Weighing my words, I hustle to catch up. The last thing I want to do is push her away, so I ask the simplest question I can come up with. “Is she still in California?”
“Yup.” She pops thePand leaves it at that.
For a long moment, the only sounds are our footsteps on the rocky trail and the mountain goats in the distance.
I’m having an internal debate about how to get our day back on track when Joey lets out a long breath.
“Okay, fine.” She says it like she’s admitting defeat. “I was ten when my dad died. I think I told you that.”
I nod, even though I’m behind her.
“For a whole year my mom handled things okay. I only saw her cry twice—the day he died and at the funeral.”
She goes quiet again, but I let her work through her thoughts.
“That’s so weird, right?” she finally says, her attention focused on the trail ahead of her. “I cried every freaking day for months. Anyway,” she continues, tightening the elastic in her hair, “a year later, on the anniversary of his death, some switch inside her flipped. A light went off. Hell, all the lights went out that day.”
Joey’s somber mood, her flat tone of voice, and her expression are in stark contrast to the lightness and joy that radiated from her when she spoke about her father only moments ago. Where a smile once flourished, it now has withered.
I squirm with the earnest need to reach out and touch her.
“For a whole year, she fooled me and everyone we knew—probably even herself—into thinking she was okay. She got me to school on time and went to work like she always had. She didn’t hang out with friends like she had in the past, but she started going to the gym a lot. On the anniversary of his death, though…” She wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and sniffs. “She broke. All of a sudden, she’d spend all day in bed. She’d forget to pick me up from school. Wouldn’t eat anything but toast and a banana for days at a time.
“My Aunt Rachel—Millie’s mom,” she clarifies, “took a couple of weeks off work to take care of us. When she had to return to her own family, she made arrangements with the mom of one of my friends so I’d get to school and back, and she set up a meal train. When the meal train ended a month later and my mom still wasn’t better, Aunt Rachel convinced her to check into a psychiatric hospital.”
A shudder shakes me to my core as memories bounce in my mind and I gasp.
“Wild, right?”
“It’s not that.” I drop my head and run a hand up and down the back of my neck. “My mom wasalsoin a psychiatric hospital when I was ten.”
Joey’s sneakers kick up dirt when she halts in front of me. Because my focus is still downcast, I nearly collide with her.
She turns and blinks at me, her mouth agape. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. After Chloe died, my mom was sad all the time. Anyone would be in that situation, but she couldn’t get out of her sadness. It’s like it was pinning her down, suffocating her. She couldn’t eat or get out of bed, let alone care for two young children. After she’d gone a week without uttering a word, my dad took her to the emergency room. The ER doctor referred her to psych, and she was admitted to an inpatient program.”
Eyes wide and soft, Joey steps into me and wraps her arms around my waist. I drop my cheek to the top of her head and squeeze her back like I never want to let her go.
“We have a lot more in common than I thought,” she says into my chest.
There’s an ache in my throat for the both of us.Does she feel it too?
A bleating mountain goat interrupts the silence, spurring Joey to extricate herself from my hold. “When do you work today?”
A hollowness forms in my chest at the loss of contact. Desperate to fill that void, even just a little, and prolong the tender moment, I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and cup her jaw. “I need to edit photos from yesterday before my session tonight. Tonight’s group is a big one. A family reunion. Those are always interesting.”
“Why’s that?” she asks as we continue hobbling over rocks through the gorge.
“Nine out of ten times, the mother and daughter or mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are locked in some kind of showdown because neither wants to give up control. Then there’s the sibling who hates wearing white. The kids are usually hungry because their parents wouldn’t let them have a snack once they were dressed for photos. Or they come with bribery chocolate, which is a melted nightmare waiting to happen.”
“I take it you don’t like working with families.”
“You’d be correct. I’d much rather work with nature. It doesn’t insult or argue.”
For the first time since I asked about her mom, she laughs. It’s a small one, but I’ll take it.
“Not that I don’t like kids.” Despite my comments, I’m not a total dick.
