The Last Song

1 Ro

Six months earlier

Ro

It was the only thing that could explain why she was here visiting her dad, in this godforsaken southern armpit of a place, instead of spending time with her friends back home in Manhattan.

No, scratch that. She wasn’t just visiting her dad. Visiting implied a weekend or two, maybe even a week. She supposed she could live with a visit. But to stay until late August? Pretty much the entire summer? That was banishment, and for most of the nine hours it had taken them to drive down, she’d felt like a prisoner being transferred to a rural penitentiary. She couldn’t believe her mom was actually going to make her go through with this.

Ro

“Why’d you do that?” her mom said, frowning. “I like hearing you play.”

“I don’t.”

“How about if I turn the volume down?”

“Just stop, Mom. Okay? I’m not in the mood.”

Ro

“I think I saw a pelican when we crossed the bridge to Wrightsville Beach,” her mom commented with forced lightness.

“Gee, that’s swell. Maybe you should call the Crocodile Hunter.”

“He died,” Jonah said, his voice floating up from the backseat, the sounds mingling with those from his Game Boy. Her ten-year-old pain-in-the-butt brother was addicted to the thing. “Don’t you remember?” he went on. “It was really sad.”

“Of course I remember.”

“You didn’t sound like you remembered.”

“Well, I did.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said what you just said.”

She didn’t bother to respond a third time. Her brother always needed the last word. It drove her crazy.

“Were you able to get any sleep at all?” her mom asked.

“Until you hit that pothole. Thanks for that, by the way. My head practically went through the glass.”

Her mom’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “I’m glad to see your nap put you in a better mood.”

Ro

She’d said those exact words to her mother in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but Mom had ignored the comments every time. Aside from trying to make nice on the trip since it was the last time they’d see each other for a while, Mom wasn’t one for conversation in the car. She wasn’t all that comfortable driving, which wasn’t surprising since they either rode the subways or took cabs when they needed to get somewhere. In the apartment, though… that was a different story. Mom had no qualms about getting into things there, and the building super had come by twice in the last couple of months to ask them to keep it down. Mom probably believed that the louder she yelled about Ro

Okay, she wasn’t the worst mom. She really wasn’t. And when she was feeling generous, Ro

But right now, Ro

Just off the bridge, summer traffic had slowed the line of cars to a crawl. Off to the side, between the houses, Ro

“Why again are you making us do this?” Ro

“We’ve already been through this,” her mom answered. “You need to spend time with your dad. He misses you.”

“But why all summer? Couldn’t it just be for a couple of weeks?”

“You need more than a couple of weeks together. You haven’t seen him in three years.”

“That’s not my fault. He’s the one who left.”

“Yes, but you haven’t taken his calls. And every time he came to New York to see you and Jonah, you ignored him and hung out with your friends.”

Ro

“I don’t want to see or talk to him,” Ro

“Just try to make the best of it, okay? Your father is a good man and he loves you.”

“Is that why he walked out on us?”

Instead of answering, her mom glanced up into the rearview mirror.

“You’ve been looking forward to this, haven’t you, Jonah?”

“Are you kidding? This is going to be great!”

“I’m glad you have a good attitude. Maybe you could teach your sister.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I just don’t see why I can’t spend the summer with my friends,” Ro

“Don’t you mean you’d rather spend all night at the clubs? I’m not naive, Ro

“I don’t do anything wrong, Mom.”

“What about your grades? And your curfew? And-”

“Can we talk about something else?” Ro

Her mother ignored her. Then again, Ro

Traffic eventually started to move again, and the car moved forward for half a block before coming to another halt. Her mother rolled down the window and tried to peer around the cars in front of her.

“I wonder what’s going on,” she muttered. “It’s really packed down here.”

“It’s the beach,” Jonah volunteered. “It’s always crowded at the beach.”

“It’s three o’clock on a Sunday. It shouldn’t be this crowded.”

Ro

“Hey, Mom?” Jonah asked. “Does Dad know Ro

“Yeah. He knows,” she answered.

“What’s he going to do?”

This time, Ro

Ro