Page 18 of Stand

“Can you call now? It’s not late.”

He felt as though the day had been forty-eight hours long already, but it was only six o’clock. As if to verify that, the doorbell rang. Presumably the pizza guy, but Ty was jumpy enough to yell, “I’ll get it!” toward Alyssa’s open door and get to his feet fast. “Okay,” he said to her. “Let me just get the pizza.”

“Ooh, pizza!” Alyssa jumped off the bed.

The healing powers of pizza, Ty reflected as he and his kids sat at the kitchen counter in greasy cheesy heaven, should not be underestimated. They sounded almost normal. Matt teased Alyssa and Alyssa was snotty to Matt; she begged Ty to let her watch some R-rated movie Matt had seen at a friend’s house, and Ty was able to be a regular father and refuse Matt a sip of the Coke he himself shouldn’t have been drinking. Like he’d sleep tonight anyway.

But Alyssa wasn’t to be diverted for long. As soon as he turned off the faucet after cleaning up, she was by his side. “Is it too late now?” she asked anxiously.

“All right, all right. Matt? You got Jake’s number?”

He shouldn’t be this bothered by this. Sam Fielding wasn’t supposed to bother him like this. If he didn’t want to call her directly, if her phone number was burning its way into his memory from the short text he’d sent her earlier, what of it?

“Hi, Jake? It’s Mr. Cavanaugh.”

Sam had been Matt’s age when her father had died. No wonder she’d gone off the rails. No wonder for all of them, he supposed, but Sam had taken more people with her.

“Hi, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Jake said. “Uh. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, thanks. Much better now. Listen, is your aunt there?”

“Which one?”

Ah, the ease of a large family. Jake had so many people at his back, he lost track of them. What was that like?

“Samantha.”

“Sam,” Jake said almost before he’d gotten her full name out, and he laughed. “Don’t call her that other name to her face.”

“Noted.”

“Hold on, I’ll get her.”

Jake yelled, “Aunt Sam!” And that giant house Ty had ridden his bike past years ago seemed to echo with all the support that family offered, that he and his kids couldn’t find.

There was murmuring on the other end of the phone and then her voice. “Yes?” she said. “Did I leave something in your car?”

“No. Hi,” he said.Great, now you sound like a breathless schoolboy.“Alyssa wants to talk to you.” And he handed over the phone.Coward.

Alyssa looked terrified. There was a second where she mimed a no, shaking her hands in front of the phone. Ty held it out more firmly. Alyssa sent him a look as though he were making her walk the plank and took the phone. “Sam?”

♦

Was she in some kind ofGroundhog Dayscenario where Ty Cavanaugh showed up in her life over and over until she addressed the elephant that sat right between them?

“Hi, Alyssa,” she said. “How are you doing, honey?”

“I’m good. So, um, when are you going back to New Mexico?”

“Tomorrow.” She wasn’t sure where this was going.

“’Cause, uh.” There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Alyssa said in a rush so the words flowed together, “’Cause I’m graduating tomorrow and I wondered if you could come because I’d like to see you and so would Mr. P. and you don’t have to but I’d like you to.” She ran out of breath. “Yeah.”

Sam was so surprised, she couldn’t answer for a second. Alyssa had met her all of three times for a total of maybe an hour. Now this sweet kid, who’d been handed an ass of a mother, wantedherat her graduation?

Graduation.The memory washed over her in seconds, chilling her blood and weakening her legs. It was Megan’s middle school graduation, and their mother had just died. For the first time, the “children” were on their own. Cat had just had the twins; Thea was pregnant with Jake and looked much older than her twenty years. Kane was working eighty-hour weeks to build the company back up after Robert’s death. Sam was graduating from high school the following night and was desperate to get the ceremonies over with so she could focus on college and getting the hell out of Dodge.

They’d made the biggest effort any of them ever had, to make it a good night for Meg. Her friends monopolized her, keeping her moving, laughing, so that while she was in the line to receive her “diploma,” she had a smile on her face. But when she reached the principal, she looked not at him but out into the audience at each of her siblings, and her face had fallen. Right there on the stage, she’d burst into tears.

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