I’d sent that text right after she’d run away, after she didn’t respond to my wild shouts out the front door or my calls. I’d watched her on the camera, careening down my driveway at a clip. She’d narrowly missed hitting the drivercoming up with the takeout I’d ordered for us, a pathetic attempt at keeping her there just a little longer.
I was sorely tempted to drive out after her, but I knew I’d probably do more harm than good that way. Instead, I’d called Sal and told her to scan the radio waves for any accident or ambulance. There was nothing. Quince Valley was a sleepy town at night, thank God.
I didn’t text again that night. I sensed I’d make things inexorably worse by not leaving her alone after everything that had gone down that night.
But I did the next.
MITCHELL: Winona, I was an ass. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.
MITCHELL: Is your hand okay?
I’d gone for bandages when she ran upstairs. They were still sitting on the kitchen counter.
She didn’t answer. I wasn’t surprised. She didn’t answer the next day, either, when I reminded her to get her hand looked at.
It wasn’t until that night that I clued in. She’d blocked me.
I’d had to block plenty of people in my life, usually after dates Sal insisted I go on invariably left me feeling emptier than before. Most of those women had men salivating over them, and the ones I’d had to block were either unwilling to accept or even enraged at my polite rejections.
ButI’dnever been blocked before, at least not as far as I knew.
I wrote Winona anyway. I was that unhinged over her.
MITCHELL: Thank you, Winona. For helping me believe I might finish my book.
MITCHELL: For reminding me there’s still good in this world.
Jesus, I was corny. I wrote her lots more than that. A line of poetry, from this book I kept by my nightstand. The color of an oriole I’d seen in the trees by the pool. The name of a dog my dad brought home in a bout of generosity when I was eight, and took to the pound a month later when she chewed up one of his best shoes.
I told her all kinds of cheesy-ass things I’d never told anyone else. She wasn’t really there.
A week after that, my brother Conrad called from Seattle. We were normally close, seeing as we lived in the same city. I’d missed him. His son Artie even more. I ended up telling him about Winona. Not every gory detail, but the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“Mitchie,” he said. “Remember that time Mom got you that dragon series?
I'd forgotten about that. I’d worn a knight costume to school for a full month, until Dad came back from some trip he’d been on and lost his shit on Mom about it. I still tried to get all the kids at school to role play the best scenes with me for months afterward. I came home in tears when someone finally told me it was stupid. I lost friends over it.
“You were obsessed, Mitchie. When you get really into something, you kind of lose your head a little. You crashed out and moved to Vermont to write a fucking book, for fuck’s sake. It’s not healthy.”
He wasn’t wrong. Yes, I could get single-minded. But it wasn’t always bad.
“That’s how I built my company,” I reminded him. Obsessive, laser focus on a project I believed in.
“You handed LoupTeq to your assistant when you left."
“Sal’s perfectly capable. And she’s only holding onto ituntil the acquisition.” I hadn’t told him the reason for the acquisition was because a secret arm of the company was doing cutting-edge and skirting-the-bounds-of-legal work around developing an Alzheimer’s cure. That was the only reason I was coming back to do the deal. It was personal to me. And to my brothers.
“You don’t always smother things into oblivion, Mitchie. But sometimes you do. So be careful.”
A beat passed. “Fuck you,” I said finally. “How’s Mom?”
“Fuck you too. And she’s okay. No better than when you left. No worse either.”
I wanted to ask if she asked about me. I visited her every other day when I was at home. But I knew from the silence he knew the question. And I knew the answer. Most days, she had no idea who either of us was.
“Call us once in a while, would you?” Conrad asked. “Artie misses you.”
At least someone did.
