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My guts tangled in a gnawing of pain, a black hole with a forceso great I was sure it was going to swallow me. Suck me down into a darkened, unfathomable abyss where I’d forever drown.
Somehow, I managed to respond. “I saw him, sweetheart, but I think he was busy.”
“We better go back later when he doesn’t got to be too busy then. Besides, I think I got very starving, and we better eat. I got a belly growl. Did you hear it so loud?” She giggled with the last. This child a joy unlike anything I could comprehend.
“It sounds like we should definitely go and get lunch then,” I returned, swallowing around the landslide of horror that rolled in my throat.
“Was it him?” my mom quietly urged. She’d shifted in her seat, concern flagrant as she stared across at me.
Her hair was the same color as all of ours, though she now added color to the roots to cover the grays, and it was cut into a long bob that brushed her shoulders.
I’d always thought my mother was the most beautiful woman on the planet. She still was, though now, the grief had begun to whittle into her features. Carving paths of sorrow that I doubted could ever be repaired.
“I don’t know,” I breathed without any sound. “I think it might have been the wrong address.”
It was a lie.
A blatant lie.
I should have known the second I’d seen his eyes last night. They were exactly the same as hers.
I should have understood why I’d felt that tugging of familiarity. Why the man had somehow made me feel comfortable when it should have been impossible.
Another bout of sickness roiled through my being, and I inhaled a staggered breath. Trying to get myself together. To come up with a plan.
Running seemed like the only solution right then.
“What kinda food do they got here? Did you know Iwikehamburgers the bestest, Grammy? And eggs, but we already ate ourbreakfast, and it was so, so good, but we gotta get some variety and somevegables.”
Her tinkling words were garbled and lisped, and a wash of heavy amusement rolled through me.
Mom shifted farther in her seat and sent Maci a warm smile that was coated in sorrow. “I know you definitely like hamburgers.”
She had to have eaten at least twenty of them since we’d lost my sister three months ago. Maci had been staying with me down the street from my mother and stepfather’s house where we all lived in Wisconsin.
I was a freelance graphic designer, so my schedule was flexible, and I’d spent as much time with her as I could.
Had believed I would raise her.
Then I’d found that letter and it’d become clear we had to come here.
Here, where I was just supposed to leave the last bits of my mangled heart.
“And don’t forget my mostest favorite! Candy!” Maci screeched.
A tender laugh rolled from my mother. “I could never forget that.”
“Because my grammy and my auntie pay really good attention to me.”
“That’s right. Because we love you so much.” Pained affection wisped from my mother’s lips, and she slanted me a glance, turmoil rippling between us that we had to dothis.
The weight of that letter throbbed from where it was folded in my purse.
I wanted to take it and throw it in that massive fireplace at the hotel.
Watch it burn.
Pretend it never existed.