Antipodes Page 3

Erin peeled off her socks under the table. The room had become downright toasty while she napped. “I think I need to recover from travel before I make any plans. Maybe we can talk scheduling tomorrow?”

  Pippa’s smile was unconvincing.

  Erin raised her eyebrows. “It smells like heaven in here.”

  “A day of cooking will do that to a house. I made a chicken stock and chopped the chicken for enchiladas tomorrow night, cooked a lamb, and made lamb pies for tonight. Are you vegetarian?”

  Erin was not in any way a vegetarian, and lamb was a meat she knew. “You made these?”

  Felicity nodded, her mouth full of food.

  Erin hadn’t imagined people made pot pies from scratch. Her parents sometimes bought frozen pot pies. Valentina cooked for her family when she cleaned twice a week, and Erin’s grampa used to cook delicious and creative dinners, but neither of them had made anything as tricky as this.

  Felicity’s lamb pie was cupcake-shaped and almost the exact size of Erin’s mostly empty stomach. Erin dug in with her fork, but the oozy center she expected never materialized. It hung together really nicely. And it was delicious.

  “So, Erin? What kind of weird stuff do Americans eat?”

  Felicity almost spat out her bite. “Pippa!”

  “Mum, I waited all day!”

  Felicity grinned. “It’s true, actually. Pippa has been on pins and needles waiting for you to wake up. She has some questions for you.”

  Pippa held up a notebook. “Sixty-one questions. The weird food stuff was number fourteen.”

  Four-deen. The accent was particularly cute out of Pippa’s mouth.

  “Let’s start at number one: do you own a gun?”

  Erin squinted. “Of course not.”

  “I heard America has more guns than people.”

  Erin bit her cheek. “Well, I heard New Zealand has more sheep than people.”

  “’at’s true,” Hamish said.

  “Question two,” Pippa said. “When is your birthday?”

  “May nineteenth.”

  Pippa squealed, “Mine is November nineteenth!”

  Confused about Pippa’s enthusiasm, Erin feigned her own. “That’s … exciting?”

  “We’re like half twins: our birthdays are exact opposites. May/November. June/December.”

  “Oh. Right.” Erin imagined it was a kiwi sentiment.

  “Okay. Next question: Your accent is neither Southern nor Boston nor New Jersey. I know all of those. So what’s yours?”

  Ten minutes later, sated, warm, and bemused by Pippa’s intense questioning, Erin felt slightly less regret about her plight.

  Felicity said, “I’m afraid we don’t have a pudding prepared. I meant to bake a pavlova for your first night, but time got away from me. Another day, perhaps.”

  Pippa said, “Can we have Hokey Pokey?”

  “I suppose,” Felicity said.

  Pippa leapt to the freezer and returned with a container of Hokey Pokey ice cream. Felicity scooped some into a bowl and offered it to Erin. “Hokey Pokey?”

  Hokey Pokey looked like vanilla ice cream laced with suspicious candy.

  “Sure. I actually prefer ice cream to pudding anyway.”

  Felicity scooped ice cream for Pippa. “Pudding just means whatever sweet thing you eat after tea. Ice cream is pudding. Pavlova is pudding. Your pudding might be biscuits.”

  “We call that dessert,” Erin said before taking a timid bite. The Hokey Pokey bits hung in suspension of thick, rich ice cream. For ice cream, it was totally decadent.

  Maybe the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about. Erin’s brain leapt from the ice cream, to the bumper sticker on her ex-boyfriend’s car, to Ben, and her brief happiness deflated.

  Disappointment and agony wrapped around her stomach and she couldn’t eat another spoonful.

  After inhaling her ice cream, Pippa scampered outside to play in the dark. Hamish loaded the dishwasher while Felicity cleared the table.

  “Erin? I’d love to hear your cello,” Felicity said. “I’ve never heard one in person.”

  Hamish laughed. “She’s lying. The very day it arrived, she pulled it out of the case and dragged the stick across it. Pure hell on the ears.”

  “You can’t blame me for having a go! I’m sure it sounds much better with you in the musician’s seat, Erin. You can practice out here. In winter, we usually don’t go to the bedrooms until we’re ready to sleep.”

  Though the house felt like it was no larger than her smartphone, Erin wanted to find her own corner and have some time to herself. Her journey had broken that 2,243-day streak of cello practice, so what was another day off?

  She treaded lightly. “Actually, it probably needs to warm up. Cellos don’t do well in the cold. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Or maybe as a birthday prezzie,” Hamish said. “Felicity’s turning thirty-seven Saturday next.”

  “That might work,” Erin excused herself to Pippa’s bedroom, where she crawled under the covers in search of heat. Rubbing her feet together like a mad grasshopper, she tried to create enough friction to spark some semblance of warmth.

  NINE

  Erin pulled her computer onto her lap. Her mother had sent several frenetic emails: Had Erin finished a new draft of the essay? Had she landed? Was the family okay? How did the presents go over?

  Had she landed? If her plane hadn’t landed, the entire world would know. Erin closed her email and snuggled further down in her covers. A moment later, Felicity knocked on her door.

  “Your mum’s on the phone, love.”

  On instinct, Erin covered her grandmother’s ring with her right hand before accepting the phone from Felicity. “Hi, Mom.”

  “You’re alive!” Claire sounded happier than Erin had expected, which meant she hadn’t yet discovered Erin had stolen the ring.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “How is the cello? I hope it’s okay.”

  “I’m looking at it.” Erin glanced at the case. “It’s fine.”

  “How does it sound? Is it suitable for a player of your caliber?”

  “It’s great, Mom,” Erin lied. Anything could be inside that cello case. She wasn’t in the mood to play it.

  “I sent several emails. They do have Wi-Fi, right?”

  Felicity waved to indicate she was going back to the living room.

  Erin gave a wan smile. “Yes, Mom.”

  “Good. You know, I’m glad you chose New Zealand. It’s a lot like home, so it’s study abroad without the hard parts— no language barriers, no culture shock, no weird cuisine. This is going to be great for you.”

  “Right.”

  “I haven’t seen your essay come through. Did you work on it in flight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And did you—”

  Claire’s voice disappeared and Mitchell boomed. “Hi, darling.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “We’ve been waiting all day to hear from you.”

  “I’m jet-lagged, I just woke up.”

  “Of course you are. We just wanted to be sure you were settled. Did you forget anything?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I thought you might want a little care package in a couple of weeks. Some Vosges or those little Mensa Mind Puzzles you take on vacations. Or those pens you couldn’t get enough of last summer. Just let me know what you need—anything at all—and I’ll send it.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, how is it? Is New Zealand as gorgeous as everyone says? Two of my partners say they’ll pay you to go on the Lord of the Rings tour and take photos. Is the landscape as sublime as the movies?”

  No. Just no.

  “Dad, I literally came back to their house and crashed and then Mom called five seconds after we ate dinner.”

  “How is the family?”

  “Fine.”

  “How is the house?”

  She didn’t want to get into it. “I
t’s fine, Dad. Everything is fine. I’m just tired. It was a long trip.”

  “I’ll bet. Hey, I’ve been tracking the big box, and it should be there right on time. New Zealand Friday, not American Friday.”

  Claire commandeered the line. “I’m emailing you a list of ideas for significant winter volunteer opportunities to pad your résumé.”

  “Mom, college applications will be over and done with by then.”

  “But you need to get a jump on actual college. Volunteering in your senior year can only help your med school application. You’ll be ahead of the game. This is all going to work out. Don’t you think it’s all going to work out? Volunteering this winter plus a BS with honors in biochem will look really good to med schools.”

  “Right.” Erin had expected a break between college applications and actual college. “Mom, I’m pretty tired. Can you just email me?”

  “We can communicate via email you if you will actually respond.”

  “After I sleep.”

  Claire sighed. “Okay. Get some sleep, but be sure your phone is on.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Is the phone having trouble with international?”

  “No. Just forgot. I’m so tired.”

  “Call me tomorrow when you’re over the jet lag.”

  “I’ll try, Mom.”

  “No, Erin. Do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And focus on your unique factor.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Good night.”

  “Night.”

  Erin peeled back her covers and returned the phone to Felicity in the living room.

  “Everything okay, Erin?”

  Erin nodded, because speaking might make her cry. Everything was decidedly not okay.

  “Did you want to move the cello out? Pippa will head to bed here in a minute.”

  “Sure.” Erin hauled the cello case to the living room and propped it in a corner.

  Felicity said, “Bring whatever you’d like out here so Pippa’s not disturbed.”

  Erin felt disturbed. “I’m pretty exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed, too.”

  Without brushing her teeth or unruly hair, Erin climbed into bed and under the covers again. That nap earlier hadn’t put a dent in her jet lag.

  In their shared bedroom, Pippa bounced around for several minutes before Felicity calmed her enough to tuck her in. Erin listened while Felicity snuggled close and read a book to her daughter.

  Erin faced the wall and rolled her eyes. She’d learned to read at four, so no one had needed to read to her at bedtime—or ever—for well over a decade.

  Felicity whispered, “What will you dream about tonight?”

  Erin felt like an eavesdropper, though she clearly had nowhere else to go. She imagined her own nightmares would continue here; she still woke in tears some mornings, but perhaps being eight thousand miles away would help.

  Pippa’s dreams were better. She squealed, “Lamb pies and spring holidays and sisters!”

  Erin twisted to wish Pippa good night.

  Felicity smiled at Erin before turning out the light and singing about a Wonky Donkey. He had three legs, one eye, and he liked listening to country music, and he was quite tall and slim, and he smelled really, really bad. He was a stinky-dinky, lanky, honky-tonky, winky wonky donkey.

  Erin conjured an image of him and fell right to sleep.

  TEN

  Midnight in Christchurch was 7 a.m. in Wheaton, so naturally Erin was wide awake.

  Restless, she checked her phone every ten minutes until a burst of air resonated from Pippa’s bed. Erin’s eyes shifted left and right in the black room as she pondered what was next.

  She flinched when the stench of gas reached her. How could a sweet, small girl make such a massive, foul fart?

  Erin surfed Reddit on her phone. She caught up with Good-Time Girl, a seventeen-year-old Christchurch chick who never showed her face but constantly posted about parties, fashion, and sporting events. She tried counting laps in her head, which usually triggered sleep.

  But her brain was no match for jet lag.

  After Pippa’s third gassy spell, Erin stealthily climbed out of bed and crept into the hall.

  She opened the door to the warm side of the house to find it no longer warm. Shivering on the living room sofa, Erin felt bone-cold, as though she never would be warm again.

  Wheaton winters were far colder than Christchurch’s and often buried under feet of snow, but her house—the whole thing—was always comfortable.

  Erin knew nothing about building fires, so she returned to her suitcase for merino socks, a second sweater under her jacket, and gloves. Suspecting she couldn’t get any colder, Erin slid open the back door and wandered out into the night.

  The Wakefields’ picnic table beckoned her. Lying on it, she dared to look up at the sky.

  Blessedly overcast. Just as well. Spying the moon would reopen her Ben wound again.

  When they started dating—when Erin tried desperately to bond them together in meaningful ways—she enthused about her astrophysics course at Harvard. Ben was interested until she tried filling his brain with the most fascinating stuff: how amazingly fast Jupiter rotates or that orange dwarfs can stay stable for thirty billion years. Thirty billion years was enough time for life to spark and evolve and a whole host of things to happen in a different solar system. Erin hyped herself into a frenzy of possibilities, but when nothing sparked Ben’s interest, she backpedaled to popular astronomy like constellations and moon phases.

  Erin loved the moon. Ben often said she had given him the moon, and after he’d dumped her unceremoniously, the moon no longer felt a part of her. She hated him for taking the moon from her. Even more, she hated herself for giving it away. Before Ben, it had been hers and hers alone.

  That wasn’t true, of course.

  Before intensive study consumed Erin’s summers, July and August had belonged to her grandparents on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the U.P., where Erin immersed herself in Lake Michigan and old music. Her grampa taught her new ways to play guitar chords. They played board games and hiked late into the night, always with a promise never to tell Mitchell and Claire they’d slept until noon.

  Constellations and the moon had interested her then, because her grampa was the best storyteller she’d ever known. Together, Erin and her grandfather had studied planets and read about other galaxies.

  Ben had stolen all of that from her.

  Why was I even with him?

  She could pretend to forget, but with her eyes closed, she imagined his warm breath behind her ear as his lips tugged lightly on her earlobe. Her heart still leapt at the thought of rolling around during marathon make-out sessions on his parents’ alabaster rug. Or in her bedroom when she snuck him in. Or in her Fiat when they were desperate.

  He’d said she was amazing and that he loved her.

  Erin was pretty new to love, but she believed love should outlast a little embarrassment. If Ben had really loved her, he would have stood up for her amid rumors.

  He should have.

  Erin wasn’t getting Ben back. She didn’t want him back, except when she did. She missed their private jokes and sharing stories, and how much he loved her body. She had loved so much about him, until he’d broken her heart. Then she’d hated him. And still loved him.

  Regardless, she would never get him back.

  She caressed Grandma Tea’s ring through her glove. Claire hadn’t mentioned the ring.

  Just as well. Claire wasn’t getting that back, either.

  Erin buckled into the backseat of her dad’s silver Mercedes. Mitchell grabbed the passenger seat so he could reverse out of the driveway.

  Claire said, “I need you to drop me at the office after the airport. The McKinsey deal is going down today and I have to prove a worthy managing partner. A smooth deal will prove I was the right pick.”

  “No doubt,” Mitchell said.

  Erin took a deep breath and steel
ed herself. When they reached the end of the driveway, she gasped. “Oh! I forgot my passport! I’ll just be a sec, promise.”

  She unbuckled, ran back into the house, and sprinted upstairs to her parents’ room. Like a cat burglar, she tiptoed into her mother’s walk-in closet. Digging into the ornate wooden jewelry chest, Erin slid aside necklaces and a diamond tennis bracelet to find a small satin ring box. She opened it and memories of Grandma Tea flooded her mind.

  A wide, flat, silver ring with channel-set diamonds and sapphires scattered light on the ceiling. It was too large for her ring fingers but fit her left middle finger perfectly. Erin had loved the ring and its history for years; her grandparents’ great love story made the ring precious. It was personal. It was unique. It was hers.

  She stared at Grandma Tea’s ring for another moment before stowing it in the tiniest pocket of her jeans. Satisfied, she snapped the ring box shut, replaced her mother’s jewelry, and headed toward her room to grab her “forgotten” passport.

  ELEVEN

  Erin: I am lying on a picnic table on the other side of the world.

  Litha: What time is it?

  Erin: Three in the morning.

  Litha: Yay for one day down!

  Erin: I guess.

  Litha: How’s New Zealand?

  Erin: Don’t know. I’ve been in the airport and at this house.

  Litha: Cool house?

  Erin: I don’t want to talk about it.

  Litha: ☹ Practice last night was cuh-ray-zee. Be glad you missed it.

  Erin: Glad. Check.

  Litha: I saw Ben at the pool last night.

  Erin’s stomach lurched. Imagining Current Ben was more painful than remembering Historical Ben. She couldn’t ask about him. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want Lalitha to know she desperately wanted to know everything.

  Litha: He asked how you were, and I told him he was not privileged enough to know.

  Erin: Thanks.

  Litha: Said he deserved to know since he still had feelings for you, and I told him to fuck right off.

  Ben still had feelings for her, but which ones? The lovey, half-naked feelings of the eleven months they’d dated? Or the vile hatred of the last two months? It was a vital distinction.