Me: Or awakened. There’s no sense in mourning the inevitable.
Ty: No blueberry fields and rain escape for you?
Me: As much as I love that visual, I don’t think that’s where my key lies.
Ty: So, where’s your key?
Me: I’m not sure, but I want to own the places others fear. Then, I’ll never need to escape.
I’ve craved a sense of freedom for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure what that vision looked like. It was always muddied by my entanglement with my brothers, whether it be the urge to extricate myself from their tight rein or the comfort of remaining entwined.
And now … now, as I skate the outer edge of autonomy, I’m realizing that no one is truly free.
My mother grew up in Oklahoma with a gorgeous field of flourishing berries as her backyard view. And when the sky cried out, sprinkling tears of growth, she’d run through the dusty aisles, watching the colors blur and blend and darken right along with the moody clouds.
It’s a story I’ve held on to through the years. So has Jax. That’s why his hair is blue. Not that he broadcasts that tidbit. But I know. Because I was the one he always confided in. Or so I thought.
Anyway, my mother probably told us countless stories, but she shared that one with reverence. Like it unlocked something. Maybe that’s simply the way it’s colored now.
But that’s the one that has always stuck, crawled inside thedeepest crevices of my heart—the places cracked with trauma and grief and loneliness—to replenish it with hope and purpose.
The summer before my parents died, we went back to Oklahoma. My grandmother had passed away, and my mom finally summoned the courage to clean out the house. We’d always spent summers there, but she had determined that this would be our last. Too many old ghosts.
One afternoon, we sat in the sweltering August heat, drinking homemade lemonade on the vast, covered porch and peering out at the fields. We’d all been working to help her box up her memories because she couldn’t bear to let a mover touch the relics of all she was saying goodbye to.
My brothers and I were probably quieter than we’d ever been—utterly exhausted in various lazy, lounging states—so my mother played a few songs on her guitar to fill the silence, and tears flowed down her cheeks.
She must have noted the concern on my face because she reached for me, squeezing my small hand. “Mama’s okay. These are happy tears.”
Happy tears?Even though she was smiling, they didn’t look happy.
“Why are you crying happy tears?” I asked.
“Grandma was never afraid,” she answered, her eyes coasting back to those picked-over berries with a hint of admiration. “I loved that about her. She was brave and free.”
I’m not sure what she was referring to because Grandma wasn’t the same person with me as she was with my mom, which was also probably a variation from how she presented herself to her peers. Different hats. But I instantly wanted to be brave and free.
I lifted my chin to my mom, my eyes roving all over her beautiful face—the image of everything that was home. “What are you afraid of?”
“Heights and the dark,” she sang out with a jovial glint, leaning across me to jostle Jax’s leg because he slept with three night-lights,but then she spun her head back to me. “What about you, sweet pea?”
I wasn’t sure if she was truly afraid of the dark or simply saying that to lighten the phobia for Jax. Either way, I couldn’t think of anything. Fear wasn’t an emotion I entertained very often. Not unless it was purposeful in the way of a scary movie. A high. My brothers often marveled at how they couldn’t frighten me.
All I knew was that I wanted to be the person that Jax and my mom took into the dark, the one who not only climbed to great heights, but could also jump off them, the one who would be considered brave.
And free.
Perhaps that’s why I’m halfway across the country, chasing the first taste of blueberries and rain that my mother savored. I don’t know how exactly, but it seems that the liberty she sought was the very spark that burned her.
When I immersed myself in research to figure out who the hell I was a couple of weeks ago, I started with simple elements based on what I’d overheard. Blood tests, medical records, news reports on the fire.
Without DNA from my parents, determining blood relation was a bit of a mystery. But that piece about Jax or me being sick kept rattling around in my brain. I do remember Jax being stuck in the hospital when we were little. Prior to my search, I couldn’t pinpoint the timeline for the illness, but it got me thinking.
Axel keeps all our medical records locked in a cabinet in his office in case of emergency. I scoured them, searching for any discrepancies. It was blood type that came up different for both Jax and me. We were both AB while Cash was A, and everyone else was O. Unfortunately, without knowing my parents’ blood type, this isn’t conclusive. If one was A and the other B, then A, O, and AB are possibilities. But if one of them was an O, Jax and I are not their offspring. If nothing else, I got a crash course in biology.
While my discovery isn’t irrefutable, it is suspicious. Especiallysince Axel came out and said we belonged to someone else. That alone would have been enough to sway me, but the time denoted for the testing pushed it all over the edge. Jax’s blood type was marked on the report from his hospital stay—which occurred about two months prior to my parents’ deaths—and the rest of us were tested in the week following his release.
After learning that, I dove into any background I could find on my mother. All our belongings had been ruined in the fire, which was ruled an accident—another detail that doesn’t quite add up. Not only did Axel mention the fire in that cryptic conversation, but the fact that it had occurred so quickly after our blood tests sickens me. I’ve been unwilling to scurry down that particular rabbit hole.
