“No, hon. No need to go back there. I called and checked in, and she’s already been moved to the funeral home.”
The words hit. He felt the blow. His mother was at a funeral home. It didn’t make sense to his mind. And then it made less. “But I didn’t even pick one yet.”
“Your mamma left her wishes with the staff. Apparently, she’d made her own arrangements.”
Trying to take care of him. Even while she was dying, she was looking out for him.
“I’ll see you downstairs when you’re ready.” She pointed again. “First door on the left,” she reminded him.
So he followed directions, because it felt like the easiest thing to do and maybe the most he could manage at the moment. He showered, he dressed, he thought about how different his mother was from Camellia’s. If he’d brought home a raggedy stranger, she’d have only greeted him at the front door to closeit in his face. Cilla didn’t trust strangers, nor abide them sniffing around, nor had Grandma Sage.
But there he was in the home of strangers on the day after the worst night of his life, sitting at a table with two women who did the things only women could do. They soothed and healed and comforted with their voices, with their eyes, with food, and that caring felt great, except for his underlying suspicion of ulterior motives.
Then again, he’d seen tears in Camellia’s eyes at his mother’s bedside, and when she’d held him, he’d felt her sadness even beyond his own.
In his experience, however, people were never this nice without a reason. He just didn’t have the energy to know or care what it was. He ate the breakfast, which was delicious, thanked them for their kindness, and told them he had to go.
Camellia followed him to the door. “I’ll give you a ride back to your truck.”
“Hospital’s within walking distance, your mom said.”
She nodded. “About a fifteen-minute walk. I can give you directions.”
He held up his phone, where a walking route to the hospital already filled the screen.
“Do you um…want to reschedule that talk? You really should have all the information.”
He nodded. “Yeah, just…not now. Not yet.”
“Okay,” she said. “I get it.” She lowered her head. “I’m really sorry about your mom,” she said. “Be okay, okay?”
“I will. She’d kick my ass otherwise.”
The door was open. No snow remained from the night before—it was too warm for that. It was a chilly, gray, wet morning. He held onto Camellia’s eyes for a moment longer than felt casual. “I don’t know how to thank you for…all this,” he said.
And she said, “I do.”
There it was. The ulterior motive, the reason for all the kindness. He knew there had to be one. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Let me help you find your birth family. I promised your mother. My mom knows that, because I don’t have a lick of professional discretion where she’s concerned. She’ll never let me hear the end of it until I help you find them.”
He was so surprised he couldn’t think of an answer.
She said, “You have my number. Call me when you’re ready, okay?”
He sort of nodded. She went back inside and closed the door. At the window to the left, her mother waved at him.
He didn’t know how he felt about taking Camellia Rio up on her offer. He didn’t feel the need to replace his dead family with a new one.
The only thing he felt sure about right then was that he wanted to lose himself in his mom for a little while, in her words, in those diaries. So after a detour to the funeral home—he got the info from the hospital—he headed home, got comfortable, and picked up where he’d left off in his mother’s diaries, and in her life.
Cilla
Later, same day or maybe early the next
It’s night now and we’ve been on the road for so many hours I’ve lost count. Twenty minutes ago, the driver finally made a stop—probably he had to pee as bad as I did. When I pulled back the tarp, I spotted a big neon sign across the entire roofof the place. “LUCKY’S TRUCK STOP—SHOWERS, MEALS, SUPPLIES!”
When I first got out, I couldn’t tell where I was. The license plates on the vehicles in the parking lot came from like a dozen different states.
