The Great Escape

She was almost glad he was forcing her to do what she should have done from the beginning, and she nodded.

That night she did her best to put off the phone call with various unnecessary chores until he lost patience. “Call them.”

“Later,” she said. “I have to pack first.”

He sneered. “Chickenshit.”

“What do you care? This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Sure it does. Your mother was the president. It’s my patriotic duty.”

She snatched the phone. As she punched in the number, she wished she’d been able to get her hands on his phone just once when he wasn’t watching. Even as she retreated to the deck, he could see her through the window.

Her heart hammered when she heard Mat’s familiar gruff voice. She fought back tears. “Dad …”

“Lucy! Are you all right?”

“Kind of.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry. You know I wouldn’t hurt you and Mom for anything.”

“We know that. Lucy, we love you. Nothing could change that.”

His words twisted the knife of guilt even deeper. They’d given her everything without expecting anything back, and this was how she repaid them. She struggled against tears. “I love you, too.”

“We need to sit down together and discuss what happened. Figure out why you didn’t feel like you could talk to us about it. I want you to come home.”

“I know. How—how are the kids?”

“Holly’s having a sleepover, and Charlotte’s learning to play the guitar. Andre has a girlfriend, and Tracy’s really pissed with you. As for your grandfather … You can imagine how he’s taken this. I suggest a stiff drink before you call him. But first you have to talk to your mother. You might be thirty-one, but you’re still part of this family.”

He couldn’t have said anything that made her feel worse about herself.

“Lucy?” It was Nealy. He’d passed over the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Really.”

“Never mind about that,” her mother said briskly. “I don’t care if you’re a grown woman. We want you home.”

“I—I can’t.” She bit her lip. “I’m not done running away yet.”

Nealy, of all people, couldn’t argue with that, and she didn’t try. “When do you think you’ll be done?”

“I’m … not sure.”

“Let me talk to her!” Tracy shrieked in the background.

Nealy said, “We had no idea you were so unhappy.”

“I wasn’t. You can’t think that. It’s just—I can’t explain.”

“I wish you’d try.”

“Let me have the phone!” Tracy cried.

“Promise you’ll stay in touch,” her mother said. “And promise you’ll call your grandfather.”

Before Lucy could promise anything, Tracy grabbed the phone. “Why haven’t you called me? This is all Meg’s fault. I hate her. You should never have listened to what she said. She’s jealous because you were getting married and she wasn’t.”

“Trace, I know I disappointed you, but this isn’t Meg’s fault.”

Her baby sister Button had turned into a volcano of eighteen-year-old outrage. “How can you love somebody one minute and then not love them the next?”

“It wasn’t exactly like that.”

“You’re being selfish. And stupid.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” Before she lost her courage, she needed to get the rest of this over with. “Put the others on, will you?”

In the next ten minutes, she learned that Andre still talked on the phone to Ted, that Holly was auditioning for a part in a play, and that Charlotte had mastered “Drunken Sailor” on the guitar. Each conversation was more painful than the last. Only after she’d hung up did it register that all three of them had posed the question her parents had never raised.

“Lucy, where are you?”

Panda came up behind her on the deck and took the phone before she could check his call log. Was he in touch with the tabloids or not? He disappeared back inside, and when she finally went in herself, he was watching a baseball game. “I need to make another call,” she said.

He studied her. “Phone’s been acting up lately. Give me the number and I’ll put it in for you.”

“I can handle it.”

“It’s temperamental.”

She had to stop playing games. “I want to see your phone.”

“I know.”

“If you don’t have anything to hide, you’ll let me look at it.”

“Who says I don’t have anything to hide?”

He was enjoying himself, and she didn’t like it. “You know everything about me, but I don’t know any more about you than I did eleven days ago. I don’t even know your real name.”

“Simpson. Bart.”

“Afraid I’ll see the National Enquirer on your speed dial?”

“You won’t.”

“One of the other tabloids, then? Or did you contact the legitimate press?”

“Do you really think somebody like me is going to cozy up to the press?”

“Maybe. I’m a lucrative meal ticket.”

He shrugged, extended his leg, and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Knock yourself out.”

The fact that he was giving up the phone told her she wouldn’t discover any secrets, and she was right. The only call on his log was the one she’d just made. She flipped the phone back to him.

As she walked away, his voice drifted toward her, quiet and a little gruff. “I see you as a lot of things, but a meal ticket isn’t one of them.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that, so she pretended not to hear.