Cloudburst (37 page)

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Think nothing of it.”

He smiled and then started to lie back in the coffin and reach up to close the lid.

“No!” I screamed.

“Excuse me, Miss,” one of the cemetery workers said. “But we think you should find your way home now.”

“What?”

“We're finishing up here. The service is over.”

I looked at the two of them. The other man had boarded the backhoe.

“You can't do that,” I said. “He's not really dead. He's just . . . doing this to annoy his parents. Ryder!” I called down to the coffin.

“Holy crap,” the cemetery worker on the backhoe said. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Now, just take it easy, Miss,” the one near me said. He put his hand out, palm up. “You back up a little now, please.”

I looked at him, down at the coffin, and then back at him.

“We've got a problem out here,” I heard the man on the backhoe say to someone on his cell phone.

“Now, you just take it easy, Miss,” the first worker said to me.

I backed away. Then I turned and ran to my car. As I was driving off, one of the police patrol cars that was at the funeral pulled in. In my rearview mirror, I saw the cemetery workers talking to the two patrolmen. I sped up, made a turn, and then pulled over to catch my breath. I sat there with my eyes closed. I was shaking so much that my teeth tapped. I hugged myself and rocked from side to side until I heard someone tap on my car window and saw both the patrolmen standing there. When I didn't respond, one tried to open the door, but it was locked. He knocked on the window again.

“Please unlock your door, Miss, and step out of the car.”

“Leave him alone!” I screamed. “If you hadn't put those handcuffs on him and dragged him away . . .”

He knocked on the window again. “If you don't open the door, we'll have to break the window,” he said. “Shut off your engine, Miss.”

I took a deep breath and did as he asked. Then I unlocked the door, and he opened it quickly.

“Are you all right?”

“No, but there's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing I can do about it,” I said.

“Can you step out of the car, please? Please show us your license, too,” he said.

“I don't have my license with me. I got into my car without taking anything,” I said.

“Where's your car's registration?” he asked. I recalled Donald telling me that he had put it in the glove compartment. I reached in, found it, and handed it to the patrolman. I stepped out of the car.

“Sasha Porter?”

“Yes, that's who I am.”

“What went on back there at the cemetery?” he asked.

“My boyfriend was buried,” I said.

“Boyfriend?” the other patrolman said, more to his partner than to me.

“Yes, he was my boyfriend.”

“Well, look, are you all right? Would it be better for us to take you home?”

“I'm okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“We'll follow you home anyway,” the patrolman with my registration said. He handed it back to me.

I nodded and got back into the car. I drove extra slowly and carefully, but they followed me all the way back and
waited while the gate opened. Then they followed me up the driveway. Mrs. Duval came out onto the portico as I drove up. Someone, perhaps her husband, had alerted her to the police car.

The two patrolmen got out of their vehicle when I got out of mine.

“What's wrong?” Mrs. Duval asked me.

“I don't know where I would begin if I tried to answer that, Mrs. Duval,” I said, and kept walking toward the front door.

“Is Mr. or Mrs. Porter in?” one of the patrolmen asked her.

“No, this is the home of Donald and Jordan March,” she replied. “Miss Porter is their . . .”

I paused to hear what she would say.

“Foster child.”

“Is either of them at home?” he asked.

“Not at the moment, no. Is something wrong?”

I didn't wait to hear what they would say. I went into the house and hurried up the stairs. The image of Ryder sitting up in his coffin was still so vivid. I was still so shaken by it.

I actually went up thinking that he might just phone.

18
Changes

O
nce I returned to my room, I didn't leave for the rest of the day and night. Mrs. Duval brought me dinner and threatened that if I didn't eat everything, she'd have Jordan take me to the hospital. I ate, mindlessly chewing and swallowing. Afterward, I tried to do something else—read, watch television, go on the Internet. I even tried to practice on the clarinet, but every time I started to do something, I stopped to remind myself that Ryder was gone from my life as quickly as he had entered it. I lost interest in anything I did and slipped back into my dark depression. Before I was forced to talk to anyone else, I went to sleep.

I didn't have to go to school the next day, of course. This was the Tuesday that Ryder and I had first planned to spend rowing on the lake, having our little picnic, and just enjoying each other's company. When Jordan saw me, she insisted that I remain home the following day as well.

“You look very tired, Sasha. I know how devastated you are. Emotional fatigue is always deeper than mere
physical fatigue. I'll have the schoolwork you missed on Monday picked up for you,” she said. “And we'll do the same tomorrow. You really need a little more rest before you return to your regular schedule at school.”

She had been gone all day Monday and was not home until sometime in the evening. I knew that Mrs. Duval had told her what the policemen had said, of course, but she didn't mention it. She didn't ask if I had gone to the cemetery, either. I had the feeling that she was tiptoeing around me, afraid that she might light one of the fuses inside me.

Later that morning, Jessica called, hoping to give me a full, detailed account of the cemetery service, but I told her I didn't want to hear any of it. Of course, I didn't mention that I had been there, too.

“I understand,” she said, her voice dripping with disappointment. “Everyone is so upset and confused. There's been so little information. Can I just ask you if you had any idea that this might happen?”

“No, you can't. Return to sender,” I said.

“Huh?”

“When mail is undeliverable, the post office writes ‘Return to sender.' ”

She was quiet. I think I was frightening her. “You're coming to school tomorrow, right?”

“I believe I'll miss school again tomorrow.”

“When are you returning to school?”

“I don't know. I could be there Thursday. I could be there Friday or maybe not until next week.”

“You are coming back, though, right?”

“I'll be back,” I said in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. She was silent again. I sensed that she didn't know what to say.

“Sasha, are you all right? I mean, I know you have to be very upset and all, but—”

“Thanks for calling,” I said, and hung up.

On Wednesday, as she had promised, Jordan sent Alberto to pick up my work at the end of the school day. It didn't occur to me until sometime that afternoon that Donald had still not returned from his trip, wherever that was and whatever it was for. I recalled that he had left on Friday because we weren't going out to eat, and that would enable him to come home sooner. It had been nearly a week. What did he mean by ‘sooner'?

Although she didn't say anything about it, I could see that Jordan was disturbed by that or perhaps something even more serious. She wasn't making her usual daily attempts to cheer me up or get me to avoid thinking about Ryder Garfield. In fact, to me, she looked even more withdrawn than I had been. I saw the way her eyes drifted, realized the long silences between things she said, and watched her move through the house almost like someone who was sleepwalking. I also saw my concern echoed in both Mrs. Duval's and Mrs. Caro's faces after they had looked at her or heard her speak. If she was doing any of this to get me to think about something else, I thought, she was succeeding.

“I might not be home for dinner tonight,” she told me later that afternoon. She stopped by the sitting room near the front entrance. I had been wandering about like
a lost soul myself all day. My schoolwork was little or no challenge. I had finished it all quickly, but unlike what I usually did, I didn't read ahead in any textbook. I think I had ended up in the sitting room because it was a room in the house besides my own in which Ryder had been. I recalled how he had run the palm of his hand over the piano, his face full of appreciation. I sat there staring at the piano, envisioning him and smiling to myself.

“I hate leaving you to eat by yourself,” Jordan added, “but it's unavoidable.”

“What's going on?” I asked. I thought it was time I did. She was wearing a conservative beige business suit, but her makeup was quite understated for her.

At first, she didn't look as if she would say anything. She shook her head and started to turn away, but then she stopped, and her shoulders shook.

She's crying,
I realized, and leaped up to go to her.

“What is it, Jordan?” I wanted to add,
Whatever it is, it can't be so terrible.
I was thinking only of Ryder. What could be more terrible? “What's happened to upset you? Did something happen to Donald? Is that why he's still away?”

She turned slowly, tears hanging off her lower lids as if they had been caught trying to escape. “No, nothing has happened to him yet.”

“Yet?”

“I'm meeting with my attorney. She's a high-powered divorce attorney.”

“You're getting a divorce?”

She nodded and took a step toward me. “When I had that conversation with you at the lake, I already knew there
were very serious problems between Donald and me. I wasn't completely honest. We had been with our marriage counselor for a while, but that didn't help us. Donald always found an excuse to cancel. Besides, he wasn't being forthcoming at those sessions, anyway. Half the time, he was manipulating both me and the therapist, but I wasn't completely stupid. I wasn't meeting friends for lunch all those times he thought I was. I was meeting with a private detective.”

“Why?”

“A few times, I had caught Donald lying to me about his trips. I didn't make a big deal of it. I realize now that I should have. Once, his office actually called here looking for him, and his office manager, Charlie Daniels, had to admit that Donald wasn't on any business for the firm. He didn't tell me where he was. He didn't have to. I suppose I always knew this day would come,” she said. “I was in denial.”

She looked as if she was struggling to breathe. I stepped back as she went to sit in the nearest chair. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and pulled up her shoulders like someone who had just been insulted. I stood there waiting.

“However, I assure you I'm not going to be like most of my divorced girlfriends and pretend that my getting half of his assets wipes away the pain and suffering he has caused me. I'll find the money he's hidden overseas, too. I won't be civilized about any of it.”

“Donald is definitely having an affair, then?”

“No, not an affair. Affairs,” she said, looking up at me. “Although my friends will think it, I'm not some poor, naive
woman taken by surprise. I suspected that his being around all those pretty very young women was too tempting for him to resist.”

She sucked in her breath and looked at me again.

“I tried to keep all of this from you right now, pretending nothing was seriously wrong. Children are always the ones who suffer the most when this sort of thing occurs, and with what you're going through, Sasha, you don't need any more grief, especially someone else's.” She reached for my hand. “I know you're very fragile at the moment. You have your own deep psychological and emotional pain. I'm sorry now that I brought you into all this, but I have never regretted having you here. In fact, you've been my joy and salvation.”