Page 235 of Taken Away

It was light.

Almost uncertain.

“I am glad you came.”

Aubrey looked at her mother’s hand.

Then at her face.

“Me too.”

And the painful thing was, she meant it.

At least partly.

They drove back to Bennett’s house in near silence.

Crickets had begun their steady call from the ditches, and the road wound dark and narrow through the trees.

Bennett kept both hands on the wheel.

He did not criticize Anne.

He did not ask Aubrey if she was all right.

He did not tell her what she should feel.

That, more than anything, loosened something in her.

Halfway up the mountain, he said, “Has it always been like that?”

Aubrey looked out the window.

“Like what?”

He glanced over.

“Good for a while. Then not.”

She closed her eyes.

The question was so simple.

So mercifully free of judgment.

“Yes,” she said.

Bennett waited.

Aubrey watched the trees blur past the glass.

“People think Anne abandoned me. She didn’t.”

Her throat tightened.

“She was there. Sometimes. She made dinner. She bought me clothes. The truck climbed higher.

Aubrey pressed her fingers together in her lap.