Page 4 of Lost and Found

As if I didn’t spend the last year clawing my way out of the worst of my grief to the best of my ability. I’ve read books—books that all said not to make any major decisions for a year, and I’ve given it that. I deleted all my social media, because I couldn’t take coming across another bell-ringing video or the cocktail of rage and elation it generally ignites in me. I’ve adhered to an exercise schedule, I’ve meditated . . . all while working my ass off to save up enough money for IVF. The point of giving up my home for the rest of this year is tocontinuesaving up for everything else. For childcare and medical expenses and time off. To do everything I can possibly do to make this decision with the care it deserves.

I thought I was doing everything right, taking care of myself. But now I have to worry about working in enoughfun?

“All you do is work,” Mom goes on. “Six or seven days a week for the last six months straight, at least.”

“Mom. I needed to.”

“No, you didn’t.” She takes a hand off the steering wheel to cut it through the air in a single slice. “But I’m not going to argue with you about that again tonight. I just need to see . . .” She trails off, and I’m horrified when I find her choking back tears. “I just need to see youliving, Bea. Living for yourself. I would love to see you dancing. I need to see you smile and laugh.”

She’s said it so fervently, the words thick with emotion, and guilt pushes me low in my seat. Guilt for being alive when Merritt is not. Guilt that I haven’t been able to do what she’s asked yet. Guilt that I’ve worried my mom so much for so long, despite my best efforts.

She’ll come around, I know. This is the way things go between my mom and me. Leslie Marshall is a virtuoso pianist with multiple accolades to her name. She was valedictorian of her high school class before attending Arizona State on a soccer scholarship, where she also met my (biological) father. She completed three of her four years before moving back home to Spunes—single—at six months’ pregnant with me. And while she maintains that she wants for nothing in life, she certainly always wants more for me.

“I just wanted more for you”when I quit violin as a preteen.

“I just wanted more for you”when I left college and registered for hair school.

“I just want more for you”when I told her my plan for IVF.“I want you to have a baby of your own someday.”Which spawned one of the most shocking and ugliest discussions we’ve ever had. Me, shocked because I’d always known my mother to be a radical, open-minded progressive, and yet there I was, arguing with her about adoptive parents and alternative families and how their lack of shared biology did not make themless than.

She, feeling personally attacked by my inability to just “know what she meant.”

I shouldn’t have asked her to come with me tonight. Probably, I just should have RSVP’d no. But it’s a distraction, and I was instructed to find some of those. Plus, the people getting remarried this evening have come back from heartbreaks of their own, and maybe I want to see what that looks like.

By the time we pull into the Byrds’ driveway, the mist is in full swing. And by the time I find myself getting out of the car and opening my umbrella, the dread is crashing over me, too.

How could I forget? No matter how hard-won, I don’t see people’s joy and simply feel hope for my own again. I also see all the things Merritt is missing.

We would have consulted each other on our dresses a week ago. Probably would have shopped for new ones together. She would have pretended not to look for Silas the moment we arrived, then sighed dreamily through her nose at the sight of him in a suit. I would have held back a sigh of my own.

This spiral snuck up on me and is cranking into me now, my lungs twisting in my chest.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I say to Mom in a reedy voice, passing her the umbrella and peeling off toward the house before she can respond. I round a corner and grab the first door I see, then launch myself through.

Or, at least, I try to. I smack into a wall of chest and ricochet right back outside instead.

“Easy, girl” comes a man’s rough rumble, like I’m some wild horse he’s guiding into a trot. Two calloused hands grip my upper arms to steady me. I look up, directly into a half-cocked grin in the darkened garage. I flash back to a memory; that same slash of a smile on a dimly lit porch, parting slowly around a joint, tendrils of smoke curling out from its corners while the sounds of college debauchery played in the background.

“Silas,” I say, a quiet gasp.

“Bea,” he says back. He’s bright in the blue spotlight shining on him. A few inches over six feet. Hair caught between brown and blond, eyes that can flash either turquoise or gray depending on the light, and a white smile with imperfections that only add to its charm. Dimples that have worked on everyone he’s ever wielded them on. The sort of bone structure that makes you believe in those one-in-a-million discovery stories. Something like“I was just cleaning the garbage out of my truck at a gas station when this guy gave me his card and said I had a face for movies.”

Absolutely too good-looking to be my type. Too blatantly sexy. Almost clichéd.

—what I’ve been trying to convince myself for years.

My eyes catch on a collection of scars that creep up the strong column of his throat. But then he’s tamping down his expression like my name broke a spell and reminded him he shouldn’t smile around me these days. I mourn it instantly.

“I’m glad you came,” he tells me.

“Yeah,” I force out. “I wouldn’t skip this.” Which is when I think of the things Ihaveskipped, including replying to him all the times he’s reached out since Merritt died. “I’ve, um. I’ve been meaning to get back to you. I’m sorry.”

He slides his hands into his pockets and presses his lips together like he finds this amusing. “No, you haven’t.”

I feel my chin rear back. “What?” I’m still under the gutter while he remains inside the shelter of the garage. I rub my palms up and down my arms where they’ve suddenly gone cold.

“You never meant to get back to me,” he explains with a smirk. “Little rude, Ruby. Don’t you think?”

My mouth drops open, and his arms snap out, lifting me into the garage by my elbows before I know it’s happening. “Sorry I’ve been somewhatpreoccupied, Silas,” I say, surprising myself with the bite in it. I don’t bother correcting him on my name. He’s never accepted that Bea is the entirety of it and has almost always called me anything but.