The next day I scowled and pouted, but it didn’t affect Mother and Father’s decision to leave me behind on my birthday. They were so focused on Gavin, my displeasure went unnoticed. I was dragged along to the airport only because my babysitter had to drive them. Who could blame me for not wanting to kiss the baby good-bye? But they did. They never forgave me, and I have been punished ever since. Or forgotten is a better word. Or perhaps I was destined to be discarded all along. Who knows, maybe by now Gavin has been too, and there is a new amusement in their lives, one who never cries or disobeys. One who is, for the most part, invisible, the way I have tried to be all these years.
I have never made a wish since that birthday. Except for today. A wish for a fair day, and I should know better. Fairness is always trumped by destiny.
19
JUST AHEAD IS THE RUST-STREAKED truss bridge that leads to the heart of Langdon. Of all my memories of Langdon, the musty smell of the river and the thump thump thump of the bridge road as I left are the clearest. Through the crisscross of girders a mini skyline emerges. I can already see that Langdon is larger than I remember, or maybe it has just grown in the years I have been away.
Mira claps her hands with excitement. “We’re almost there! Last chance, Des. A secret?”
Last chance. Seal the deal. Be part of the game.
After so many years of sitting out, do I even know how to play anymore? Tell. It’s only a game. And it’s only fair. I speak, hoping to get the words out before the safe and wiser part of me clamps down. “I have a brother. He’s here in Langdon. So are my parents.”
“I knew it,” Seth whispers under his breath.
“What?” Aidan’s voice is laced with suspicion like he’s been led astray.
Mira leans forward and touches my shoulder. “Truth, Des?” I turn and look at her.
We begin our trek across the bridge, the familiar thump, thump, thump beneath us, the shadows of the girders flashing across Mira’s face. Dark, light, dark, light, like an old film that is skipping. I look at her eyes. At Aidan’s.
“Yes. True,” I say and wish I could snatch the words back as soon as they are said.
“I thought your parents were in another country, or at least another state,” Aidan says. “And that’s why—”
Mira elbows him. Here I am, the fragile twit again. I turn and face forward.
“Is that why we really came here?” Seth asks. “Do you want to see them?”
“No!” I say. “Absolutely not.”
“But maybe you should go visit,” Mira says. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? When was the last time you saw them?”
I look at her sharply. A long time ago. Too long. Longer than she could possibly understand. “A year.” That seems like a sufficiently long amount of time that is believable. One that will not make me too much of a freak of nature, which, arguably, is what I am.
“A year!” Mira says in disbelief. Her reaction almost makes me smile. If I had told her the far graver truth, she would have thought me to be a liar.
Aidan falls back against his seat. “I see my family every holiday and plenty of weekends in between too. I can’t understand how—”
Another sharp elbow from Mira.
“It’s all right, Mira,” I say, hoping to put on some scrap of dignity and spare Aidan a bruised rib. “I’ve gotten used to it. My parents simply don’t have room in their lives for me. And I’ve adjusted my own life accordingly.” All the explanations I’ve silently devised over the years are now coming out with practiced ease. But I feel anything but easy.
“Except for today!” Mira says indignantly. “For this to be a fair day, I think you should see them. Tell them what you think, Des. It’s not right!” Her chin juts out farther, and her lips pull tight. “How dare they treat you like that!”
“We’re with you, Des.” Seth turns his gaze br
iefly from the road to look at me. “If that’s what you want.”
I shake my head. “No. It won’t change anything.”
Aidan leans forward with his hands gripping the front seat. “I think she’s right. In fact, maybe we shouldn’t even go into Langdon. What if we run into them? They might notify—”
I cut him off. We must go into Langdon. Today. “They travel a lot. There’s no chance of us bumping into them. And today is Mother’s birthday. She always travels on her birthday. They spend more time in planes than they do at home.” Forever in planes, I think. Going to places they won’t let me go. I turn briskly toward Aidan. “And that’s why I never see them, if you were wondering.” I look back at the road. “Isn’t that what everyone wonders at Hedgebrook?”
“We don’t wonder,” Mira says softly. “At least not too much. And we only talk about it a little.”
“Mira,” Aidan whispers.