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Kate’s family, probably. A gorgeous man, a beautiful teenaged girl, and two mop-headed boys.
Margie hugged Tully, who sobbed in her arms.
Dorothy stepped back into the shadows beneath the tree. She’d been an idiot to think she had a place here, that her presence would help.
Her daughter had people who cared about her, and about whom she cared. They would gather together on this day and ease their grief by sharing it. Wasn’t that what people did? What families did?
It made Dorothy feel inestimably sad and old and tired. She’d come all this way, following a beam of light that couldn’t be grasped.
* * *
It’s no good to pretend, you know. And we don’t have all the time in the world. I hear Kate’s voice, and honestly, I wish I didn’t. You see now, don’t you?
I am like a little kid, squeezing my eyes shut, certain that in my self-imposed darkness I can’t be seen. That’s what I want right now: to disappear. I don’t want to do this whole going-into-the-light/looking-back-on-your-life thing anymore. It hurts too much.
You’re hiding from me.
“Yeah. No shit. You dead people don’t miss a thing. ”
I feel her coming closer; it is like firelight drawing near. Tiny yellow white stars burst across the black expanse of my vision. I smell lavender and Love’s Baby Soft spray and … pot smoke.
That takes me back.
Open your eyes.
The way she says it breaks my resolve. I slowly do as she asks, but even before I see the poster of David Cassidy and hear Elton John singing “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” I know where I am. Back in my bedroom in the house on Firefly Lane. My old Close ’n Play is on the bedside table, along with a stack of 45s.
Dorothy. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. ” The Emerald City. How had I missed all the obvious clues in my life? I was always a little girl, lost in Oz, looking for a way to believe that there was no place like home …
Kate is beside me. We are sitting on my bed in the house on Firefly Lane, leaning against the rickety headboard. A yellow poster that reads WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS fills my vision.
You see now, don’t you? Kate says again, more quietly this time.
I don’t want to think about it all—the day my mother showed up to “help” me with my “addiction” and how badly I handled it. What else have I been wrong about? But before I can answer her, there is another voice, whispering in my ear. I’m sorry.
Oh, my God.
It is my mother. The bedroom dissolves around me. I smell disinfectant.
I turn to look at Kate. “She’s here? Or there? At the hospital, I mean?”
Listen, Kate says gently. Close your eyes.
September 3, 2010
4:57 P. M.
“Lady? Lady? Are you getting out?”
Dorothy came back to the present with a start. She was in the cab, parked in front of the hospital’s emergency entrance. She paid the cabbie, giving much too big a tip, and then she opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
The walk to the front door unnerved her. Every footstep felt like an act of unimaginable will, and God knew her will had always had the strength of warm wax.
As she moved into the austere lobby, she felt self-conscious, a ragged old hippie in a high-tech world.
At the reception desk, she stopped, cleared her throat. “I’m Doro—Cloud Hart,” she said quietly. The old name pinched like a bad bra, but it was how Tully knew her. “Tully Hart’s mother. ”
The woman at the desk nodded, gave her the room number.
