I blink at her. “What?”
She finally brings her gaze back to mine. “We should go get them. Tell them to come in with us now. It’s stupid, that they’re sitting in the car waiting for us to call.”
I swallow back my instinctive reply:Absolutely not.That’s not part of our deal.
I know, deep down—in a way I wouldn’t have known when we first set off on this trip—that this isn’t the moment for me to be big-sister Jess, substitute-parent Jess, boss-of-her Jess. I know I need to listen to her, the way Adam listened to me this morning, when I basically told him the same thing.I wish you could go in with us.
So I say, “You’d want them there? When you see her for the first time?”
I’m asking her for real. Curious, not condescending. NotI know better than you how this whole thing should be handled.
Her mouth twists as she chews at the inside of her lip. Heartbreaking. God, she’s so young.
Then she says, “Why should she get to have us by ourselves, you know? Why should she get that, after all this time?”
I answer her honestly. “I don’t know, Teeg.”
“They don’t have to start their recording at first. But they could be with us. They should be, I think.” She takes a breath, seems to get a little taller where she stands. “I think it’s what’s fair.”
I’m not sure what fairness has to do with it. But when I look at Tegan standing there—really look at her, the whole messy, flinty, fragile, figuring-it-out truth of her—I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.
I’m pretty sure what matters most is that I let her make this choice for herself.
“It’s whatever you want, Teeg,” I say. “We’ll do this however you want.”
* * *
IT’Sway too small for all four of us on the porch, so when Tegan and I step on board, Adam and Salem stay on the ramp behind us. Both of them are intensely, purposefully silent. Maybe it’s out of respect, or maybe it’s that they’re both still surprised that we asked them to come.
Adam wanted to talk about it—I can feel him back there,stillwanting to talk about it—but there wasn’t time. Thereisn’ttime. Now that we’re up here, in front of this closed front door, I half expect we’ll find out that she’s not inside anymore. That she saw us standing around, and somehow bolted. I can’t really picture her jumping overboard, but then again, before this trip, I couldn’t picture her turning into a con woman, either.
“Ready?” I ask Tegan, under my breath.
She nods, and I lift one hand to the door. With the other, I grab hers.
She wraps her fingers around mine and squeezes.
When we hear a creaking noise inside in response to my knock, I think we must take the same deep, bracing inhale.
Then the door opens, and there she is.
Mom.
Like I remember her.
Long hair like mine. A face as familiar as my own. She’s older, but then again, so am I.
Every single thing I’ve ever rehearsed to say to her—the furious rants, the dispassionate censures, even the occasional name-calling—flies right out of my mind.
Mom, is all I can think.Mom.
It must be the same for Tegan, who’s also saying nothing. And eventually I realize it must be a version of the same for our mother, too. She’s looking back and forth between us, but she’s not said a single word.
From behind us comes a quiet but insistent throat-clear.
It’s paddles placed on my chest. Shocking me back to life.
I cannot let Salem get the first word in.
