used to buy out his uncle, I mean. Because we aren’t exactly on those kinds of terms. Anymore.

  “What about you?” Rob asked. “How are you liking school out here?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell him the truth, of course. That I hated Juilliard and had been miserable every freaking minute since I’d started there.

  Besides, I was still thinking over what he’d said. He’d bought his uncle’s garage. He was only in his early twenties, and he already owned his own business.

  Just like my dad. I mean, my dad owns his own business. Several, actually.

  And my momdefinitely approves of my dad.

  “Doug says you’re doing really well.” Rob started fiddling with his silverware again. “In school, I mean. First chair in orchestra, or something?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t point out how many hours a day I had to practice to keep it. First chair in the flute section at Juilliard, I mean. “But I’m taking a break for the summer.”

  “Right,” Rob said. “Doug says you and Ruth are doing some kind of summer arts program for needy kids?”

  Douglas, I was realizing, had said a lot. I was going to have to call him when I got home and ask him just what in the Sam Hill he was doing, telling my ex so much about me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty cool. I like it a lot. Better than playing in the orchestra, actually. The kids are fun.”

  “You always did like kids,” Rob said, smiling for the first time since I’d opened the door and found him outside it. As always, the sight of that smile did something to my heart. Stopped it, more or less. “You were always great with them, too.”

  There was an awkward silence. I don’t know what he was thinking during it. But I know I was thinking that things had been a lot better when I’d stuck to just that. Working with kids, I mean. It was when I agreed to start trying to find grown-ups that everything had gone to hell. Between Rob and me, I mean. And, actually, for me personally, as well.

  “That’s kind of why I’m here, actually,” Rob said.

  I glanced at him over the rim of my margarita glass. “What? Because of…kids?”

  “Yeah, basically,” Rob said.

  Without another word, I took a huge slurp of my drink. And got a brain freeze. And choked.

  “Whoa,” Rob said, looking concerned. “Slow down, slugger.”

  “Sorry,” I said, wincing because of the brain freeze. I stuck the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth because that is what is supposed to cure ice-cream headaches, like the one I suddenly had.

  But I didn’t know of any cure for the heartache his words had induced.

  Because it had all become clear. Why Rob was here, I mean.

  He wasn’t just getting married. He was having a kid.

  That had to be it.

  And why not? He had his own place now, not to mention his own business. He was his own boss at last. The next natural step was marriage and a child.

  Which was great. Really. Just great. I was really happy for him.

  But why had he felt compelled to come all the way to New York to tell me? Couldn’t he have just sent me a wedding invitation in the mail? That would have been a lot easier to handle than…this. I mean, did he have to come all the way here to rub my face in it?

  “The thing
is,” Rob said, leaning forward a little in his chair. He had clearly seen that I’d recovered sufficiently from my frozen-drink headache. The heartache? That was still going on, but I guess I was doing a better job of hiding that than I had the brain freeze. “I know things have been…well, weird between us. You and me, I mean. The past two years or so.”

  Weird.That’s what he called it.

  Whatever. At least he realized how long it had been. Since things had ceased being hunky-dory (they had never been perfect) and started being…well, what he said.Weird.

  “But we’re still friends, right?” Rob’s big shoulders were hunched as he leaned towards me. The ladylike little table at which we sat—the one decorated all over in mosaic tiles, which had always suited Ruth and me just fine—suddenly seemed too small, dwarfed as it was by Rob’s man-sized body. “I mean…maybe we aren’t—whatever we were—anymore.”

  Right. Whatever-we-were. That was the word for it, all right. Because what had we been, really? We hadn’t really been lovers, because we’d never made love.

  But I had loved him. A part of me still did. Maybe more than a part of me.

  Because I’m a complete moron.

  “But we’ll always be friends, won’t we?” Rob wanted to know. “I mean, after everything we went through together.”

  I thought he meant the number of times we’d been unconscious in each other’s presence, from being smacked over the head with various large, heavy objects.

  But then he added, “Detention at Ernie Pyle High. That’s gotta bind people for life, right?”

  I smiled then. A tiny smile. But a smile just the same. Because itwas kind of funny.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

  “Good,” Rob said, leaning back maybe a fraction of an inch and his shoulders losing a pinch of tension. “Good. Okay. So, we’re still friends.”

  “Still friends,” I said. And took another fortifying sip of frozen margarita.

  Because I really don’t want to go to his wedding. Not even as friends.

  “Then it’d be okay if I asked you,” Rob said, starting to tense up again—I could tell by the way one of his denim-clad legs began to jiggle a little nervously beneath the tiny table—“I mean, as a friend—”

  Oh my God. What if he’s about to ask me to be his kid’s godparent or something? I wondered who the kid’s mother was. The blonde from the garage that day? God. I had so known he was lying when he’d said there was nothing between them.

  “So,” Rob said. “Here’s the thing—”

  I took a deep breath…and held it. Really, I’m a very strong person. I mean, I have lived through a lot in my nineteen years, including a schizophrenic brother, various fistfights brought on by people calling said brother cruel names, being struck by lightning, being stalked by the paparazzi because of a superpower caused by said lightning, sent to Afghanistan to help in the war on terror, and so on.

  Heck, I’ve even endured two semesters of music theory at Juilliard, which, when I think about it, was almost as bad as the war had been.

  But never in my life have I felt more need for courage I knew I didn’t actually have than I did at that particular moment. I held my breath as Rob said the words I so didn’t want to hear:

  “Jess. I’m getting married.”

  Except that’s not what came out of his mouth. What came out of his mouth instead were the words:

  “Jess. I need you to find my sister.”

  Four

  “You need me to WHAT?”

  He lowered his gaze. Apparently, it was too much for him to look me in the eye. Instead, he stared at his beer bottle.

  “My sister,” he repeated. “She’s missing. I need you to help me find her. You know I wouldn’t ask you, Jess, if I wasn’t really worried about her. Doug’s told me you don’t…well…dothat anymore. He told me the war—well, that it really messed you up. And I totally understand that, Jess. I do.”

  He looked up then and hit me with the full force of those baby blues.

  “But if there’s any way…anyway at all. If you could just give me ahint about where she is…I’d really appreciate it. And I swear afterwards I’ll go away and leave you alone.”

  I stared at him.

  I should have known, of course. That it wasn’t ME he wanted. Not, you know, that I’d ever once entertained the idea, since opening my door to find him standing there, that that’s what he’d come for. To try to get back together, I mean.

  And I will admit, it was a big relief that he wasn’t here to tell me about his impending nuptials with Karen Sue Hankey, or whoever. Not that I cared what he did anymore, or who he married.

  I just don’t feel like I should have to know about it.

  But to have come all this way to ask me to find someone—when he knew perfectly well how all of that finding people crap had messed me up—

  Well, okay, he didn’t know, really, since I’d barely spoken to him since it happened. The war, I mean. And the part I’d played in it.

  Still, he had to have read it in the papers. He had some nerve coming here and asking me to—

  Then suddenly something else hit me, and I looked at him confusedly.

  “You don’thave a sister,” I pointed out.

  “Yes,” Rob said evenly. “Actually, I do.”

  “How could you have a sister,” I demanded, sounding angrier than I’d meant to, “and not even tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t know about her myself,” Rob said, “until a few months ago.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe this. I really couldn’t. I mean, first my ex-boyfriend shows up at my door, and not even because he wants to get back together with me. Then he pulls out some kind of ghost sister. Seriously, this is the kind of thing that only happens to me. Wait’ll the TV show’s producers got a load of this. “Did your mom put her up for adoption, and not tell you, or something?”

  “She’s not related to my mom,” Rob said.

  “Then how can she be your sister?” What was he trying to pull? Did he think I’d lost my MIND during the war, and not just my psychic powers?

  “She’s my dad’s kid,” Rob said.

  And then I remembered. You know, that Rob had a dad, too. I had never met him, because he’d left Rob’s mother when Rob had been just a baby. Rob had always been reluctant to discuss his father—didn’t even go by his father’s last name, which was Snyder, but his mother’s—until the day I’d accidentally stumbled across a photo of him, and dreamed about his whereabouts.

  Which happened to be—for want of a better word—jail.

  Rob had been even MORE reluctant to talk about his dad when he realized I knew where he was.

  I just sat there staring at him. Because I seriously couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

  “So…your dad’s out of jail?”

  It was Rob’s turn to wince.

  “No,” he said. And I realized I’d never actually said it before. You know. TheJ word. It had always been an unspoken acknowledgment between us, back when we’d been—whatever-we-were. “No, he’s still there. But before he got sent away, after he and my mom got divorced, he met someone else—”

  Understanding finally dawned.

  “So she’s your half sister,” I said.

  “Right.” Rob reached for a tortilla chip, scooped up a large amount of guacamole with it, put it in his mouth, and chewed. I doubted he was even tasting it. He was just eating it to be doing something with his hands, which always seemed to have needed to be doing something, since the day I’d first met him, either messing with an engine or folding over a paperback or kneading a rag. “I didn’t know about her until she wrote to me this spring. See, she wasn’t getting along with her mother, and so she started writing to my dad and he told her about…about me and my mom. So one night she called, and…well. It’s something, to find out you have a little sister you never even knew you had.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. Actually, I couldn’t. I was just saying th
at to say something.

  “Her name’s Hannah,” Rob said. “Hannah Snyder. She’s a great kid. Really funny and kind of…well, feisty. Like you, a lot, actually.”

  I smiled wanly. “Great,” I said. Because, you know, that’s the image I want the guy I’m in love with to have of me. Funny and feisty, like his little sister. Yeah. Thanks for that.

  Not that I’m in love with Rob. Anymore, I mean.

  “Things were…well, Hannah said things weren’t great for her at home,” Rob said. “I mean, with her mother. She was into some things—Hannah’s mom—that she shouldn’t have been into. Drugs and stuff. And men.” Rob cleared his throat and concentrated on dipping another chip. “Men who Hannah said made her feel uncomfortable. You know, um. On account of her getting older, and them—”

  “Paying unwanted attention to her?” I asked.

  “Right,” Rob said. “And I didn’t think that was such a hot environment for her to be growing up in. So I started looking into what it would take for me to become her legal guardian until she turns eighteen. It wasn’t as if her mother wanted her around. Since school was out, she—Hannah’s mother—said it would be all right if Hannah came for a visit.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. But I wasn’t really listening. A part of me was wondering how Rob could ever think he could get a court to give him guardianship of his little sister when he was on probation.

  Then I realized he probably wasn’t on probation anymore, for whatever it was he’d done. He’d been a juvenile back when he’d done it, and now he was over twenty-one. That was probably part of some sealed court record somewhere, and now that he was a business and home owner—a contributing member of society—it couldn’t come back to haunt him.

  And I would probably never, ever know what it was he’d done that had got him put on probation in the first place.

  “So a week ago, I picked her up from her mom’s place in Indianapolis,” Rob went on. “And Hannah came to stay with me. And everything was great. I mean, it was like we’d grown up together and never been apart, you know? We both like the same stuff—cars and bikes andThe Simpsons and Spider-Man and Italian food and fireworks and…I mean, it was great. It was really great.”