The Exact Location of Home (3 page)

Perfect. Top drawer on the right. You can never have enough wire. I might be able to use this on the busted toaster.

On to the switches. Four toggle, two button, and six standard light switches go into the bottom drawer.

There's one little propeller, only an inch or so in diameter, and a bigger one that's four times that size. I wonder if Georgie was going to use these on the same project.

The big one is fantastic. I pull one of the motors and some wire back out of the drawers and snap the propeller onto the motor pin. I find my wire cutter, snip off about four inches of wire, and strip the ends so I can make a connection.

The second drawer from the bottom has a bunch of Lego cars I use for experiments. I pull out a blue-and-yellow truck with big wheels and duct tape the motor with the propeller onto the back. I wire it up to a toggle switch and fish a nine-volt battery from the bottom of Georgie's box. I tape the whole thing together so no wires hang down and take it down to the hardwood floor in the kitchen.

I kneel down next to the table, set the car on the floor, and flip the switch. The motor whirs like a dentist's drill, the propeller spins into a blur, and the whole thing takes off across the floor toward the basement step, just as Mom opens the door and steps up with a big basket of laundry.

“Watch out!”

Mom tries to leap over the attacking Lego vehicle, but the basket of clothes throws her off balance, and she crashes to the wood floor in a shower of socks and underwear. Behind her, my creation plummets off the cliff of the basement stairs, and I hear the heaviest pieces clunking their way down the steps.

“Sorry! You okay?” I ask.

“I'll survive.” Mom laughs and starts collecting laundry. She looks normal again. Her eyes and her face aren't so blotchy and sad. I better not bring up Dad again. Not now anyway. I help her pick up the socks.

“New invention?” Mom asks, rubbing her elbow.

I nod and drop a pile of underwear into the basket. “It was a good one, too.”

Mom picks up the basket and walks off to fold clothes. I go downstairs to clean up what's left of my Zig-mobile and wonder how many times this happened to Georgie before he moved his workshop downstairs to the basement for good.

When I wake up Sunday morning, there's no pancake smell. Mom always makes pancakes on Sundays, but it's already 8:30, and the house still smells like last night's warmed up pot roast.

I pull on sweatpants, grab my new GPS, and head downstairs.

Mom's sitting at the kitchen table, her hands swimming through waves of envelopes and bills and papers that cover the wood. Her phone is next to the calculator. She keeps glancing at it like it's about to bite her.

“What's up, Mom?”

She looks up, surprised. “Oh! I'm just … straightening up some bills and things.” She shuffles the papers into a pile. “You're probably hungry, huh? I'll make breakfast.”

When she opens the fridge to get eggs, the cold light shows dark circles under her eyes, as if she's been up all night. She does that sometimes, when she's studying for a test in one of her nursing classes, but I thought most of her finals were done.

“Mom?”

She whirls around, and the eggs slip from her hand onto the floor with a
crack-splat
. She says a word I've never heard Mom say before, and her eyes fill with tears.

“It's okay. I'll get it!” I grab the full roll of paper towels and start ripping them off, two and three at a time, to sop up the egg.

Mom reaches for the towels and helps me clean. “I'm sorry,” she says. “It's been a tough week, and I didn't sleep last night. I'm a little jumpy, I guess.”

She stands up, opens the fridge, and pulls out a new carton of eggs.

“Pancakes?” She pulls down the mixing bowl like nothing happened.

She must be sad about Mrs. Delfino, I decide. We found out last night that she died at the hospital, even though Mom had tried CPR. Like Ruby said, it doesn't always work. But Mom's about to become a nurse. That must have been tough for her.

Whipping pancake batter seems to make her feel better, though. She's humming as she ladles it onto the griddle, and now the house smells like Sunday morning.

The pancakes sizzle on the stove while I clear the table so we can eat. I set my GPS unit up on the counter and then finish stacking Mom's papers into a big pile.

She looks up. “Oh!” She practically jumps over the counter to snatch the papers out of my hands. “I'll get those.” She hugs them to her chest and hurries upstairs.

When she comes back, she picks up the GPS from the counter. “Where'd you get this?” She sounds upset, like she's accusing me of stealing it or something.

“Garage sale. A lady gave it to me because I reminded her of her husband.”

Mom looks at the GPS like it's something moldy she pulled out of the fridge. She half laughs, half scoffs and turns to flip the pancakes. “Are you going off treasure-hunting like your father?”

“Mom, how come he's not coming?”

She slides the first four pancakes onto a plate and hands it to me with the syrup. “We talked about this already. He has things going on that make it impossible right now.”

“What things? Can't I go with him?”

She ladles four more circles of batter into the pan. “No.”

“But Mom, last time in Maine it was fine. You must have his new phone number or email. Just—”

She whips around so fast she knocks the handle of the frying pan and it spins around on the burner. “Enough, okay? It's not up to your dad. It's up to me.
I'm
the person who makes those decisions.
I'm
the person who lives with you and drives you to school and makes your breakfast, if you haven't noticed.”

A haze of burned pancake smoke rises behind her. She takes a deep breath, smells it, and whirls around. She flips the whole frying pan over and dumps the pancakes into the trash. Then she turns and looks at me.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you won't see him this weekend.”

“I know. When can he come?”

“Maybe a few months.”

“A few
months
?!”

She puts her hand on my elbow, but I pull it back. “This time … it's different, Zig. It's … more complicated. It'll be a while.”

“Well, why can't I just have his new—”

“That's it. No.” Mom pours the rest of the pancake batter down the drain and turns back to me with wet eyes.

“I swear I'll help you arrange something when we can, okay? But let it go for now. Just trust me on this one. Please?”

She brushes my hair back from my eyes and looks at me, waiting for an answer.

I nod.

But I don't promise.

As soon as Mom leaves for her shift at the diner, I open the door to her room. The laundry is half-folded, spread out on her bedspread, and the papers and envelopes from downstairs are sticking out from under the towels. I sit down and shuffle through the pile. She must have Dad's new phone number here somewhere.

It's bills, mostly. $130 for Lakeside Gas & Electric. $80 for Northern Communications Telephone—and no number on the list of calls that looks like it might be Dad's. $467.42 for Mom's credit card bill. No wonder she's taking extra hours at the diner. I take a closer look at the credit card charges. About half are groceries and gas. And one huge chunk from the office supply store where we got my school supplies.

I flip through the rest of the pages. A few handwritten notes from Mrs. Delfino about rent. Mom must have paid it late this month. I'm about to replace the papers under the towels when a folded letter slides out from between two electric bills and drops to the floor.

I open it and recognize the handwriting.

Dear Laurie
,

I know you're aware of my new living situation, but I wanted to write you anyway, in the hopes that you won't be too judgmental. I never envisioned this, but life has a way of throwing curve balls. It will all work out
.

I have plans to stay very involved in Kirby's life, as always
.

Very involved? There's a thought.

I'd like to talk with him about this myself, so please don't cloud things with your spin on what's happened. It's hard enough. I'll be in touch soon
.

~Senior

I stare at the signature. Senior.

Dad.

He's Kirby Zigonski, too. When he was a kid, everyone called him Zig, just like me. Now that there are two of us, they just call him Senior.

I read his letter twice.

He has a “new living situation.” How could he move and not tell me? Why would he be worried about Mom judging him?

The porch door slams and my stomach tilts. Mom must have forgotten something. I jump up, shuffle the papers together, shove them back under the towels, and pull the corner of the bedspread to fix the wrinkles I made sitting on it.

“Hey!” Gianna calls from the kitchen.

My heart settles back into my chest. “Don't you knock any more?” I find her pulling a pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge.

“I did knock. But you didn't answer, and it was open.” She pours herself a glass. “Want some?”

I shake my head. “Is Ruby hanging out with us today?”

“Maybe later.” Gee downs half her lemonade in two gulps. “She has a Birds First meeting to talk about something with the herons at Smugglers Island.”

“Oh.” I watch her chug the rest of her drink. Then I remember the note upstairs.

“Hey, Gee, can I show you something in the bedroom?” She coughs on her lemonade and I realize how awful that sounded. I feel my face getting hot. “No, I mean—something that's in there now. You don't have to go in there. In fact, you can't. You stay here. I'll go there. And I'll bring the thing back here. That I want to show you. Okay?”

I leave before she can answer. When I come back with the note card, Gianna's sitting at the table.

“You know how Mom told me yesterday Dad can't come?” I say. She nods. “She won't say why and gets all mad and sad and stuff when I ask her. And she won't let me call him either. His old number and email don't work.”

“Okay. So … ?”

I pull up a chair across from her and hand her the note. “So check this out.”

Her eyes skim back and forth. I reach for the broken toaster and start loosening the screws in the bottom while I wait.

“I don't know about the phone thing, but this looks like he moved in with somebody,” Gianna says, all matter-of-fact. She leans over to show me the letter. I push the toaster aside and lean in, even though I've read it four times already. Maybe she has a secret code to unlock it.

“See where he said ‘living situation?'” She points. “And then he's worried she'll be mad. I bet he moved in with his girlfriend.”

“He doesn't have a girlfriend.”

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“
Saw
him? A year and three months ago.”

“A lot can change.”

I take the letter from her and pick at the edges.

Dad has had girlfriends, but it's never been a secret. Why this time? How come he doesn't want me to know where he is? Unless it's somebody we know. Or maybe—

“Zig?” Gianna reaches over and puts her hand over mine. I look down. I've torn all the corners off the letter. She brushes the little paper bits off the table and throws them out. “Have you tried calling to get his number?”

“Calling who?”

“Calling his old number. Sometimes there's a recording that gives the new one.”

“There's not.”

Gianna sighs. She puts her glass in the sink and picks up the GPS unit from the counter. “Have you tried this out yet?”

I shake my head.

“Maybe we should go geocaching today! That game you talked about, where people hide stuff and you find it using … numbers and stuff.”

“Satellite coordinates,” I say.

Gianna nods. “That! And remember, Mrs. Loring gave us that website—
geocaching.com
. She said if you put in your zip code, it'll give you a list of geocaches near you and you can plug in the numbers and stuff—”

“Coordinates.”

“Whatever. Let's try it!” She bounces a little and starts pressing random buttons on the GPS.

“Give me that.” I take it from her. “Before you program it to lead us to Sweden or something.”

“Zig, come on! Maybe there's one close enough to ride our bikes to.” She disappears down the hall to the den where the computer is before I can tell her I need to get that letter back into Mom's stuff. I take the GPS and the letter and go back to Mom's room. I pick up the pile of bills and stuff again and slide the note from Dad into the middle, kind of where I found it, I hope. Then I notice another handwritten note on top, this one from Mrs. Delfino.

Laurie
,

I realize that this has been a difficult fall for you with nursing school, so I'm willing to let the rent go another month. Please be sure that the August and September payments are in the mailbox by October 1
^st
. Study hard, dear
.

~Marietta

It's dated at the top.

September 24.

Just four days ago. Two days before she died. I can't believe Mom would get that behind on the rent.

October first is three days away. Who's going to come pick up the rent check now that Mrs. Delfino is gone?

And what will they do if it's not here?

“Look at this!” When I get downstairs, Gianna has entered our zip code into the geocaching website. “There's three whole pages of geocache thingys—all right in town.” She scrolls up and down too fast for me to read anything.

“Hold still.” I reach over her shoulder to grab the mouse, but she doesn't move her hand, so we're sort of holding it together. She looks up at me, and I feel my face warm. I let go. “Just … don't scroll so fast.”