Mary and Ernie Bishop greet me warmly at the door after I ring the doorbell of their small brick bungalow in a neighborhood that is old but well maintained. The kind of place it might have been nice to grow up in, where you could ride your bike on the streets, knock on neighbors’ doors… Far from the rich feel that so much of Bellerive has, but not a place that seems poor either.
Ernie is tall—over six feet—maybe almost my height, and Mary is tall, too, for a woman. Athletic looking. Both of them have hair streaked with silver, but I can’t help examining them, trying to figure out what parts of me might have come from parts of them.
In their kitchen, Ernie offers me a protein shake, but I ask for water instead. He seems disappointed, and I wonder whetherthey bought the stuff to make a shake just for me. One of my endorsement contracts is with a protein shake company, and maybe that’s where they got the idea.
“We thought you might bring your girlfriend,” Mary says. “We saw some videos from your games. She seems lovely.”
“She is,” I say with a nod. “But I wanted a chance to…” My bluntness almost pokes through, and I shut my mouth just in time. Tamiko would be proud.
“Make sure we were decent people?” Ernie suggests, handing me a glass of water before taking a seat at the table. “Wouldn’t blame you. Still can’t believe this whole set of circumstances.”
“To think Cathy is gone…” Mary’s eyes tear up as she looks at Ernie across the table, reaching for his hand. “We’re trying to find out where she was buried. Figure out if there’s any way we can get her home, or… Something. Feels like we need to do something.”
“Do you still have any of her things?” I ask. We’re related, but they’re strangers, and so their grief doesn’t quite feel real to me or maybe earned. Whatever it is, it’s making me uncomfortable. Maybe I should have brought Sawyer. She’s good at making people feel at ease—the doctor in her.
“Oh,” Mary breathes out. “Yes. Her room. It’s changed a little, but we left a lot of it. I always expected her to turn up one day. Come home.”
I follow them both out of the kitchen and down a narrow hall to a bedroom. Mary opens the door, and the room smells stale. She steps in and picks up framed photos, handing them to me. There are ones of her, presumably with high school friends. Then there’s one of her with a tall boy, and my heart skips. “Who’s this?”
“Her younger brother, Brandon. Took that just before she found out she was pregnant, I think,” Mary says, peering overmy shoulder. “They were close before she left. I thought she might have kept in touch with him, maybe. But she didn’t.”
I absorb the fact that I have an uncle, that he has a family. It’s hard to process. People who finally share my DNA but still strangers.
“She was a Jill of all trades,” Mary says. “Loved creative tasks—painting, sewing, making things, but she was also on every school sports team. Straight A student. Couldn’t have asked for a better kid.”
“Which is what made her getting pregnant so tough. Turned her life upside down,” Ernie chimes in. “We didn’t handle it well.”
My mom didn’t paint her life as being that fantastic before she got pregnant, but I also know how time changes perspective. Maybe the things she wrote she didn’t really believe anymore by the time she died. Maybe Mary and Ernie are remembering her through a rosy tint. I’ll never know.
“When we had kids, I knew there’d be sacrifices,” Mary says. “Love always comes with sacrifice.”
I stare at the framed photo in my hands of my mom with her brother, trying to piece together the woman who birthed me, the family she came from, the history she’ll never be able to tell me herself. But the mention of love meaning sacrifice causes my mind to stray to Sawyer—the only person I’ve ever loved enough to even consider giving up things I want, routes I planned to take.
“Sometimes we get those sacrifices right, and sometimes we have regrets over the ‘more’ we could have done. It’s that unanswered question that drives people mad: Did I do enough? And I know I didn’t. I let love and happiness and family and connection slip through the cracks instead of putting in the effort to patch it. Until the day I die, I’ll regret that we let Cathydown. That we didn’t do everything we could to bring her back home. Until the day I die, I’ll wish we did things differently.”
It's the first time I’ve ever heard anyone talk about love leading to sacrifice, and if I’d heard it at any other point in my life, it might not have hit me square in the chest like it does right now. This whole time, I’ve been acting like, let myself think like, Sawyer was the only onecapableof sacrificing. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe that’snotfair.
As I stare at the old photo of my mother in my hands, I really ask myself what I want. What I really want, in my gut, in my heart, and I realize it’s not what it’s been every other time I’ve asked myself that question.
Ernie pats me on the shoulder. “Struck a nerve, did it?”
“I needed to hear that,” I admit. “Sometimes what’s most important shifts.”
“If we’d known what happened to Cathy, what happened to you, we’d have stepped up. No question,” Ernie says.
And maybe I’m feeling sentimental, or maybe I’m taking a page out of Sawyer’s book and I just want to believe the best of them—but Idobelieve them. They seem sincere. For years, I’ve had a great big question mark where my mother and father should be. With the chance to fill in those blank spaces right in front of me, I’d be a fool to turn that down.
“I’d love to hear about my mom.” My voice goes rusty on the last word. “I’d love to know her through your eyes.”
“We’d love to tell you,” Mary says her voice thick with tears.
Chapter Forty-Two
Logan
Being with Ernie and Mary only made me surer that I’ve already found my home, my person. So, I called my agent and talked through my idea with him. A long shot, but a shot I have to take. He tells me that there’s only one person who can veto the Oregon deal, give me what I want, which leaves me with a lot to think about on the flight home.
When I get to Sawyer’s, there’s still security on-site, and I send up a silent thanks to her cousin Owen for running a reliable company. Owen’s security firm is sticking around until after the trial or plea deal—wherever they land. I nod to the guy watching the door as I let myself into the house.
