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So I take a step backward, and then another, keeping my eyes on her. “Azalea,” she says, the first time I’ve heard my mother say the name she gave me. It makes my stomach turn over.
“Yeah,” I respond, trying to tamp down the stupid part of me that whispers she may have had a change of heart.
“I hope I don’t hear about you contacting any of my or my husband’s relatives. We have an understanding to live separate lives, right? No need for legal steps to ensure my family’s privacy.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t get any lower, I sink another couple of feet.
With shoulders back and head held high, I say, “Nope. You’ll never hear from me again.”
I turn my back on her for what I swear to myself will be the last time. Maverick scrambles to open the car door for me, and I throw myself inside. I watch through the windshield as he jogs around the front of the car, thankfully picking up on my urgent need to get the hell out of here.
Within seconds, we’re speeding down the road. The tight feeling in my chest eases with every extra foot between us and the picture-perfect house where my mother lives. “Straight home?” he asks, turning out of the idyllic neighborhood and onto the main road.
“Straight home,” I tell him.
He reaches over and takes my hand, threading our fingers together. I lean my head against the window and stare out, waiting for tears that don’t come.
I must drift off at some point, because the next thing I’m aware of is Maverick shaking my shoulder. I rub my eyes, trying to get my bearings; once I do, I’m surprised to see that we’re sitting in my dad’s driveway. “What are we doing here?”
“Figured you’d want to talk to him.”
I look at my dad’s Toyota, then at the house. I only lived here for a few months before leaving for college; it still doesn’t feel likemyhome, not the way our house in Boulder did. Sometimes I still miss that house, our old life. In this moment, I am especially missing those years of my childhood when I didn’t even think about my absent mother, when I was content with my single dad and the life we had together. Before my curiosity got the better of me and sent me down this path that I should have left untraveled.
“I don’t know what to say.”
He taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “You’ll figure it out.” When I don’t answer, he continues. “I’ll drive you back to Ames if you want, Zale. Say the word and we’ll go. But I feel like this is where you need to be right now.”
I stare at the Toyota. On the back is a bumper sticker with a barcode on it that saysPARENT OF AN IOWA STATE CYCLONE: SCAN FOR TUITION. My entire life, everything he’s done has been for me. The mystery surrounding my mother has been the single stumbling block in our relationship, the one thing that has gotten in the way of our mutual honesty and trust.
I can't stand the thought of him finding out how far I’ve gone to learn things he clearly doesn’t want me to know. I wouldn’t be able to cope with my dad being angry at me right now.
And if I were to learn something else that knocks down the pedestal he’s always occupied in my mind? I couldn’t handle that, either.
“Take me back to school,” I say.
True to his word, Maverick doesn’t argue. He just nods and puts the car in reverse.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Maverick
InAmes,Ipullinto a spot outside Azalea’s apartment. I wait a second to see if she’ll get out or not. She doesn’t, so I put the car in park and settle back in my seat. My bad leg is twinging from a day of sitting in one place. I stretch it out, rotate my foot. After Azalea leaves, I’ll take a couple of the painkillers that I keep in my console. I know she’ll start down a spiral of guilt if I do it in front of her, and after what happened today, that would be cruel.
Azalea hasn’t said a word since we pulled out of her dad’s driveway. Instead, she is staring out the windshield with a vacant look on her face. It reminds me of the way Dad and Lilly and I acted when Mom first passed away: like zombies. Like we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. In a different way than I did, Azalea lost her mother today. I wish she didn’t have to know that pain.
We sit in silence for a long time. I want to hold her, but I don’t know where our new boundaries are. I want to say something to make the hurt go away, but those magic words don’t exist.
“I don’t know what that woman said to you,” I say finally, “but I think she’s a fucking idiot.”
Azalea lets out a strangled laugh. “She said a lot of things. I think…I think having me was a really hard experience for her.”
The sympathetic words she’s saying don’t match the devastation emanating from her, and I can only stare at her. I’ve been sitting over here cursing Marie Hall’s name since we left that creepy neighborhood, and she’s not even my deadbeat mom. Azalea is three hours removed from confirming that her mother doesn’t want her, and already she’s moved on to understanding. Empathy. Forgiveness. I admire it, but I could never do it.
“None of that excuses how she treated you today,” I say, recalling with a surge of anger how Marie had yanked Azalea around by the arm, trying to hide her from her fellow Stepford Wives. “She’s had twenty years to get over it.”
Azalea smiles sadly. Her eyes look watery again. I press my hands between my knees, trying to keep them to myself. “Oh, she’s over it. Over me, at least.”
“Then I stand by my statement. She’s an idiot.”
