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She looks down at her plate a second, then, “Your mom called to say Merry Christmas.”
I feel the familiar surge of sadness, anger, and shame that rises when the topic of my mother comes up.
“She could have called the shop.”
Miranda reaches for my hand. “She said she’s well and hopes you are both the same.”
I nod. My mother left when I was in fifth grade, unable to live “tethered by domestic obligations.” She needed to be free. And free she has been—traveling the world, teaching yoga and meditation at various wellness centers. I follow her on Instagram. Sometimes she likes the store posts. It seems like she’s having a good life, remains unmarried without children except for the one she left behind. Me.
I’ve seen her a handful of times since she left. Once my father took me to San Francisco to see her. One Christmas she came home. I barely remember these visits, except that my father was angry and sad for days after.
She came back to town when I was still recovering in the hospital, when the search was on for Ainsley and Sam, when Steph was buried. She stayed with her best friend—Miranda. And I’ll say for all her failings as a mother, she was there during that dark time. Volunteering for the search, caring for me, helping me survive Steph’s funeral when I could barely stand on my own feet but insisted on going.
But then she was gone again. Called off to teach a meditation retreat.
She left me a note and some flowers on our porch.We are always connected even when we are apart. My spirit is with you. You are strong.
What a crock. She always hated this town. And she didn’t love me enough to stay.
She calls, always around my birthday or Christmas. She sends cards, letters. They sit in a box on the top shelf of my closet. Sometimes I pour over them, trying to piece her together. Figure her out. No luck with this so far.
“She just wasn’t suited for this life,” Dad told me. “Nothing to do with you. Really, it’s my fault. She wanted us to travel, explore the world. But my place has always been here.”
I look at him now. I feel emotion coming off him in waves, his eyes glistening.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say and I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for.
“I don’t think it was that,” say Miranda. “Or not just that. Truth be told he hasn’t been right since I forgot to turn off the news.”
My dad and I lock eyes.
The things I learned from Harley Granger are on a spin cycle in my brain.
Even though my father was the one to track down and arrest Evan, he never believed that Evan acted alone. He thought there was someone else. Someone who was still out there. He never stopped believing that. He worked with Mrs. Wallace for years trying to find the girls, following up every lead, no matter how farfetched. There was aDatelinepiece. Mrs. Wallace turned to psychics. She hired private detectives. Even after Mrs. Wallace left town, he kept working on it. The case, as far as he saw it, was still unsolved. Would be as long as Ainsley and Sam were still missing.
I see all of this in my father’s hazel eyes. Sometimes he’s clouded, absent. Not tonight.
I never agreed with him. Since that horrible night, Evan Handy has been the monster that haunts my dreams.
I wonder now, thinking about the pictures of those missing women, if my dad was right. If there’s someone else out there.
After we’re done eating, I walk Miranda out to her car. She has the blue cashmere wrap on around her wool coat, and I like that something I gave her is keeping her warm.
“Your mom,” she starts. I turn away from the look of sympathy on her face, stare at the snow-covered trees, notice that a bulb is out in the colorful strand I hung along the eaves.
“It’s fine,” I say lifting a hand.
“Even when we were kids, you know, she just . . .” She shakes her head.
“What?”
“I love her like a sister. But she was never happy in Little Valley. She called it ‘The Void.’ She was always charting her escape. But then she fell in love with your dad.”
There’s a book in the bottom drawer of the armoire in my father’s bedroom. It bulges with old photos. Him and my mom at the prom, on their wedding day, bringing me home from the hospital. There’s joy on their faces. Love. The more recent shots of me as a toddler, my first day of school, she looks faded, dark around the eyes.
“She found her calling. And unlike a lot of us, she followed it.”
“And if you had a calling that took you away from Ernie and Giselle?”
