The Way Back to You (22 page)

“I’ve never come across it. But there was one Christmas when my dad got each of us coffee cups with our own names on them. They say, ‘I heart Zoë.’ ‘I heart Nina.’ ‘I heart Claudia.’ I was like, ‘Dad, what kind of narcissists do you think we are?’ So on any given morning, Mom and Zoë and I might be using one of those mugs, but never the one with our own name.”

“Well, since your dad has proven that such a thing exists, somewhere in this store filled with personalized souvenirs, there’s has to be another ‘Claudia.’ I’m going to find it and buy it for you.”

And
that’s
when I’ll talk to the cashier about my mother’s whereabouts.

I start the hunt, checking through the
C
s at each display. It calms me, focusing on something other than what I ought to say to this woman who might or might not know Shannon. I spend ten minutes poring over stickers, door signs, bracelets, barrettes, necklaces, toothbrushes, combs, jewelry boxes, back scratchers, pocket knives, mini flashlights, and more, but I turn up nothing.

Until . . .

“Aha!” Beneath my sweatshirt, Arm startles at my outburst. I grab a five-sided silver star. “CLAUDIA” is in the center, encircled with the words “SHERIFF—OATMAN AZ.” I hold it up for Cloudy. “Found it!
This
is what you’ve been missing out on your whole life.”

“Yes. A ‘Claudia’ sheriff’s badge. It might not be functional, but it’s certainly fashionable.” Cloudy turns the display and taps her finger on a “Kyle” badge. “Here’s yours.”

“Sweet.” Snatching it from the rack, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, carrying a badge with each of our names, I head up to the register with Cloudy beside me. We glance around as I set my purchases on the counter. Now that I’m ready to casually interrogate her, the cashier seems to have disappeared into the back room.

“I can never wear this in front of my parents if I don’t want them wondering how I got it,” Cloudy says.

“What? How can we be the best sheriffs if we don’t have our badges on at all times?”

I’m not doing it on purpose, but my voice is coming out extra loud, like,
I’m a happy person who loves corny gifts!

“We can’t both be sheriff, anyway,” Cloudy says. “Someone has to be deputy.”

Arm wiggles. I adjust her positioning, but she doesn’t like it. “Is that how things work? Fine. You can be my deputy.”

“No, you can be
mine
.” The movement under my shirt grows frantic, and there’s more than a hint of I-told-you-so in Cloudy’s smile. “Uh-oh.”

Arm catches her tiny claws into my T-shirt, climbs up my chest, and pops her head out the top of my sweatshirt. I burst out laughing, and Cloudy moves in close enough that I could kiss her forehead. (I don’t.) She’s laughing, too, as she slides her hand up the front of my shirt to help with the flailing kitten. Arm has no interest in leaving through the bottom, though; she kicks her feet as Cloudy tries to get ahold of her.

“It’s okay. I’ve got her,” I say, still chuckling.

I free Arm’s squirmy body through my sweatshirt’s neck hole, somehow managing to avoid getting scratched. Cloudy takes her from me, stroking and calming her while I straighten out my clothes.

At the sound of a woman’s voice, my body turns ice cold and my heart beats so hard, my veins might explode. The new cashier who’s just stepped behind the counter is saying, “After what I read in my horoscope, a black cat crossing my path is the last thing I need today. It’s all good, though.”

Involuntarily, my head jerks up and my eyes take in her face, her hair, the name on her copper necklace: Shannon.

Of course it’s Shannon.

Seeing my mother shouldn’t be such a violent shock to my system, but it is. I do a double take, a triple take, a quadruple take. I came into this store for her, but she wasn’t here. That was better. She shouldn’t be here now. Not now, not here, not in Arizona.

And yet, she is. And a part of me knew it in an instant. Even though my conscious mind still can’t comprehend this, my adrenaline was already pumping from the first syllable she spoke.

“She’s a gorgeous cat.” Shannon scans the bar code on each of the badges. “And her green eyes match her aura.”

She still has red hair; it’s chin length now instead of down her back. She still wears embroidered sundresses and beaded earrings. She’s still taller than most women. Poised and graceful. She still has a dandelion-seed-head tattoo on her wrist with “Wish” below it in cursive. She still has a forehead, nose, mouth, and chin similar to what I see in the mirror every day.

Now she’s looking back at me. Right into my eyes. Impossibly, my already off-the-charts heart rate ramps up even higher. My mother smiles, and I can hardly breathe as she opens her mouth to speak.

And then she tells me my total.

I keep watching, waiting for something to spark for her.

Nothing happens.

With my eyes, I beg her to not just look at me, but to
see
me standing right here.

She turns away, saying something now about Cloudy’s aura.

I open my wallet. Drop it to the floor. Pick it up. I fumble through the bills with shaking hands. I pass her what I’m hoping is the one she needs.

It’s as if my chest is being kicked over and over again while she works the register, turns to me again, and gives me change along with a small bag containing souvenirs, including one with my first name engraved in it.

She aims a smile at Cloudy, at Arm, at me. “Have a blessed day, you three.”

“Uh, sure,” I say.

I head out the door of Jackass Gifts, increasing my speed until I’m full-on running.

Putting one foot in front of the other, all I can think is that my mother has told me she’s an empath, she can channel nature spirits, she harnesses mystical energy. Now she’s claiming she can read my kitten’s aura.

And yet, somehow, she looked her own son in the face and she didn’t fucking recognize me.

Dear Paige,

Ever since I received your letter, I have been so anxious to contact you. I am so sorry for your unfathomable loss. Nothing I say can possibly alleviate your grief, I’m sure, but please know that Ashlyn is always in my thoughts. I feel so much closer to her after reading the wonderful things you’ve written about her. She sounds like an incredibly spirited and special girl, and she must be deeply missed.

Is there any way to adequately express my gratitude? I am alive today when two months ago, I never believed I’d make it to my twenty-ninth birthday. In the days before my transplant, my condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, left me confined to a bed, sometimes too dizzy to stand up on my own. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever leave the hospital. I did, though. I’m writing this from the kitchen table in my tiny apartment, my dog Flynn sitting at my feet. (I hope Ashlyn liked Samoyeds.) And in a few weeks, I’m leaving for a short trip to the lake with my boyfriend.

I suppose I’m answering my own question here, but I’m going with no. I won’t ever be able to articulate how much this means to me. Maybe the only way I can is by living the joyful, meaningful life you wrote about.

Ashlyn is my miracle, and I promise to do her heart justice.

With all my love,

Sonia

T
he lobby of the Ocies’ time-share matches up with everything I’ve seen of Las Vegas so far: it’s gigantic.

“
Whoa.
No wonder what happens here, stays here,” I say to Kyle, gaping at the vaulted ceilings and skylights. “It can’t fit anywhere else.”

The joke falls flat, just like my other attempts at conversation since we left Oatman. Kyle’s face is blank as we make our way to the front desk, and he remains silent while the concierge taps on her keyboard and hands each of us our own room key—thankfully, it’s a smoother check-in than our attempt in Sacramento. He’s a zombie while we move through the lobby, past overstuffed armchairs and potted palms, into the breezeway that’ll lead us to the suite on the second floor.

I want to say the magic phrase that’ll
shazam!
today better, but my tongue is too clumsy from worry, and nothing is coming out right. And anyway, there are no words right enough for what went down with Shannon. On what planet does a parent not remember what her own son looks like? It’s animal instinct or genetic or something that happens at a soul level. Shannon should have carved permanent room in her heart for her kid,
and it should be forever, no matter what.

Kyle spent the two-hour trip to Vegas just as distant, flopped on the backseat of the Xterra, and nodding in and out of sleep with Arm snuggled to his side. As the sun set, I crafted apologies for him in my head while drumming my anxious fingers on the steering wheel. It kept me from checking the odometer and the clock. Every mile and every minute brought us closer to Sonia’s wedding. At eleven tomorrow morning, she’ll be walking down the aisle in a chapel at the Bellagio Hotel. Kyle and I will be there somewhere, hoping to go unnoticed, but angling for a clear view of the bride.

My nerves rattled like maracas as soon as the car crossed over onto the Strip, as if there were some invisible force field at the boundary.

Not that the scenery didn’t offer any distractions.

It’s as glitzy as the movies promised. Hotels and casinos and shops rise up on either side of Las Vegas Boulevard, enormous and spectacular—emphasis on the spectacle. Electronic billboards flash from everywhere, relentlessly teasing shows and restaurants. There’s a castle with blue, red, and gold turrets capping the white building, and on the next street over, every New York City landmark—the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building—is crammed onto one corner. Farther up, a glowing replica of the Eiffel Tower points to the night sky. It was like we’d been dropped onto an oversized, interactive game board. After this long, longer,
longest
day, driving up the Strip felt like riding on the city’s pulse—even though traffic was moving at a crawl.

Kyle finally sat up when we were stopped at a red light on
East Harmon Avenue. I wanted to point out the hotel that’s shaped like an Egyptian-style pyramid, but one look at his face and my mouth stayed shut.

Bedrock City seems like ages ago, and that all doesn’t matter, anyway. What I need to do is make sure he’s okay after seeing his mom. He shouldn’t carry any of it; it’s Shannon who deserves to be depressed, because she’s the one who’s losing out.

We swing through the back doors, into the breezeway. The entire complex is sprawling, surrounded by multiple open-air parking lots and framed by black metal gates. It’s made up of two buildings, both five floors high, that interconnect with the main lobby. The lazy river pool sits in the middle, ringed with lounge chairs and fire pits. When I checked the Xterra’s dashboard earlier, the temperature had already dipped into the forties—similar to our past couple of nights in Sedona. But despite the chill, there are people bobbing along the heated water.

Kyle reaches the bottom of the staircase before I’m halfway there. I have this vision of him drifting up and disappearing, never making it to the room. If he gets away from me now, I won’t be able to pull him back. When he lifts his foot to take the first step, there’s a panicked flurry in my chest.

“Hey, wait!” I rush to him and blurt, “How are you feeling?”

His fingers clench around the strap of Arm’s duffel. He’s carrying her by the smaller handles, not the longer one that loops over his shoulder. “I’m tired,” he tells me, and he sounds it. Drained.

“I bet. But how are you? Really? About everything that—”

“I can’t do this right now,” he says, tromping up the stairs.

“Okay,” I call after him. “It’s okay.”

He doesn’t wait for me at the landing, or hesitate before turning down the hallway. He moves as if he knows where he’s going, or doesn’t care where he ends up. I race up, my heart pounding, and I hustle until I’m at his side again. “Listen, Kyle. I’m so sorry about Shannon. If I’d had any idea—”

“That she couldn’t tell me apart from any other random teenager?”

“You know there’s something majorly wrong with her, right?” I stumble over my feet and realize I can’t catch my breath. “That is not normal.”

“I said I’m not in the mood to do this right now.”

“Whenever you are, though, you can talk to me.” I scuttle ahead to face him, so he can be sure that I mean it. “You can tell me anything.”

His footsteps remain steady. “Yeah, thanks.”

“I feel so awful,” I say. “Like it’s my fault.”

“It is your fault!” It explodes out of him, an eruption of pent-up noise that blasts through the quiet hallway, rocking me to a shaky stop. He’s breathing through his nose, and while his next words are more hushed, they’re no less seething. “Why did you have to tell me she was there?”

My instincts are clamoring like an alarm, compelling me to get out of there. I don’t need to explain myself. But now that he’s actually looking at me, I glimpse something beyond anger in his eyes, something like desperation. It hits harder than the sight of him running away from Jackass Gifts, and it tugs the words
from my lips. “You said you missed her. I couldn’t keep it from you when I knew that.”

“Will shouldn’t have gotten you involved in the first place.”

“He wanted you to have the choice.”

“What kind of choice did I have, Cloudy?” he snaps. “Did you really think I wouldn’t go see my mother after you practically walked me up to her?”

“I didn’t know it would end up that way. I was only trying to help.”

Kyle inhales a hiss. “Help? It seems a lot like control. Everything you do is on your terms. The rest of us just follow along.”

My mouth is full of battery acid. “That’s not true,” I say.

He’s entirely still. Maybe it’s so he won’t jostle Arm in her duffel or maybe he’s
that
angry at me. “
You
decided to stop talking to me last year.
You
decided not to tell me about the organ recipients until we were already in Sacramento. And
you
decided to bring me to Oatman with no explanation. By the time I’m allowed to have an opinion, it’s too late for it to matter. It makes me feel useless, like I have no say in my own life.”

Everything inside and out of me becomes solid and heavy, and all I can do is stare wide-eyed at Kyle. Taking him to Oatman was supposed to be a favor—to him and to Ashlyn. A way to make up for last night and prove that I’m a good friend. That I’m not selfish. Instead, I led him straight there without asking, waiting to tell him the whole story until it was absolutely necessary. It’s exactly how I got him on this trip.

But I don’t need him to remind me.

I don’t need him throwing it in my face. Not when I did it all for the right reasons.

Backing away, I say, “Maybe if you stood up for yourself, I wouldn’t have to make decisions for you. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m thinking, and you don’t know why I do anything.” Then I storm off in the opposite direction.

“I knew you were going to do that,” he says, his voice a low growl. “I knew you’d walk away first.”

It’s an arrow right to my back.

Bull’s-eye.