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That day, some part of me died. It just withered away.
Gone.
That night I cried. A lot.
But the next day, life went on. Grandma Georgia baked cranberry muffins. Trent asked me if I wanted to play Mario Kart. I read a couple of chapters of a novel, met a friend at the town park, ate dinner, and went to bed.
Even though a part of me was dead, life kept going. I was wounded, and I can see now that those wounds have colored plenty of things in my life. And since then, I’ve been careful not to ever refer to her as Mom.
Then, a few minutes ago, I called her mom again.
I can’t figure out why.
I’m way too worked up about all of it—hearing her voice, buying her a ticket, and Trent’s reaction—to think about what to pack to go goat searching.
Cole stuffs his sleeping bag into a sack. He pulls a backpack out of his duffel and loads the sleeping bag in. Then he adds more things on top of it: colorful packets of something, a little black satchel, a hatchet, and a white box. As he rolls up two of the throw blankets he’s been sleeping on and straps them to the outside of the backpack, I finally speak up.
“Wow, you actually brought a backpackinsideyour duffel?”
“I wasn’t sure if we were gonna have to hike.”
“You think we’re going to need all that stuff you just packed?”
He swipes his headlamp off the floor and adds that to a front pocket of his bag.
“It’s better to be prepared, than not. If we get on his trail and it starts to get dark, I got a feeling you’re not gonna be willing to turn around.”
I’ve seen the way he dotes on Blue.
“Yeah, and you might not want to turn around, either. We both care about that little guy.”
“You got that right.”
There are a few gallons of drinking water on the table. He picks one up and hands it to me. “Think you can carry this one? I’m going to take a full one, too.”
“We needtwogallons of water?”
“Sure. The air’s dry out here and we’ll be hiking. Plus, we want to have some for Blue when we find him. And for cooking.”
Cooking?
I want to ask him how the heck he thinks we’re going to cook in the middle of a desert goat search, but I don’t get a chance.
He swipes up my puffy jacket and hands it to me. “Better have this. You got a hat? That’ll make all the difference once the sun goes down.”
By the time I grab my hat and add it to my purse, he’s already out the door. I catch up to him outside the yurt. He’s croucheddown by a scuff mark in the reddish-orange dirt. When he stands up, it’s with a grim look etched into his features.
“Looks like he headed east.”
He leads the way.
I trek after him. Even though I try not to think about my morning, it’s impossible. As I search the ground for hoof marks along with Cole, I keep returning to the sound of my mother’s voice.
I never made an actual decision not to talk to her for three years.
It just… happened.
At first, she was with the new guy, Barry, and it seemed like every time I called her, they were in the middle of an argument.
