“We find out where she went to shore,” I tell my brothers.“We go to every ranch and every gas station and every fork in the road within hiking distance until we find someone who’s seen her.”
CHAPTER 62
Summer
It turns out Leah is a fellow traveler staying at the Lompoc Discount Motel.I have dinner with her once more, and she tells me one of her sons is picking her up in the morning, and she’ll be visiting with his family for two weeks.
I hug her goodbye.She slips me her phone number and tells me to call if I need to talk.I shove the paper into my jeans pocket and think to myself how there are a lot of good people in this world.
Like the MacLaines.
I spend that night in the motel, doing damn near nothing but staring at the TV, trying to sleep, and forbidding myself to think of home.The only thing Ihaven’tdone is what I’m here to do.Tomorrow morning, I’m going.
I wake up and drag my sorry ass to the bus stop to wait for the morning prison shuttle.But when it comes, I tell the driver I’ve changed my mind and walk away.
I’m such a pussy.
I blame Yosemite Ranch.
In some ways, living there made me whole.I learned who I am and what I’m capable of.I learned how to love other people and laugh so hard that I cry.But at the same time, that life made me soft.I became a person who isn’t happy unless she’s surrounded by people who care about her.
So pathetic.Such a pussy.
Now I’m sitting on a little bench outside the motel, switching between staring at the Santa Ynez Mountains and shutting my eyes so tight that I see spots on the insides of my eyelids.But I can’t push the racing thoughts from my head.Thoughts of Yosemite Ranch, of the MacLaines, of making s’mores and chocolate-covered worms with a giggly Jasmine.Of my beautiful little cabin, the job I adored, and the three horses I treasured.
My amazing little life.
The land.
The love.
I shut my eyes even tighter and shake my head forcefully enough to throw off the memories—like BeelzeBob threw me off his back and set this whole disaster in motion.
I long for Declan.I miss him.I can feel his big, hard body against mine as he takes me.I can feel his mouth on mine, and the deep rumble of his laughter.I smell him—warm skin and a trace of expensive body wash, and clean clothes.
I break into sobs on that bench, and it takes a good while for me to pull myself together.
But then, on my third morning in Lompoc, I wake up, get dressed, and I catch the shuttle.My first stop will be the women’s annex.
As we get closer to the barbed wire of the prison, my anxiety level increases, which is amazing since I thought I’d already topped out in that department.The bus is filled mostly with prison employees, but there are a handful of miserable visitors like me.
I can read it on their faces, how much they don’t want to do this but how much they feel they have to.When the bus arrives, the employees turn one way, and the visitors are herded into the visitor center by a barking guard.
I’m tempted to bark back at him, but there’s something about visiting a prison that keeps a person in line.I can’t imagine anything worse than being locked up.And I can imagine a lot.
After waiting for thirty minutes, it’s finally my turn to show my ID and fill out the form to visit my mother.They confiscate my backpack, which terrifies me, since all my cash is folded up and shoved into an inside zipper compartment.And from there, it’s another three hours and a pat-down before I finally make it to the visitors’ area.
I watch as one prisoner after the next shuffles in, finds their friend or family member, and sits at a molded plastic table to talk with them.But so far, my mother hasn’t appeared.
I keep watch out for her, though I have no idea what she looks like these days.In my mind I picture an older version of the woman I knew—one beat down by years of rage and drugs.She’s probably skin and bones with stringy gray hair.She may be stooped over.But she’ll have those same eyes—the dull gray of a storm cloud, but as empty as a black hole.
I don’t see her.
I eavesdrop to pass the time, until I can’t anymore.The conversations around me are so painfully private and miserable that after a few minutes, I block out the sound.
Finally, a guard approaches me.He shrugs.“She says she don’t want no visitors.”
A lightning bolt of shock goes through me.I can’t imagine Lurlene Stevens has had a single visitor in the past decade.I thought she might be pleased to see someone from the outside, even if it’s only me.
