When it all goes to hell, she has someone to count on.
Lauren Tanner wakes up that morning and finds a note carefully written note slipped underneath her door. The piece of paper has been folded carefully, precisely pressed into four rectangles of equal size, and her mother's neat, even handwriting runs across the page in perfectly straight lines. Each letter looks almost as if it were typewritten by a computer or a typewriter, not written by a human hand. The small black font runs across the page, perfect until it runs to the bottom of the page where the ink smears and blots.
Lauren can't remember a time when her mother's handwriting was less than perfect.
Lauren can't remember a time when her mother was less than perfect.
She reads the words, hazel eyes quickly scanning over every precisely printed word, but by the time she reaches the end of the letter, her vision blurs and tears streak down her face, dripping onto her mother's carefully written letter, further marring the neat, precise print. In those moments, the cavernous house seems unbearably quiet, and Lauren is acutely aware of the sound of her own breath breaking the silence.
She can't stand it.
She runs down the stairs, almost expecting to find her mom there by the stove, cooking Lauren bacon and eggs while morning biscuits bake in the oven. Her mom's not there, but her dad is, and he looks so tired. Steve Tanner, her father, sits at the square table in the breakfast nook, elbows leaning on the table, his face in his hands. There's a single sheet of paper laid out in front of him, and Lauren can't make out the words from the doorway - all she can see is a mess of black print running across the white paper, but somehow, she knows that his letter says the same as hers.
He finally looks up to see her standing in the doorway, but she's not sure if he really sees her. She's not sure if he looks right through her. Either way, he doesn't say a word. The silence just stretches through the kitchen, hanging between them, permeating the air all around them, suffocating them, and Lauren hates it. She wants to grab one of the China plates her that her grandmother loves and always insists on using when she visits and throw it on the floor so it shatters to pieces just so she can hear the sharp sound of glass breaking against the tile floors.
She doesn't though, and her father still sits silently at the table, face buried in his hands.
She doesn't eat breakfast that day. She watches her father for a few more moments, and it occurs to her, somewhere in the back of her seven-year-old mind, that her father has broken so she heads back up the stairs and to her room because she can't watch, can't intrude on her father's pain, can't come to grips with the fact that her father is broken.
The house is quiet so the sound of her father's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs seems to resonate loudly through the halls. He appears in her doorway, and Lauren thinks that today, her father looks a lot older than he did just yesterday.
"Get your things, Lo," he says in a voice that attempts to be strong yet does a poor job of covering his resignation and heartbreak. "You're going to Kaylie's house."
She looks at her father and sees the fatigue that's slipped into his muscles, into his bones and changed the way he carries himself and knows she has to be strong so she throws him her brightest smile and starts chattering on about what she's going to do at Kaylie's house, how they're going to mess up Leo's rooms and swim in the pool, how they'll bake cookies with Kaylie's abuelita who's visiting from Spain, how they'll paint each other's nails, orange for Lauren and pink for Kaylie. She says all sorts of nonsensical things, none of which really have any meaning to her, because at the moment, the most significant thing in her life is the fact that her mother's gone and Lauren doesn't know where she is.
She goes to Kaylie's house and her dad doesn't even go to the front door with her, just opens the trunk and retrieves her bag, leaving Lauren to walk up to the Cruz's intimidating mansion. It doesn't intimidate her though, because she's Lauren Tanner, and because Kaylie's house is pretty much her house, the place where her parents send her when they fight and don't want her around.
She walks into the house and into the warm kitchen that smells like cookies and somehow, she's okay.