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35

ZOEY

“Maybe a sexy demon lady …” I murmur to myself, pencil poised over my sketch pad.

Sunlight spills in from the window above the kitchen sink, bathing the cabin in a warm afternoon glow. Good light for my current project.

Different ideas flip through my mind. I’m imagining a pinup girl from hell. Maybe lounging on a bed of fire. Just need to make sure it has a nice curved shape that’ll sit evenly on the surface of a motorcycle helmet.

I want my design to be perfect. Badass. Something the wearer will be proud to show off. Because the only way to put this art on display will be if the guy actually wears his helmet.

Some people might think I’m overly cautious, harping on this helmet thing. But I know I’m right.

Mom doesn’t talk about her childhood much. She lost her dad at a pretty young age, so I guess there wasn’t a lot she could tell me about my grandfather. But there is one thing I know.

How he died.

My grandfather went on a late-night ride on his motorcycle and got into an accident. She never said exactly what part of the crash caused his death, but I know that one of the few rules she insisted my dad follow was to always wear his helmet while riding. The same went for my brothers and me when we took out our bicycles or a set of roller skates.

She wasn’t mean about it.

Mom would walk up to me, cup my face in her hands, and press a kiss to my forehead. Then, she’d whisper, “I love this head more than anything in the world. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to it. Please, wear a helmet.”

Who can say no to that? None of us ever did.

So, here I am, trying to jazz up a boring black helmet, crafting it into something Warner doesn’t just feel obligated to put on.

Instead, I want him to be excited about it.

“Who am I kidding? He’s not a demon-lady kind of guy.” I tap my pencil on the paper.

Then, it hits me. So obvious that I laugh at myself.

I know what kind of guy Warner is.

He’s a wolf.

An hour later, the design is sketched, and the outline is painted on a helmet I picked up from the motorcycle shop in town. I wasn’t about to ask Warner for his and have him ride unprotected while I worked. Plus, this way, I can keep it as a surprise.

Just as I’m mixing paints to get the perfect shade of amber, Cyndi Lauper’s voice fades away, and I can hear the click of the cassette tape coming to a stop. The poppy beat of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was apparently the last on this playlist. When a younger version of my mom introduced it, I wasn’t surprised. I can only imagine how that song spoke to her—a girl homeschooled in a small Colorado town by a recluse of a mother.

I groan out a stretch before standing up to pick my next round of music. The tapes clack as I finger through them. There doesn’t seem to be any particular order. I’ve listened to maybe a third, and I’ve heard everything from an adolescent version of my mother introducing ’70s ballads, all the way to a late-teens Mom jamming out to the ’80s glam rock. Her intros get better with time, but they’re nowhere near the smooth delivery she has on her current morning show.

Since there’s no point in looking, I close my eyes and pick a tape at random from the side of the box I haven’t dipped into yet.

With the next round of music cued up, I move back to the kitchen table and my paints.

“Good morning, University of Denver. Well, good morning to those of you who aren’t still asleep, hungover from last night’s Sigma Tau Delta rager.”

Smooth. Practiced. Engaging. This is more like the mom I know today. That, plus the mention of her alma mater, throws me off.

“Rumor has it that a few members of our illustrious football team were spotted streaking across campus around midnight. So, this one goes out to them …”

Jermaine Stewart’s classic “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off” fills the cabin, but I’m still too befuddled to enjoy the humorous choice.

This is not the recording of a preteen girl holed up with her boom box in a tree house, playing at being a radio DJ. This is my mom in an actual studio. The one she had a part-time job at when she was in college.

But I know for a fact that the summer after high school, Selena Gunner packed up her truck, left Pine Falls, and never came back. And if what Mom told me is true, Grandma Minnie only came up to Denver on the days each of her grandchildren were born. She stayed long enough to give Mom a crocheted blanket before she turned right back around.

So, how did this recording end up in Minnie’s cabin?

Could Mom have mailed it? Maybe as a strange kind of olive branch?

I stand to pace the main room of the cabin as I think.

No. Mom definitely said she didn’t contact her mother until she was pregnant with Abram, and that was after she graduated.

An idea occurs, the possibility of it sending an uncomfortable shock of denial through me. But I have to know.

I pause the tape and flick the settings over to FM. Static. I scan through all the channels, and I get nothing. Same with AM.

But that’s what I expected. I only hoped differently.

After carrying all my music around in a smartphone for so long, the boom box seems overly heavy as I lug it out the back door. Bruce lounges on the porch, soaking up the sun, and barely gives a twitch as I hurry past him.

The air smells like damp earth baking in the sun. A chill rides the breeze, raising the hair on my exposed arms.

I ignore the beautiful hints of autumn, focusing on my destination and what it might reveal.

Climbing into the tree house while clutching the boom box is awkward, but despite swaying a few times, I manage to get both it and myself through the entry in the floor without damage.

Luckily, I got tired of unplugging and plugging it back in and bought some batteries.

I sit cross-legged on the old wooden floor, hesitating with my fingers poised on the buttons. The stereo seems to gaze back at me, its speakers like wide bug eyes.

Tempting me.

Mocking me.

Shaming me.

I flip the on switch.

Static.

There’s a tremor in my fingers as I press the button to scan for stations. A second goes by before, suddenly, a voice spills out.

“… the best deal in downtown Denver! Come get your new car?—”

The stereo scans again, landing on a station playing Ariana Grande’s latest hit. It scans again, finding a classical music station. It scans again. And again. At some point, a set of familiar numbers flashes on the little digital screen.

I attended the University of Denver too, transferring there for my sophomore year and on. Occasionally, I turned on the school’s radio station to see what they were playing.

Today, whoever the jockey is has chosen some classic rock, but I don’t bother to focus on the lyrics.

My heart cracks, little fissures in the organ spiking like splinters in my chest.

Because in this moment, I realize my theory is truth.

In the same way that I’ve been making this tedious climb to get service, so did my grandmother more than thirty years ago. A woman too proud to mend fences with her daughter crawled into a tree house just to hear that daughter’s voice.

I press the Off button, needing silence to deal with my realization.

The stereo sits quietly, and I stare back at it.

This was all that Minnie Gunner had for family in the last years of her life. No one visiting her. No one calling her.

She only had the voice of her daughter, broadcasted from miles away.

The pain of this knowledge makes my muscles cramp and my head ache. I curl up on the floor of the tree house, folding under the weight of my sorrow and regret.

Whenever I thought of my grandmother in the past, I assumed she didn’t want to know any of us. That she was fine on her own. That family didn’t mean anything to her.

But I know different now. A woman who doesn’t care does not keep recordings of her daughter’s voice.

How many more tapes in that box are from a time after Mom left? How many times did Minnie crawl up into this tree house to listen to her estranged daughter’s broadcasts?

“Oh God. I’m so sorry.” I moan the words into my hands, feeling the tears coming, the sobs rising from deep in my chest.

What kept her away? But I think I know.

The river. I can imagine her drowning in it, just like I do. The darkness of the water a barrier between her and the person she loved most in the world.

What a horrible joke—for this woman to have been a stranger to me my whole life and only through her death am I getting to know her. The items in her house reveal glimpses of a strong, capable woman, who stored away love for her family the same way she jarred preserves. With dedication and so that only she knew what was contained within.

I’m not sure how long I let myself cry for her. It’s more than the loss of a person that hurts me. It’s the loss of the one person in my family who I see myself in.

Each piece of Minnie I discover holds a sense of familiarity, as if the same set of tools were used to create us both.

And I cry for the loss of love.

I could have loved her. I know it. If only I had gotten a chance to know her. If I had taken that chance.

But none of us took it.

Minnie didn’t reach out to us, but we also didn’t reach out to her.

Mom wasn’t a gatekeeper. She never denied us access to our grandmother.

“Why didn’t I know you?” I whisper to the boom box, like it will transport my message to whatever plane of existence my grandmother floats in now. I’ve never been religious, but I can see the appeal. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that I haven’t lost my chance to know my grandma? To love her?

But all I have is this life, and Minnie is gone from it.

Loneliness creeps up on me like a jungle cat, slowly stalking me, then pouncing with a bone-crushing force that leaves me gasping for breath. My fingers scramble for my pocket, rooting around until I find my phone.

I dial each one of their numbers in turn, starting with the oldest.

Abram. No answer.

Byron. No answer.

Carver. No answer.

Panic has started to set in, and my thumb feels heavy as I try Donovan.

On the second ring, I finally connect.

“Zoey! Are you home?”

My brother’s question has me tearing up all over again, but I try not to let on how weepy I am when I respond.

“Not yet. Still in Pine Falls. Suddenly found myself missing Denver though and thought I’d give you all a call. How’s it been without me?”

“Hell. Seriously. Byron broke up with that girl he was seeing, the one who bartends at McConnell’s. And now, we’re all scared to get a drink after our set.”

I let out a watery chuckle at the thought of my four brothers, too awkward to ask for a beer because the bartender is glaring at them. They’re a talented crew, all taking after our dad, who works as a studio musician. The four of them have their own band, aptly called The Gunners. I refer to them as the Jonas Brothers, which annoys them to no end. So, I never plan to stop.

“Tell Byron to stop dating people at our favorite spots.”

Byron is a serial monogamist. He gets invested super fast—grand gestures, romantic dates, weekend trips. Girls and guys all over Denver have fooled themselves into believing they’re his forever. Unfortunately, the glitter of a new relationship wears off fast, and when Byron realizes they’re not the one, he ends it.

I know for a fact that he’s not trying to be insensitive. He really does want to find his forever person. I just don’t think he knows what a forever person looks like.

“He never listens,” Donovan groans. “We need you back to keep him in line. And to order our drinks for us.”

“Good to know you miss your beer buffer,” I joke.

“Come on. You know everyone falls to pieces without you.” His words make my gut clench in a weird combination of happiness and misery. “Hold on a sec. I’ll call them over.”

“You’re all together?”

“Yeah. Thursday is rugby night.”

Of course. My brothers usually play a pickup rugby game on Thursday evenings. I glance at the time on my phone, realizing it’s already after six.

Guess I cried for longer than I thought.

It’s not long before a chorus of male voices spill through the speaker, all of them talking at once.

“When are you coming back?”

“What’s Pine Falls like?”

“Why don’t you call more?”

I let them shout out their questions, waiting for them to give me a moment to answer. When they finally quiet down, I take my turn at the conversation.

We spend the next few minutes catching up. Them telling me about all the shenanigans each other has gotten into. Me talking about some of my projects and assuring them that I’m not staying in Pine Falls forever.

Aware that I interrupted their game, I let them go even though all four of them try to insist I stay on the line.

When the phone call ends, I find myself so exhausted that I struggle to sit up. The combination of crying and wrangling my brothers over the phone drained every bit of energy from me.

So, I stay on the floor of the tree house, staring up at the patchy shingled roof.

Despite their exhausting chatter, there was one underlying message I couldn’t help but pick up through that call.

They love me.

I’m not forgotten out here in this cabin.

At least not yet.