“I want to tell you…about California.” I don’t know why this feels like the insurmountable thing I need to cross before I can divulge anything else, why this feels like a betrayal.
My breath stutters as I bury my head into the comforter, her palm rubbing small circles across my back.
“Just please, don’t leave. You can hate me, just please. Don’t leave.” My body folds in on itself, sobs breaking me open until I can’t tell where this grief ends. I'm unraveling. I’m small again. I’m being ripped from front porches by unfamiliar hands, the wood still warm beneath my feet, the air ripping out of my lungs as I twist my head back over my shoulder, searching. Always searching. Years of my mother’s face circle my memory in flashes. Eyes, mouth, the way she’d hold herself still so I wouldn’t be afraid, because I never knew if this would be it. The last time I’d see her. Because leaving has always come without warning, love always something that disappears while I’m still reaching for it.
And then there's Evie. Fingers in my hair, like if she can untangle the strands she can untangle my knotted heart and find herself at the center ofit.
“Sloane.” Her voice is a careful caress trained by all the times I’ve pushed her away, kept her at arms length. “Sloane, honey. Look at me.”
My swollen eyes find her face and I see a version of myself reflected back, the pieces I’ve broken off and tried to abandon so many times before. Tears form at the corners of her own eyes, her delicate jaw still, like if she moves too quickly I’ll run away and I wonder how many times I have left. How many times she’s memorized my face and wondered if it was the last time she’d see it.
“I had…I had—” My voice tumbles over itself, my chest a wicked trembling thing as I try to find the words. Her hands brush back my tears, our faces so close as we lay on the queen sized hotel bed.
“I know. I know you did.” She nods, her tears breaking the surface as she tries to sniff them away.
“How—”
“Clem called.” She gives me a sad smile, and guilt folds up my stomach until it reaches my throat and I feel like I can’t breathe. She sucks in a small breath until her face morphs, the mask she's worn all the years I’ve known her slipping away until she’s small too. A girl who just wanted to be loved. “I’m so sorry baby. I—” Evie inhales sharply, trying to stifle what is already out. “I wish that things were different, I wish I wasn’t so—” she sniffs, wiping her tears away quickly, as if she’s to blame for their presence. “I just wish I was someone you could’ve told. I wish I could have been there.”
My face crumples as I realize she’s not disappointed in me but herself. “I thought you’d hate me. I was giving up something you wanted so badly, something you prayed for.”
“Hate you? Sloane, you are mine.” There’s a fierceness in her voice followed by another sob and I don’t know if it’s hers or mine. “I could never hate you. All those years of praying,hoping I’d have a little girl one day.” She shakes her head, her eyes desperate for me to understand. “You are the answer to every one of those prayers. You and your brother. You are all I ever wanted. All I want.” She takes my fingers, rubs warmth back into them with her hands like she’s been waiting to do this forever. “You are my perfect, wild thing, Sloane. There is not one hair on your head I would change.”
Her mouth tightens, words gathering behind it. “I just wish…” she swallows. “I wish you’d let me in. I wish you didn’t have to brace yourself every time I reach for you. Wish you knew that nothing about you, not your fire, not your grief, not the way you feel everything fully, has ever been too much for me. I wish I would’ve pushed harder, broken the part that kept you silent when you so badly needed to be held. You were just a little girl, Sloane. You weremylittle girl and I gave you too much space, let you think that you were anything but the miracle that I prayed myself hoarse for.”
She presses her forehead to mine, a steady stream of our trembling breath and tears between us as she sniffs back a smile. “Honey, I would go to the ends of this earth searchin’ for you, would rip it apart with my bare hands if I had to. You’re mine, Sloane. You always have been. And I will always find you.”
“Connie left again.” The sentence is choked and broken when I let it out and I watch her bite the inside of her own cheek. She nods this sad grave nod, the permanence of it signaling she knows more than I do.
“That’s why I’m here.” Her eyes squint with tears, like if she looks at me hard enough I might see what's behind them. “She called me.” My eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “To be transparent, she’s called me quite a bit over the years. Just to see how you and your brother were. I’d always give her your number. Update her on where you two were. She said you might need me…I didn’t realize it meant she was leaving.” She shakes her head, her sorrow so deep, so palpable that it feels like my own and I wonder if it is. I wonder if this is how it feels to let someone carry some of your pain.
“Being a mom is hard, Sloane. Harder than anyone ever tells you.” She lets out a sad laugh and I sniff, realizing the pain I felt just hours ago has dulled, isn’t fresh and hot, ready to erupt. “There is always something to feel guilty about,” she continues softly. “Connie...she has her own battles, but she loves you enough to know you deserve more. Leaving has never meant she's stopped loving you. The world can besocruel, especially to us moms and even more so to the moms who aren’t ready. All the pain that comes from having a child, all that guilt? It can eat at you and there’s rarely anyone there to make it stop. Most of the time they just push us to the side, make us feel worse for not knowing exactly how to be what our children need.” She swallows. “I know that even when Connie’s been stumbling through her own storms she's carried her love for you kids with her. Her love has always been yours Sloane, always, just as mine has.” She uses her thumbs to wipe the last of my tears away, my eyes falling shut as she brushes my hair with her hands, and we lay in a comfortable silence.
I think about what Andy said, that night at the pizza restaurant, think about how I was so scared that I'd been running too long, that I’d never be found. But laying here, Evie's gentle breathing lulling me to sleep, I realize I was found a long time ago.
41
Andy
Luis’s memory is an ever present thing but, sometimes, the urge to go to him will jacket me. Leave me unable to really do much besides turn my face against the pillow, like I did over and over again, all night and the night before, waiting for to feel steady again. Skipped conditioning; am still avoiding the texts from Coach about whether or not I’m getting on that plane tonight. The conference game is the last thing on my fucking mind. All that is, is Sloane. The broken way she stared after me as Jean pulled her away, despite my cries, despite my pleas. Sloane, a shell of herself. Sloane, all alone.
I pull myself up the pathway to Mom’s apartment, wondering if this would feel half as horrible if Luis was on the other side of that door. He could make the worst of days better with just a look, a reassuring smile that would melt over me, soothe every anxiety I had. He was the first line; Mom was second. He took the brunt of everything for her, handed her the pieces he was too clumsy to reassemble, and together, they carried it all. Fixed everything.
In his absence, I assumed I could fix it all by myself.And on the slow trek toward my mother’s door, I realize that I haven’t fixed anything. Just…brushed it under the rug, weighed it down with monied distractions. It’s been pulled out from under me, though, and now—now I’m incapable of understanding how I’m supposed to be okay in the wake of Sloane.
I step into the apartment, the warm flow of the recessed kitchen lights drawing me closer to the dining room table where I can hear my mom’s soft laughter, and let my keys clatter against the counter when I see my brother. My chest seizes up, my silent resentment for his thoughtlessness sticking to my skin even though Iknowit’s not his fault. None of this really is.
If I’m being honest, his news blast that revealed my years of siphoning information from them for our dad, that linked me to the Rivers…it was past due. Should’ve happened years ago. The fallout from my choice was inevitable—my cowardice just delayed its spectacular crash landing.
“Sweetie,” Mom smiles up at me, her eyes kinder than I’ve seen them in days. “Come sit.”
I swallow against my discomfort, sitting as I avoid the uncharacteristic pity I find in Ian’s gaze.
“Listen—” he starts to apologize, cheeks drawing upward as he grimaces.
“Save it.”
“Andy,” Mom chides, and I shake my head.
