“I think she rescued me.” Eli runs one hand over the hood, eyes glinting with pride. “I’m still tinkering with the engine. She needed a brand-new transmission, brakes, exhaust system, driveshaft. Everything had to be replaced.” He pops open the hood, offering me a glimpse of his work.
“Is this what you do?” I ask, mesmerized, even though I have no idea how the inside of a car works and I’m finding it hard to reconcile the corroded scrap of metal in the wall photos with the gorgeous vintage car under my fingertips.
“I’m a mechanic,” Eli says, his chin jutting with pride. “I like pulling things apart, putting them back together again. Giving a wreck a new life.” He closes the hood, pushing it down until it locks in place. Then guides me to the open side door, gesturing for me to climb in. I do.
“What’s next for her—after you’re done?” I ask, sliding both hands over the soft leather steering wheel. Eli takes the passenger seat beside me.
“A potential buyer came through last week,” he says, rubbing a speck of dust off the dashboard with the back of his palm.
“He offered three hundred thousand dollars,” Pearl exclaims enthusiastically.
I shoot Eli a dubious look. “I think she added an extra zero,” I say, unable to believe anyone would pay the price of a condo for this car. “Who has that kind of money?”
“Jackson Hole ranchers, apparently.” He shrugs sheepishly in response. “The deal is far from done,” he says, “but if it goes through, I’ll be driving Mabel out to Wyoming before Labor Day. Wanna come?”
A few months ago, the mere suggestion of a road trip to Wyoming would seem ludicrous. For one, when would I find the time? Most of the vacation I accrued atThe Georgia Timeswent unused. But standing here beside Eli and this dream of a car, it’s easy to imagine myself in the passenger seat, a silk scarf over my long, windswept hair, the sun lapping at my bare shoulders, a vastcloudless sky over an expansive stretch of road—and the endless possibility of it all.
Pearl’s phone pings, breaking into my thoughts. “My friends are here,” she announces, texting something back. “It was so awesome to meet you, Luisa.” In a sudden frenzy, she opens the driver’s door and throws her arms around me, giving me a tight hug. I hug her back, unaware that she would be leaving.
“I’m staying at Paulina’s,” she says to Eli. “We’re having a horror movie marathon. Can I take the leftover cake?”
“I thought you made that for me,” Eli exclaims in mock indignation. “What are Luisa and I supposed to have for breakfast?” He cuts me a sly glance, and my cheeks go red at the suggestion that I’ll be spending the night.
Pearl sets her gaze on me and smiles. “You kids make good choices,” she sings on her way out.
CHAPTER 28Holly
Ma, this is weird.”
Aidan is propped on the phone screen in the corner of my bedroom, and I’m grilling him about which jeans I should wear for my date tonight. I’ve tried on two pairs, twice each.
“Is it any weirder than my son setting me up?” I ask, teasing.
Aidan’s semester has ended, but he stayed in Athens to play a couple of paying gigs and apartment hunt for next fall. I wish he were here to offer in-person advice, but I can’t exactly be mad that he’s earning good money while also finding a place to live. I glance out my bedroom window toward Joel and Peter’s darkened house, silently cursing them for choosing this particular stretch of time to take Aunt Edna on a Norwegian fjord cruise. Joel can always be depended on for brutally honest fashion judgments.
Aidan sighs, resigned. “Okay, go with the flared ones. But they both look great—you’re beautiful, Ma.” I watch as he pushes shaggy bangs from his eyes, wondering whether it’s still my responsibility to arrange (and pay for?) my son’s haircuts, now that he’s technically an adult. “But it doesn’t even matter,” he says, “because that Pridmore guy is super into you—as he should be. You’re awesome.”
“See,” I exclaim. “I knew there was a reason I kept you.”
We joke about this sometimes. What else can we do?
Aidan was near the end of seventh grade the day he walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge to grab a bottle of chocolate milk, and asked me point-blank: “Did you ever think about having an abortion?”
I was glad that he knew what an abortion was, and also relieved that he had the courage to ask. His candor felt like a solid indication that he trusted me, that he could talk about difficult things with me, be vulnerable. Basically, all the things I never had with my own parents.
I had hoped the day would eventually come when I could explain my choice to bring him into the world. But still, I wasn’t prepared.
“Honestly, yes,” I told him, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table.I considered it.
“So, I was unplanned,” he replied, taking the top off the milk and chugging. I wondered where he’d heard that term: “unplanned.” Strange coming from a barely adolescent boy.
“Well, I wasn’t much of a planner back then. I couldn’t even find space in my life to do laundry,” I explained, standing up to take a glass from the shelf, and then handing it to him. “So, technically, you were unplanned. But I think you’re really asking whether you were a mistake.”
“Were you using protection?” he asked me, pouring milk into the glass and not daring to look at me directly.
“You weren’t a mistake, Aidan,” I answered, deciding not to go into the details of sloppy, drunk teenage sex. That was a conversation for another time. I took hold of his arm, gave it a light squeeze, and then my mouth formed the most truthful words I have ever uttered: “You are precisely the opposite of a mistake, every single day.”
He didn’t reply, but he did look at me and nodded. And that was that. We never spoke of it seriously again. But Aidan did start to joke regularly about how cool it was that I decided to “keep” him, and so I started to joke about it, too.
