helping out a poor divorcee like that.”
“We girls have to stick together.”
I reached for the door, and the automatic lock buzzed before my hand even touched the handle. I nodded thanks to Valerie, and out of the corner of my eye spotted Yellow Teeth clutching his pilfered pack of Camel Lights.
“Just a second,” I said, and strolled back to the lounge. I held up a half carton of cigarettes and said, “Hey, buddy, you want these?”
Yellow Teeth’s eyes grew wide and he stood up. “Sure thing, cuz.”
I held out the carton with one hand, and when he reached for it I grabbed the pack of cigarettes from his fingers with the other.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Those were mine!”
“No, they weren’t,” I said with a smile. “You only borrowed them.”
6
UNCLE WONDERFUL PICKED ME UP AN HOUR LATER. I DIDN’T bother asking where he’d been because he would have lied about it.
“She looked good,” I said as we drove down a suburban street.
“She looks like crap.”
“I mean, yeah, but still . . .”
“But still what?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to process it all.”
“What’s to process? You broke her heart, and she tried to kill herself. End of story.”
“You can’t blame that on me,” I said. “It’s been almost four years since I left. There’s no way it’s my fault.”
“You think so, huh? Well, think again.”
We pulled up to a small gray house with a dried-up hydrangea bush in the front yard, and Uncle Wonderful turned off the engine.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Go inside and see for yourself. The key’s under the mat.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m not breaking into somebody’s house for you. I’m through with all that.”
“It’s not somebody’s house. It’s your house.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t own a house.”
“Technically it belongs to your mother, but she bought it for you.”
I turned to take a closer look. The house had brown shutters, white window shades, and a green mailbox with the name O’Rourke spelled out in gold press-on letters. It looked real. It looked like a home.
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “My mother’s never owned a house in her life.”
“You’ve been away for a long time, Skip.”
Uncle Wonderful was right about that, and now things were happening way too fast. One second I was at Wheaton watching Claire drive into the sunset, and the next I was back on Long Island staring at a house with my name on the mailbox. I needed time to catch my breath.
“The code for the alarm is nine-eight-eight-nine,” he said. “And there’s a car in the garage with the keys in the ignition. It’s all legit. Or at least legit enough to pass inspection. You know how to get back to Shady Oaks from here, right?”
“Sure,” I replied, unable to take my eyes off the house.
“Visiting hours are nine to eleven in the morning and five to nine at night. I’ve got things to do tomorrow morning, but I’ll drop by around six and I expect to see you there.”
I climbed out of the car and walked toward the house. My house.
“Oh, and Skipper.”
“Yeah?”
“Welcome home.”
• • •
The key was under the mat just like he said it would be, and the code for the alarm really was 9889. If it wasn’t my house, at least Uncle Wonderful’s information was accurate. Then I turned on the lights and couldn’t believe what I saw. The room was like a mash up of every apartment where my mother and I had lived. On the right was the couch from the Dover Hills apartments where I used to watch SpongeBob SquarePants, and next to that was the end table from the Carlton Arms where I used to do my math homework. It didn’t seem possible, so I got down on my hands and knees and inspected the underside of the table. Sure enough, there was the picture of a mad scientist I’d drawn with a purple crayon back when I was eight years old.
“Where did all this stuff come from?” I asked aloud as I climbed back to my feet. With the exception of a nineteen-inch SONY Trinitron we stole from a Circuit City in Patchogue (watch the loading dock long enough and someone’s bound to get sloppy) my mother and I never took anything substantial with us when we moved. Some clothes, my books, and the Trinitron, and that was pretty much it. Yet, here was all this stuff I knew like the back of my hand. It felt like some crazy dream.
Except