The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [52]
“Can I offer you a snack?” a flight attendant interrupts, approaching just behind Serena and holding out a tiny bag of pretzels.
“No peanuts?” Serena asks.
“Sorry, just pretzels,” the attendant says.
“Then I’m meant to have pretzels,” Serena decides, smiling as she pops open the little bag and turns back to me. “Your dad tried to save my brother, Cal. And by helping Andrew—with that strength your dad shows, like in the airport—your father helped me. He’s still helping me. And I’m helping him. Do you not see that? That’s what being family is—that’s the best part—it’s not tit for tat or who owes more, it’s simply—when one hurts, so does the other; when one finds good, you share in that, too. That’s family.” But as Serena continues to stare my way . . . “This is making you uncomfortable, isn’t it?” she asks.
I shake my head, trying to convince her she’s wrong.
She goes silent, her stare digging even deeper. She’s not upset. She’s excited. “I was wrong before. This is why I’m here, isn’t it?” she blurts, not the least bit concerned that we brought her on this plane to save her life. “Not just for what your father and I share . . . the lessons are for you, too, for all three of us. Oh, I didn’t see it before. I mean, until you showed up, I didn’t even think he had family.”
“He did have family! He just—” I catch myself, clenching the fuse that’s lit in my chest and digging my feet into the airplane’s thin carpet. “He has a family,” I say quietly. “He just chose to ignore me.”
“You sure about that?” She tugs on her ankles, tightening her Indian-style position and reaching for a pretzel.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You were, what, sixteen years old when he was released? Just taking the SATs, starting to wonder about going to college. You really think having a convicted murderer enter your life was the best thing for you?”
“You don’t know that. You met him, what, four months ago?”
“Six months,” she says. “How’d you know that, anyway?”
“I was bluffing. But that’s my point: You barely know him. I heard you at the hospital, asking if he got the shipment. So answer my question, Serena: Why’d you really come to the airport?”
I wait for her yellow blue eyes to narrow, but they just get wider. She’s not insulted. She’s hurt. “I came for the same reason you did,” she tells me.
“Let me guarantee right now that’s not true.”
“Do you really think you’re the only one whose life didn’t turn out the way they dreamed, Cal? When I was eleven years old, my mother remarried a man who . . . well, shouldn’t’ve been living around eleven-year-old girls. Or their younger brothers. I still pay for those years. But when I was seventeen—when I finally told my mom, and she threw me out because she couldn’t handle that it might actually be true—I remember sitting in this filthy McDonald’s. It was pouring, one of those thick Florida rains, and I had this feeling to go outside. When I did, I saw this puddle—shaped like a mitten—that reminded me of this great puddle we used to jump in back when we could afford camp. And reliving that moment . . . that was blissful. Real bliss. All because I listened to that feeling to go outside.”
“Okay—so to find true meaning in life, I need to go stand out in some sentient downpour. Very Shawshank Redemption.”
“Let me ask you something, Cal: Why’d you come on this trip?”
“I almost got killed this morning.”
“Before that. When you saw your dad lying there in the rain . . . You had your own feeling, right? You listened to something inside yourself and suddenly your life was reignited. Like in Don Juan, where he says that sometimes you need to lace your belt the opposite way. We get so comfortable in our lives, things get so mundane, we spiritually fall asleep. But you don’t have to go to an ashram in India to reignite