“Now we’re going home.” Evelyn lets go suddenly, and my legs hit the ground hard.
“Just like that?” Andrew asks. He sounds impressed.
“Just like that,” Evelyn says, and I can hear her smacking her hands together, like she’s brushing away all traces of me.
Andrew sets me down. He pulls my notebook from the waistband of my jeans.
I feel their absence when they leave me, the cold snaking its way to the places where their hot hands held me so tight.
58Amelia Blue
There’s the sound of a switch flipping, and the room is flooded with light. I crane my neck (the older woman is still holding me so I can’t quite turn entirely) and see a tall man standing in the doorway. He’s holding a baseball bat.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
“Your house?” I repeat.
I review the facts that I (sort of) know: This building is on the grounds of Rush’s Recovery. This place looks like a private home. This room seems more a helter-skelter home office than any sort of official records room.
I blink as my eyes adjust to the light. The man looks familiar: dark hair, brown eyes, evening stubble. Jeans with a nondescript thick sweater beneath a wool coat, beat-up boots. He would be handsome if he didn’t look so menacing.
“Do you work here?” I ask, groping for an explanation.
The man coughs. “I’m Andrew Rush.”
At once, the article I swiped from the records room appears in my mind’s eye. He was in the picture, younger then, but it’s definitely him—the Rushes’ son, the one who went into the family business.
But that’s not why I recognize him. Now that there’s a name with the face, I remember that Andrew Rush is (was?) a musician. He released a one-hit wonder years ago. The song was praised for its vulnerable take on navigating the world as an imperfect person, always hungry for more. Even now, clips from the music video pop up on social media alongside covers of fans doing different takes—setting it to piano or mashing it up with club music. His brown hair is graying at the temples, and there’s a bit of a paunch spilling over his waistband, but it’s definitely him. I even recognize his voice, inescapable when his song was blowing up the charts.
“Why aren’t you looking for Sonja with everyone else?”
He narrows his eyes. “I was. But then my alarm went off.”
“Your alarm?”
He shakes his head as though he can’t believe he’s explaining all this to the woman who broke into his house. “My phone alerts me if the windows or doors open when I’m not home. In case my mom gets out. She’s”—he pauses—“not well. Had to retire a few years back, so I took over the business.”
That makes him the center’s owner, the one who’s sending me home because I ran out of money. I shift my gaze back to the woman gripping my arm, realizing she was locked inside, just like Edward a few nights ago.
“Wait,” she begs as her son begins to cross the room. Her words are slurred but insistent. “I have to tell Amelia Blue.”
It’s the first time she’s referred to me by my own name, not my mother’s.
“The coroner had a daughter to send to college. All I had to do was call—”
“Come on, Evelyn,” Andrew says. He’s trying to sound gentle, coaxing, but there’s an edge to his voice. He stands over her, so much taller than either of us, and I’m seeing a version of what I saw the other night: the woman outside the house, the man restraining her.
“Evelyn,” I repeat. Ten years ago, a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Evelyn Rush called the landline in Laurel Canyon early on a Sunday morning. I was home for a long weekend from school. (With Georgia out of town, I didn’t have to stay away.) Evelyn Rush said that she’d been Georgia’s care manager, and calmly explained that my mother had checked herself out. There was nothing they could’ve done to stop her, she added. Georgia was of age, and her stay at the recovery center was voluntary.
“We worked it all out with Callie,” she says now.
“You knew Callie?” I ask. I haven’t heard from my mother’s manager since she died.
“Like I said,” Andrew explains. “She’s sick. Gets confused.”
“I’ve kept the secret for too long,” Evelyn says, wringing her hands. “I’ve had enough of it.”
“I better get her back to bed before she gets more agitated.” Andrew’s trying to sound like a dutiful son, but I still hear that edge in his voice. Heglances at Georgia’s open file on the desk. It’s obvious he doesn’t like the idea of leaving me alone, but his mother is writhing in his arms.
