I was surprised to see my mom’s car in the driveway when I got home from school that day. She wasn’t usually home until after five. I parked my bike in the garage and went inside. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, reading over a document. The whites of her eyes were lined with red.
“What’s wrong?”
She seemed startled when she looked up at me. I don’t think she heard me come in. She shuffled the sheets of paper in her hand and stuffed them into a large yellow envelope.
“Nothing, sweetie. Everything is fine.”
I wasn’t convinced. “You look like you were crying.”
She forced a smile. “I had just yawned before you came in. It must have made my eyes water.”
Her eyes were too wet and red to be from a yawn, but I decided to let it go. I shrugged off my backpack and dropped it onto the floor.
“Homework?” she asked.
I shook my head. “We have exams this week.”
“Go put your backpack in your room, then.”
I did as she asked. When I returned to the kitchen, the envelope she had on the table was gone. She was standing by the sink, stirring a cup of tea.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked.
She turned around and smiled at me. “We’re going to order a pizza.”
I frowned. “But it’s not Friday.”
“We’ll make an exception,” she said. “We can get whatever toppings you want.”
“What about Dad?”
My dad didn’t usually allow me to pick the toppings. It was always what he wanted.
“Dad won’t be coming home tonight.” She turned away from me as she said it.
“Oh. Why not?”
She shrugged, made herself look at me, and stretched her lips into a forced smile. “He has a work thing. He might not be home for a few days.”
I knew then that something was up. My dad never had ‘work things’ that prevented him from coming home. That, and my mom was acting weird. I had never seen her try this hard to make it look like everything was normal when her red eyes told a different story. She picked up the cordless phone and handed it to me.
“Do you want to order the pizza?”
“Sure,” I said, taking the phone from her. She began to walk away from me. I stared at the phone in my hand for a minute, and then turned to my mother’s retreating back. “Mom?”
She stopped, turned slowly, and stared at me with a worried brow. I wanted to press her to be honest with me, but with her looking at me like that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Can I get a soda?” I asked instead.
“Of course, sweetie. Order whatever you want. Tonight is your night.”
* * *
My dad didn’t come home the next night, either, or the next. I could have let his absence distract me, but instead I chose to distract myself by studying and working hard on my exams. Writing a response to Naomi’s letter was the least of my concerns. I had almost forgotten about her letter until I was emptying out my backpack after eighth grade graduation. I had been disappointed to see that my dad hadn’t shown up, but I guess I wasn’t all that surprised. I knew that something was going on. I just wished that my mom would tell me.
I was sitting on my bed when I found the letter. Rocky was sitting by my feet. He was a large dog, and took up most of the space on the floor between the bed and the wall. I slipped the letter back out of its envelope and reread it. Coming up with something mean to write back seemed so pointless now. I didn’t have the energy to waste on writing back to Naomi. I was in a terrible mood. It was ironic, I realized, that these letters had started because I was in a bad mood that day in fifth grade, and now I could only come up with something mean when I was in a good mood.
There was a light tap on my door just then. I set the letter on my nightstand, and said, “Come in.”
