The Honey Bus. Meredith May

being in the dark of a real movie theater. We settled in to watch Matthew’s favorite show, Emergency!, about two Los Angeles paramedics who carry a hospital phone in a box and rescue accident victims, mostly by jolting them back to life with electrical paddles.

      “TV’s too loud!” Granny called from the kitchen.

      Just then a car exploded on-screen at full volume.

      I was cozy. I didn’t feel like removing a wall and crawling all the way to the TV to reach the volume knob.

      “Turn the TV down,” I said to Matthew.

      He ignored me. Lately, Matthew’s adoration of me seemed to be waning. This was disturbing on two counts. One, he was no longer following my orders. The other day he’d even refused to let me put every necklace and bangle in Mom’s jewelry box on him, something we did all the time. But worse, he was all I had left of my family, and I couldn’t tolerate the thought of him leaving me, too. I tried not to take his emerging independence personally, it was part of his growing up after all, but I was afraid it signaled something deeper, that he one day wouldn’t need me. The thought of Matthew leaving me was so terrifying that I became meaner to try to keep him in line, to show him that there were severe consequences for disobeying me. So if he wasn’t going to turn the TV down, then he wasn’t going to get to stay in the hut, either. I knocked the sofa cushion nearest me, and our house toppled on us. Matthew howled in outrage as he kicked his way free of the ruins.

      Granny appeared in the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She shot us a look that said we were riding her last nerve. Then she cranked down the volume, and that’s when we heard someone knocking on the front door.

      How long the visitor had been trying to get our attention, we couldn’t say. Most likely it was one of Grandpa’s honey customers, dropping by unannounced with an empty glass jar in hand. Grandpa wasn’t home, so whoever it was would have to leave their jar on the doorstep with a check or cash in it, and Grandpa would swap the money with honey, then put it back outside so they could fetch it later.

      Granny opened the door, and I saw her back stiffen.

      Then she shouted my mother’s name over her shoulder. “Sal-leeeee!”

      I heard the creak of the bedroom door, and Mom padded into the living room in rumpled sweatpants and T-shirt, an outfit that doubled as her nightgown.

      “You don’t have to yell, Mom,” she said, blinking in the afternoon light. Mom came up behind Granny and put one arm on the door frame and leaned in. Then she took a step back.

      “David,” she said.

      I heard a low male voice, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled up.

      Dad!

      The vault inside me where I stored all my secret thoughts about Dad flung open, and fireworks exploded out of every pore. Six months of wishing in the lonely quiet of night had worked its magic, and now everything was going to snap back to the way it was before, just like I knew it always would.

      I clicked off the TV, and Dad’s silky words swirled into the living room, wrapping me in a tight fabric and pulling me toward him. I knew he would come back. Now we could finally go home, Mom would be happy again, and Matthew and I would get our own rooms back. I looked at my little brother, and he was bouncing up and down, his eyes fixed on the door.

      “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” he sang.

      I leaped in the direction of Dad’s voice, but Mom and Granny wouldn’t step aside or open the door wider than a couple of inches, so all I could see were bits of him—the side of his leather Top-Sider shoe, a patch of ink-black hair. I peered through the crack in the door and spotted our green Volvo parked in the driveway by the eucalyptus tree. He must really want us back if he drove all the way here, I thought.

      “Did you bring my portable dishwasher?” Mom demanded. “The kids’ toys?”

      I tugged on Granny’s sleeve, but she didn’t respond. I tapped on Mom’s back. Nothing.

      My father had just driven across country in Mom’s Volvo to return it to her, and no one had explained this beforehand to Matthew and me. He’d stayed the night at his mother’s house in Pacific Grove, and he’d asked her to follow him to our house the next day and park a few streets away so he could catch a ride back to the airport. He’d anticipated a possible confrontation at our house and wanted to spare his mother from seeing it, so they made a plan for him to walk to the village where there was a one-block strip with a grocery, barbershop, bank and restaurant, and meet her in the parking lot.

      I knew none of this. When Dad suddenly appeared on our doorstep, I’d assumed that he was there to fetch us. I looked on, stunned, as Granny blocked him from coming through the door.

      Something wasn’t right. Dad must know we were in the house, so why wasn’t he coming inside? What was taking so long? Why weren’t they letting him in? Granny was speaking in clipped sentences, with the same undertone of disgust she saved for bad politicians she read about in the newspapers. I heard Dad mumbling, like he was apologizing, and the air became thick with malice. Their voices were getting louder, darker, sharper, and my muscles clenched with the memory of our last night in Rhode Island. Then Mom’s voiced cracked into thunder.

      “How can you do this to me?” Mom shrieked. “Don’t you care about your own children?”

      Dad’s fingers flashed into the house and dropped the car keys into Granny’s open palm. She tossed the key ring a few feet onto her writing desk as if it was a stinky shoe that she didn’t want to touch. Mom stepped outside to talk to Dad and Granny closed the door, thumping her butt into it to make sure the latch caught. She pushed the button in the doorknob to lock it, and swiped her palms together in a gesture of finishing something, of wiping flour off her hands. She walked back to the kitchen without glancing our way, as if nothing had happened.

      Things were moving too fast. I could hear Mom outside roaring at Dad. I didn’t know what divorce meant, but I caught the finality in her voice as she spat the word at him, and that told me all I needed to know—that whatever was wrong with my parents was unfixable.

      “Don’t you want your kids?” she wailed.

      Matthew looked at me with wide eyes, searching my face for reassurance. I took a step closer to him, and he wrapped his arm around my leg.

      I heard Dad’s voice rise to meet Mom’s, and they became two dogs, barking and growling at each other. A familiar dread pressed down on my rib cage, and I understood that if I didn’t get through that door, I might never see my father again. This was my one chance to try to change his mind. Maybe, if he saw me, if I pleaded with him, he’d stay. I couldn’t let Dad come this close and then slip away without trying. I lunged for the door, unlocking it just in time to see Dad walking down the driveway and toward the road. The neighborhood reverberated with Mom’s voice as she hollered to his back.