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“It’s not easy,” he says. “But nothin’ worth having is, Doc.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Bea
Isee the campervan before I see her.
It’s parked half on and half off the sidewalk outside our house in that particular way she has of treating parking regulations as a kind of loose suggestion. Forest green with the solar panel on the roof catching the afternoon light and the sticker on the back that says the best view comes after the hardest climb, which she bought from a woman at a craft market in Asheville two summers ago.
I stop on the sidewalk.
I’m on my way back from the town with my bag digging into one shoulder and my coffee that I keep forgetting to drink going cold in my hand. She texted on Thursday from somewhere in Tennessee—a waterfall, good fleece, big smile, thinking of heading north soon—and I’d read that as a general statement of intent, not an actual plan, definitely not an ETA.
I look at the van.
I look at my front porch.
My mother is on it. Talking to Sydney.
Sydney is in the doorway in yesterday’s sweatshirt with the expression she gets when she’s enjoying a conversation more than she expected to, already a bad sign, and my mother has her hands moving the way they do when she’s mid-story, which means she’s been here long enough to get past hello and into actual narrative, which means she’s been standing on my porch talking to my most excitable roommate for god knows how long with absolutely no interference from me.
I exhale.
I cross the street.
Sydney clocks me first—over my mom’s shoulder, mid-nod—and her face does something complicated and delighted that she makes zero effort to conceal, and then my mom turns, and there it is, the welcome I’ve been getting my whole life: real, warm, and kept at a size that doesn’t require me to match it. She’s always been good at that. She figured out early that I find big displays of emotion sort of destabilizing, and she’s loved me accordingly ever since. It’s one of the things she got completely right.
“Surprise,” she says.
“Clearly.” I look at Sydney, who is now actively grinning. “How long have you two been out here?”
“Twenty minutes? Maybe a bit more.” Sydney sounds completely unbothered about this. “Your mom was telling me about the Smokies.”
She opens her arms, and I step in—the hug is brief and solid and smells like the lavender hand cream she’s used since I was small, the one she buys in bulk from a health food store and decants into a little tin for the van—and she holds me for exactly the right amount of time.
“You look tired,” she says.
“I’m not tired.”
“Mm.” She clocks the coffee cup in my hand. “Is that your breakfast?”
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
“I didn’t ask what time it was.”
Sydney makes a sound that is one hundred percent a laugh disguised unconvincingly as a cough, and when I look at her, she pulls her face into something neutral, but she’s not even close to selling it.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” she says, and disappears.
I watch her go. Then I look at my mom.
“She’s wonderful,” my mom says.
“She is.”
“She speaks very highly of you.” She picks up her canvas tote from the porch step—the faded one that lives in the van and goes everywhere she goes—and follows Sydney inside.
* * *
