The Right Kind of Wrong Read online

  "Vince did them." I turn around and Grandma is shuffling into the kitchen. She flicks on the light and plops down in a chair.

  "Of course he did," I mumble.

  "He's not as bad as you made him out to be."

  "That's debatable. Just because he lost his parents doesn't excuse what he did."

  My grandmother tisks. "Kara Mae, you remember what it's like to lose someone."

  I slam my hand down on the counter. "Yes, I do. And you didn't find me plagiarizing anything, did you?"

  Grandma gestures towards the empty chair. "Sit."

  I huff but sit down across from her. I really look at her and it's the first time I've really seen her in a long time. The woman from the old pictures is still there, but her face is now a beautiful map of wrinkles. How did I miss that when I lived here? Every valley and crevice reminds me of the years I've had with her. Her bruised and blotched hand reaches for mine. I let it stay. She looks into my eyes and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with her other hand.

  "Let it go, Kara. You're going to spend so much energy hating the boy, you're going to miss out on the things you can gain from him. Plus, it sounds like you two need each other if you want to win this competition."

  I groan. "I don't need him, Grandma. I almost lost everything I worked for because of him. I had to clean up the mess he put me in. We're only doing this project together because we have no choice. Doesn't mean I have to like it."

  I run my hands over the slick table cover and avoid meeting her eyes. I've never lied to my grandmother. I've never had to. But I don't tell her that I'm the one that let Vince take my part of the project. That I'm the one who should carry the blame. I don't tell her I'm holding onto a grudge because the rest of me is so damn angry at everything else. It feels natural to be angry at Vince, too.

  Grandma shakes her head and gives me a pained smile. "You're as stubborn as your grandfather. Don't know a good thing when it falls into your lap."

  I get up and kiss her forehead. "I need to get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow. Night, Grandma."

  Vince is waiting at the top of the stairs, his arms crossed.

  "Goodnight, Vince." I hope he hasn't been standing there long.

  He grabs my arms and pulls me into him so his mouth is near my ear.

  "Let's get one thing straight. I don't need you either. But we both need to win this competition and I will do whatever it takes to get us there. Got it?" His whispered words drip venom.

  This side of Vince is giving me whiplash. I pull away from him and clear my throat. "We have a busy day tomorrow. Be ready at eight."

  He moves out of my way and I walk to my bedroom. His door slams shut. I slam mine louder, determined to have the last word.

  Because, I always do.

  Light pours into my grandparents' room. Little window decals cause bits of color to dance along the walls. I snuggle under the blankets, wanting just a few more minutes of slumber. Once I'm awake though, there's no falling back to sleep. Stupid body.

  I pull my favorite pair of sweat pants and a sweatshirt from my suitcase and go down to the kitchen. Grandma stands at the sink looking out the window. When I reach the bottom step she turns and her eyebrows rise in surprise.

  "I see college has done some good for you. Up before seven, I can't believe my eyes."

  "Well if it wasn't for the light pouring into the bedroom, I might still be perfectly comfortable in bed. I don't know how you slept up there for so many years without the light bothering you."

  "I never could sleep well after your grandfather got up for work. I'd stay in bed for maybe another half hour before I'd get so bored, I'd get up and get going. You just don't remember because you slept until noon."

  I smile. "What can I say? I was a teenager." I point to the coffee pot. "Is that fresh?"

  "Just made it. Help yourself."

  I fill half of my mug with coffee and the other half with fresh milk. "I'll be outside for a little bit."

  It's the type of morning that dew and fog mingle with the chill and stillness in the air. I love these mornings. I don't have to close my eyes to pretend I'm in a dream world. I remember sitting in this exact spot wishing for the day I could leave. Now that I'm back, it feels as if I never left.

  The screen door screeches against wood and Vince slips out, cradling a coffee mug. He sits on the other side of the porch swing, his foot pushing us back and forth.

  "Morning." His voice crackles.

  "Morning. I see you found the coffee."

  "Yeah, Elaine had a mug waiting for me."

  "She likes you."

  "I know." I hear the smile in his voice.

  I stare at the misty landscape and inhale. Crisp, fresh air fills my lungs.

  "It's nice out here. Is this what it's like all the time?"

  I nod. "Pretty much. Even in the dead of winter when it's freezing, the snow covers everything like a white blanket. Especially out here. Because there's not a whole lot of traffic, it stays pretty clean."

  "I've never seen snow."

  I turn to him. "Really?"

  He laughs. "Remember, Nevada and California. The only two places I've ever been. Except for now."

  "Wow. I can't imagine never seeing snow. It's one of the things I miss when I'm in California."

  He shrugs. "Can't miss what you've never had."

  "Touché." We sit sipping our coffee, watching the mist and dew fade. The heat starts to creep in around us. Vince's words from last night replay in my mind over and over again. You're the one who should apologize.

  I desperately want to. But I don't, because I'm selfish. I want to hoard the silence.

  Just as I'm ready to get up, Vince nudges me in the ribs. "I'm sorry about last night."

  I rub the spot where his elbow dug in. "I'm sorry, too."

  He runs a hand through his hair and rests it on his neck. "I'm not good at this whole apologizing or explaining thing. Clearly. I'm just hoping we can forgive and forget."

  My grandmother's words from last night whisper in my ear and I try to give Vince a sincere smile. "If you're good then I'm good. So are we...?"

  "Good? Yeah. We're good."

  I get off the swing and take his empty coffee mug from him. "Great. Then go get ready. We have a busy day ahead."

  One of his sideways smiles settles on his face and he follows me into the house. He bounds up the stairs while I wash out our mugs in the sink.

  "What's on your agenda, today?" Grandma asks.

  "I'll probably take Vince around town. Show him Grandpa's favorite spots. We'll be stopping by the cemetery. You want me to take anything when we go?"

  Grandma shakes her head. "No, I was there a couple weeks ago. "She rests her hand on my shoulder. "Tell him hello for me." I clasp my hand over hers.

  "I will. Need anything else while we're out?"

  "I don't think so. Make sure you show him the memorial wall. I think he'll enjoy that."

  I smile and head for the stairs. "You're right, he will."

  As I get to the top of the stairs, the bathroom door opens and I nearly run into Vince, who’s wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

  I'm frozen in place as my gaze skims over his bare chest,. Water droplets still cling to him. Don't look at his face. Just get to your room. I mumble a "sorry," and duck into my room before he can say anything.

  I pull out every item of clothing I brought and try to gauge what I should wear today. Am I expecting to be on camera? What if I run into someone I know? How should the girl who's made it big in California dress? I made damn sure when I left that's what people believed I was going to do. Four years later, I have absolutely no idea what making it big means.

  I pull on a long boyfriend tee with a pair of skinny jeans finished off with cowboy boots. I look at myself in the full-length mirror in the corner of the room and am stunned to see a reflection of someone I used to know. The old me. The girl who didn't give a shit what people thought. I brush my hair and apply minimal makeup bef
ore leaving the room.

  Downstairs, Vince and Grandma are in a heated conversation about something and I hate breaking it up. "You want to stay here and keep Grandma company or you coming with me?" I ask.

  He exchanges a look with Grandma but turns to me and smirks. "As tempting as that might be, I don't think you can handle a camera quite the way I can. Ready?"

  I nod and swipe the keys from the counter top. "Yeah. Let's go. Grandma, we'll be back later."

  She winks and smiles wickedly. "You two have fun, now." I look at Vince and see he caught the wink as well.

  I whisper on our way out, "And you think I'm crazy."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Gravel flies as I speed down the road and away from my grandmother's house. I forgot how much I despise the uncertainty of loose gravel. Sometimes the traction is tight and unmoving, but other times, one little slip of the wheel can send a car in the opposite direction. Kind of like my life lately. When we get to the main road, Vince rolls his window down and lifts his cell phone toward the sky.

  "What are you doing?" I ask.

  "Spotty cell service around here. Damn boondocks."

  "When I was in high school, there wasn't a cell phone tower in the area so no cell phones got service. Mr. Hankins finally broke down and allowed one of the cell companies to build a tower on his property."

  "Thank God for Mr. Hankins then. Where are we going exactly?"

  "Cemetery."

  Vince arches his eyebrows. "Are you sure you want me to come along? That seems like a..." He chews on his words before continuing, "personal thing."

  I shrug. "This whole project is kind of a personal thing. Since we are going to town, the cemetery is on the way; we might as well stop."

  Vince smiles when his phone beeps confirming service. I take a left turn before Everson unfolds in all its glory. We drive up the winding hill and stop at a gated lot. The Everson Cemetery sits atop a cliff, overlooking the town, but it's not noticeable until you're actually in the lot beyond the gates.

  "Here we are." I reach in the back for a blanket.

  Vince pulls his camera from a bag wedged between his feet. An intricate iron gate weaves and winds into a thing of beauty at the cemetery entrance. It open with a thundering creak.

  "Someone needs to oil that sucker." Vince follows me through and I take the lead. I weave through spotty grass patches, tombstones ravaged with time and weather and tombstones that shine with sad newness until we reach the outermost edge of the lot. My grandfather's grave.

  Vince looks beyond the lot to the plethora of trees that resemble lollipops from this far up. "Holy shit."

  I smile. "Isn't it gorgeous up here?"

  He moves his camera where it belongs, attached to his face.

  I set the blanket on the grass in front of the grave and wipe the layer of dirt and dust from Grandpa's marble tombstone. Dried up petals fall from the sunflowers planted by the grave. My grandmother hates sunflowers.

  Only one person would have left without thinking about coming back and checking on planted flowers. My father.

  My pent-up rage bubbles in my stomach. My father is as dead to me as the petals falling to the ground. I dig up the plant, walk to the edge of the lot and chuck it off the cliff. Roots and soil disappear from view but the wind carries dead petals across the sky.

  "What was that for?" Vince looks concerned.

  I don't look at him and return to wiping off the tombstone."Dead flowers by a grave. It's morbid. And wrong."

  "Okaaaay."

  He plops down on the blanket. "My father planted them. I didn't think they belonged here. That's all."

  "I'm getting the sense you hate your dad."

  I laugh. "You sure are Captain Obvious, aren't you?"

  He doesn't laugh with me. "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  He gives me a "I-call-bullshit" look. "Why do you hate your dad?"

  The tombstone is now spotless, so I fall into place beside Vince and start plucking strands of yellowed grass beside me. "It's a long story. And I don't hate him."

  Vince shrugs. "I think we have time."

  What’s the best way to sum up the relationship I have with my father? "Basically, he's a workaholic who didn't want a kid. My mom raised me until she died and Dad sort of went crazy. He'd leave for weeks at a time, forgetting to tell anyone he was leaving—including me. One day I got off the school bus and waited for Dad to get home, but he never did. We didn't have food in the house and I didn't know what to do, so I walked all the way to my grandparents' house."

  "What did they do?"

  I remember the yelling and the phone calls. I prayed my father would fight for me. Apologize. Do anything to keep me with him. But he didn't. "They decided it was time for me to move in with them. So I did. I never got an apology, he never tried to persuade me to come home. That was what he wanted. To get rid of me. And he got what he wanted. I'm not sure we've spoken more than five or ten minutes at a time since then."

  Vince probably thinks I'm callous for not crying. Most people would cry. Isn't it normal to cry when talking about the man who abandoned you? "My grandfather totally made up for my dad not being there. Seriously. Everything that my dad could have done, my grandfather did for me. And probably ten times better than Dad ever could."

  Vince pushes a button on his camera and points it at me. "What was your grandfather like?"

  I laugh. "That's a complicated question."

  "Give me a few basics. Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, it will be helpful for the project if we get an idea of the man he was."

  I pluck more grass and try to tie a knot. "My grandfather was a lot of things. He was the kind of man who would drop whatever he was doing to help someone if they needed it. He loaned just about everything out. His car, the tractor, money. There wasn't anything he wouldn't give if someone else needed it."

  I smile thinking about the way people talked about him. They instantly softened when he was the subject of the conversation. "He was very kind, but he was also stern and stubborn. He knew how to argue, too. When Wesley Pierce said something, people listened. Actually, they didn't just listen, they believed his every word. He had a way with words and the truth. I don't know, maybe that's why I believe I can use words to chase down the truth."

  All I see when I look at Vince is a camera lens. I smile and drop my eyes to the patch of grass at my side. My eyes get hazy, from wanting to cry but holding back, "He was a good man with a big heart. He was everything I'm not and everything I want to be. And I—" I have to stop because now the tears are dangerously close. I'm a mixed bag of emotions. I want to cry but I'm not ready to share that part of me with Vince.

  Vince puts his camera down and scoots close. He smells like sandalwood and lemon grass. Who smells that good? His arm snakes around my shoulder and he leans down.

  "I think you're more like your grandfather than you realize," he says.

  I don't push away. Instead, I close my eyes and imagine what my grandfather would do in this moment. And it hits me. He wouldn't do anything but savor it for what it's worth. I sit, curled into Vince, silent. We stay like that for what seems like an hour, reading each other's silence.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We drive through the old part of Everson, rows and rows of massive Victorian houses that have spots on the Historical Homes website.

  "What was it like?" Vince asks.

  "Huh?"

  "Growing up in a small town like this?"

  Boring. Oppressive. Smothering.

  I shrug. "I don't know. Different than California. Everson is probably where all those clichés about small towns were born?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Here? No one locks their doors. Everyone knows everyone's business, and the same people who say they can't wait to get the hell out of here end up married and knocked up."

  "So you're saying it's an idyllic little town."

  I laugh. "Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying." Looking at Eve
rson now, I see the appeal. It's so much quieter then California. A pang of nostalgia hits me and for a minute, it feels as if this is exactly where I belong. I pull up to the curb of a house with light blue siding and stark white windows. The grass is a well-manicured, vibrant green. I point at the house. "That's where my father lives. Hasn't changed much since I moved."

  Vince stares at the house for a few minutes and then turns to me. "Looks nice."

  "I guess so."

  Vince doesn't say anything after that. I guess it is kind of awkward for me to talk about my issues with my father and then sit parked outside his house. But, I do have a reason for being here. A particular picture of my mom and me flashes to mind. I'd meant to go back and get it all those years ago and never did.

  "There's something I left here a long time ago. I think it's time to get it back. Do you want to come in?"

  "What if your dad is there?"

  "He won't be. He travels for work. He's only home, like, one week out of the year."

  "What does he do again?"

  A job so important he gave up his daughter for it. "Foreign and domestic sales for John Deere."

  "Hmm."

  Vince follows me to the front porch and I reach under the rug. The rusty key is in the same position I left it.

  I unlock the door and let myself in.

  The entryway looks exactly the same as it did when I lived here. Funny, because when I close my eyes, I can picture the day I came through this door the very last time. The entry leads to a formal dining room and the kitchen.

  "That's a cool picture." Vince stop and points to a painting of a child with windswept hair. She's building what's left of a half-washed-away sand castle. The sky—a color I imagine my mother mixing gobs of blue shades together to find the right one—melts into the sea-green waves in the distance. I'd thought it was 'pretty' when I was a little girl, but as I study it now, there's a bittersweet depth to the child reconstructing what's been broken.