Inevitable and Only Read online

  Text copyright © 2017 by Lisa Rosinsky

  Title page photograph by iStock/danix

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. While some locations described in this book are real, the conversations, characters, and events portrayed as occurring at those places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Boyds Mills Press

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-817-2 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-921-6 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937884

  First e-book edition

  Design by Barbara Grzeslo

  The text of this book is set in Aldus.

  H1.0

  For my mom, who read this one in the right order

  CHAPTER ONE

  After three and a half weeks of waiting—or really, fifteen years, nine months, and the slowest three and a half weeks ever—there it was. I dropped the junk mail and bills onto the hall table and picked out the long envelope with a rectangular bump, stamped with the words “Official Documents Enclosed, Do Not Bend.”

  “Dad!” I shrieked, running into the kitchen and flapping the envelope in his face.

  “Error. Error. Cannot. Read. Moving. Object,” he said in Malfunctioning Robot Voice, taking a block of tofu out of the fridge.

  I waved the envelope again. “It says ‘Department of Motor Vehicles,’ Dad, guess what it is!”

  “Speeding ticket?” he suggested, unwrapping the tofu.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s addressed to me, not Mom.” I don’t know how my mom manages to get so many speeding tickets—she drives, like, less than ten miles a day.

  “Mmm, fermented soy juice,” he said, switching to his Gollum impression, as he drained the block of tofu in the sink. “Fermented ssssssoy juiccccce.”

  Dad’s tofu scramble isn’t bad, if you ask me. Mom grumbles, but if she’s not home while Dad’s cooking, then how can she expect to be served whatever she wants? When we go out to dinner she likes to order fancy stuff like brussels sprouts salad with truffle oil or chickpea fritters with date compote. But that’s just on special occasions like birthdays, or to celebrate when Josh wins a cello competition. Most nights, Dad cooks, and it’s usually something like tofu scramble or black bean burgers or Quinoa Surprise.

  “Dad, focus!” I said. “It’s my learner’s permit!” I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the laminated card triumphantly. “See?”

  He pushed his glasses down his nose and looked at the card over them, preparing his snottiest British accent. I know the tell-tale signs. Martin Chuzzlewit Voice, he calls it. I think he just likes saying Martin Chuzzlewit. “Why, yes, indeed, it does seem that the state of Maryland is permitting you to learn. But to learn what, is the question? To learn the fine art of helping your father steam a spot of broccoli?”

  I took the head of broccoli he held out and began breaking off bits and tossing them into the steamer. “Can we go out tonight? Please? Just to drive around the ShopRite parking lot. I won’t go over ten miles per hour. I promise.”

  Dad pursed his lips and pretended to consider, but I thought I saw a smile starting to crack through.

  “Eight miles per hour! Six!”

  “We’ll go right after dinner,” he said, in his normal voice, which I’ve always thought sounds just like the weatherman’s from the news and traffic report Mom listens to every morning in the car. Deep and resonant and, well, radio-like.

  “Yes!” I shouted, dropping the last of the broccoli into the steamer. Josh had wandered into the kitchen, and he jumped at the noise and started to back away. But I caught him and lifted him off the floor, spinning him around in a circle, even though he’s almost as tall as me now. “Yesyesyesyesyes!” I said, spinning the other way.

  “Put me down, please,” he said patiently. My little brother inherited all the patience in this family.

  I put him down because he was really too heavy to spin anyway. “Did you hear me? I’m going to learn how to drive!” I waved my permit over my head.

  “Can I have real cheese on my scramble?” he asked Dad, ignoring me.

  Dad took a block of cheddar out of the fridge and set it down on the counter beside the tub of Daiya cheese. “Just remember you might turn into a baby cow one of these days, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Which one do you want, Cadie?”

  I sighed. “I’ll have the fake cheese.”

  My parents have been vegetarians since they were in college—they met while peeling potatoes in their campus co-op kitchen—but Dad’s recently “jumped on the vegan bandwagon,” as Mom puts it. Usually while wrinkling her nose at the soy creamer or cashew butter Dad’s plunked in front of her on the table. Secretly, I think almond milk belongs inside an almond, not in a bowl of cereal, but officially I side with Dad on this one. As with most things.

  Mom came home just before eight, and I had the table set, the water glasses filled, and the salad dished out onto four plates so we could start dinner as quickly as possible. At eight thirty on the dot, Dad pushed back his chair and announced, “Cadie and I are going out for a driving lesson, if the other half of the family would be so good as to take dishwasher duty tonight.”

  Mom nodded absentmindedly, then processed what Dad had just said—I practically saw the wheels turning. Her head snapped around to me. “A driving lesson? Already?”

  I held up my permit, which I’d tucked carefully into my sweatshirt pocket. Mom took the card and examined it. Then she sighed.

  “Dios mío. My little girl. You’re growing up too fast.”

  Something twisted in my stomach a little, and for a moment I wished I’d asked Mom to take me for my first lesson. Maybe it would’ve helped close the gap that had been widening between us for the past, oh, decade and a half.

  But then she rubbed her eyes and said, “Go ahead, you two. Thanks for taking her, Ross. I’m beat. Could hardly keep my eyes open on the way home myself.”

  “Tut, tut. Not a very good example to set for our new driver here,” Dad said, dropping a kiss on my mother’s head. “You’d better rest up tonight, milady. Pamper thyself.”

  You’d have to know my dad’s voices as well as I do to have recognized the barb in his tone.

  To me, he said, “Tis hatch’d and shall be so!” and I grinned, because it was a quote from The Taming of the Shrew, which we’d seen back in April at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. Last week we’d gone to Much Ado About Nothing. Dad was thrilled that I’d signed up for drama class this year—I finally had room in my schedule for electives. He’d started collecting secondhand pocket editions of all the Shakespeare plays for me whenever he had extra copies at the bookshop.

  I scooped up the car keys from the blue bowl on the counter, tossed them to Dad, and danced to the door.

  Dad got into the driver’s seat of our ancient Honda Accord and reached over to unlock the passenger’s side door for me. Once upon a time, the car was some shade of red. But the roof had been painted blue, the hood was now purple, and the bumpers were green. The doors were still their original color but had faded to a pinkish brick red and had been covered with little white stars, which is why Dad dubbed it the Commie Comet. He and Mom had plastered it in so many bumper stickers—which said things like ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING and EVERY MOTHER IS A WORKING WOMAN and QUESTION CONSUMPTION and JESUS WAS A LIBERAL—you could barely see
the color of the car underneath anyway.

  That was one thing that made me think maybe there was still hope we could get the old Mom back: she didn’t insist on painting over all the stickers when she got the job at Fern Grove Friends School. She bought herself a wardrobe of business suits and high heels, cut off her long hair, and started wearing makeup, but she kept driving the Commie Comet just the way it was. Then again, most of the other cars in the parking lot at Friends look similar to ours. Of all the academic jobs out there, managing a Quaker school must be the crunchiest.

  Dad drove up Elm Avenue to the ShopRite at the corner of University Parkway. This late at night, the parking lot was deserted, just as I’d known it would be. We pulled into a spot in the middle of the lot, under a flickering streetlight, and Dad turned the ignition off and unbuckled his seat belt.

  “All right, he said, albeit dubiously.” Dad loves to narrate himself, especially when it involves using adverbs. “Have at it, youngster.”

  I flew around to the driver’s side and waited for him to get out (have I mentioned that patience isn’t my strong suit?), then slid into the driver’s seat, scooted it forward so I could reach the pedals, and adjusted the mirrors. I touched the steering wheel, the gearshift. Dad buckled himself into the passenger seat and said (in his normal Weatherman Voice, which meant that he was more nervous than he was letting on), “I’d suggest we begin by turning on the car.”

  We drove around that parking lot for close to an hour. Very slowly. I learned how to ease off the gas pedal and transfer my foot to the brake without jerking the car. How to check all my mirrors before changing into an imaginary left lane, an imaginary right lane. How to twist the wheel ever so slightly to a position that would make the car turn in a graceful wide circle, not a tight corkscrew.

  “Do you want to drive home?” Dad asked, finally. “There’s no traffic on Elm this time of night. I’m fine with it if you are.”

  This is one of the many things I love about my dad. He trusts me. Trusts that I know how to make good decisions.

  “Yes!” I said, pumping my fist.

  “Mirrors,” Dad reminded me, as I turned out of the parking lot.

  I kept the speedometer needle at 10 as the car bumped along Elm. It’s a hilly road, cresting slightly at every cross street and then rolling down a gentle slope to the next one. We passed 39th Street, then 38th.

  “Now, as you reach the top of a hill,” Dad said, “you always want to slow down slightly. You never know what might be coming up the other side.”

  We rolled downhill from 38th and I pressed the brake lightly to keep the needle at 10, then transitioned my foot over to the gas pedal to climb the next hill.

  “Like right now,” Dad said, “you want to ease off the gas right about—”

  Something blurred across the road as I reached 37th Street.

  THUNK.

  I stomped on the brake and screamed.

  Dad shot out of the car and I sat there, frozen, my foot glued to the brake, until he banged on my window.

  “Put it in park!” he was yelling. I shifted the gear into park, then he yanked the door open. “Let me back it up.”

  So I stood on the sidewalk while my father rolled the car off the cat I had just run over.

  I couldn’t look away. Where the front tire had been, there was a dark pile of fur with a darker pool of liquid forming around it. It was glistening faintly in the light from the nearest streetlamp, but it wasn’t moving. Not a twitch. I was sobbing and screaming and I didn’t realize what I was saying at first, until I’d said it over and over again, and finally Dad put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Yes, Cadie, honey, I know you’re a vegetarian. Cadie, Cadie, take a deep breath.”

  He crouched to examine the situation, then took his phone out of his pocket and made a quick call. After he hung up, he walked over to me, his face pale, and put his arms around me. “Sweetie. You were driving entirely responsibly. It was an accident.” Weatherman Voice. Serious Dad.

  “But I’m a vegetarian,” I sobbed again, as if I didn’t know any other words in the English language.

  “Good people can hurt things without meaning to,” he said. “It happens all the time. Shh, Cadie, breathe. Breathe with me.”

  He started counting inhales and exhales and I breathed with his counting until I calmed down enough to stop hyperventilating. Then we waited for Animal Control to come, and when they arrived they examined the body and told us there was nothing they could do: the cat had no collar or tags; it was probably a stray. But they scooped it into a bag so they could take it back to the lab and look for a microchip, and then Dad said he’d drive the car home. We could see our house from where we’d stopped, so I said I’d walk the three blocks down Elm Avenue. Dad gave me another hug, then nodded.

  I cried while I walked, and when I opened the front door, Mom was waiting to give me a hug, too.

  “Dad told me what happened, querida. Don’t cry. It could’ve happened to anyone. At least you’re okay.”

  But I didn’t want to be comforted out of my misery. I’d killed an innocent living being and I deserved to suffer.

  “And it sounded like the cat was very old, anyway,” Mom said, stroking my hair.

  I pulled back and gave her my best look of disgust, then stalked upstairs to my room. When I curled up on my bed, I felt something poke me in the ribs, and pulled my learner’s permit out of my sweatshirt pocket. I tossed it under my desk, rolled over to face the wall, and closed my eyes.

  I heard footsteps coming up the stairs a while later, but I kept my eyes closed when the door creaked open. The footsteps paused at the doorway, then continued into my room, and I felt my mattress sink down. I opened one eye a crack to see Dad perched on the edge of my bed.

  He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sat there. I squeezed my eyes shut again. Finally, he spoke.

  “Cadie, my Cadiest,” he said quietly. “What can I do?”

  I just shook my head. How could I say it out loud? I, Acadia Rose Greenfield, was a murderer. At the age of fifteen. With my eyes closed, I saw one image burned into my retinas: Animal Control lifting that little body off the road, its matted fur glowing midnight black in the beam of their headlights. My stomach twisted and all I wanted was to vomit it out, to purge myself of the horrible memory. To go back in time before it had ever happened and fix it somehow. But there are some mistakes you just can’t undo.

  “Dad?” I whispered. “If crossing paths with a black cat is supposed to be bad luck, what kind of luck is it if you kill one?”

  Dad didn’t say that was stupid or superstitious. He didn’t try to comfort me or convince me I was overreacting or try to make me feel better. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. Dad knows me inside and out, because we’re the same that way—when we’re upset or angry, we just have to ride it out.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I know how much you’re hurting. Do you want me to sit here with you awhile longer?”

  I nodded and reached out my hand, and he held it. And he must have stayed there until I fell asleep, because when I woke up the next morning, I didn’t remember him letting go or leaving.

  The next day Mom whisked Josh off to the Peabody Preparatory for his cello lesson after school. I had art club, and then I took the bus down to Mt. Vernon to the bookshop. I couldn’t wait to tell Dad my news.

  I got off the bus a few blocks early so I wouldn’t have to transfer and walked the rest of the way. I love walking through Mt. Vernon, especially in early September when the leaves are starting to turn. Baltimore is grimy, lots of it is falling apart, but it’s also a city full of brightly colored row houses, old churches, little monuments tucked away in odd corners.

  Fine Print Books inhabits one of those painted row houses, a musty three-story structure approximately the same shape and size as our house. (You might wonder whether that tells you that our house is small, or the bookshop is huge. Let me give you a hint: used bookstores don’t make enough money
to be huge.) Dad hides there among the stacks all day, while my mother runs meetings and draws up budgets, and my brother practices cello to become the next Yo-Yo Ma.

  And me? I convinced Mom to stop my violin lessons when I was ten, when it was already clear that five-year-old Josh was a cello prodigy. To my surprise, she agreed without too much arguing—I think because the extra money they saved on my lessons went to buy Josh a decent half-size cello—and I was allowed to amuse myself however I wanted to while Josh was herded off to Peabody for lessons. While he practiced for an hour in the morning before school, I slept in. During his two hours of practice in the evening, I joined clubs I never stuck with for more than a few months.

  But I’d never been as excited about any of those clubs as I was about drama class. I started walking faster just thinking about it. Dad was going to flip when I told him about the winter play.

  Fine Print has at least one resident cat per floor at all times. Dad says that “all true bookshops have feline familiar spirits.” He says it’s a principle of physics, like magnetism. Cats are naturally drawn to a place filled with armchairs and people sitting in them with books on their laps.

  Today, when I walked in the door, Grendel—a huge tabby who spends all day sleeping in the window display—rubbed against my legs, and a lump of tears rose in my throat. What if that black cat had been someone’s pet? Someone’s feline familiar? What if it used to sit in someone’s lap and make it impossible for them to turn the pages of their book, like Grendel does?

  Cassandra heard the jingle of the bells against the door and looked up, put on her perfectly round, gold-rimmed glasses, and said, “Well, well, Grendel, look what you’ve gone and drug in from the cold.” (It was seventy-three degrees outside.) Cassandra is my father’s assistant. She’s a grad student in medieval history at Goucher College, and she dresses like she’s forgotten what century she actually lives in. Either that, or she does all her shopping at the Renaissance Festival.

  Today she had her waist-length cherry-red hair braided and wound around her head in coronets, and she was wearing a crimson skirt with knee-high black combat boots and a billowy white blouse. Oh, how I lusted after those boots.