Page 18

Moscow, Idaho

X ana is waiting in her dark blue Honda for Karen, Emily’s mom, at the little airstrip that is the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport.

She’s excited. She wants to show off her progress to the woman she considers the mom she never had.

Karen admires the bedding, which now matches.

Xana says she saved money this summer and opened a bank account, something Emily joked she’d never do.

At Maddie’s suggestion, she joined the staff at the Mad Greek and makes eighty bucks or so a shift.

She shows Karen the wall mirror she bought with some of her earnings.

Karen is proud of Xana, who is beaming. She tells Karen she loves her new roomies.

But it’s a bittersweet moment because, for the first time in three years, Emily is living separately from Xana—albeit not far away, just across the street from where Emily is rooming with Josie at the Whites. Xana still sees Emily every day, and Karen heads over there now.

Later that evening, Xana and Ethan drop by Emily’s apartment, as they always do after a long day, to decompress and gossip. Karen is in her pj’s.

She recalled: “Ethan sits down on the corner of Emily’s sectional couch. And instead of sitting on the couch, Xana sits on top of him. She snuggles. She’s happy… and she’s telling us all about her day and what they did, and dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, who said this, everything.”

Karen couldn’t look away from the comic visual of the effervescent, gesticulating woman sitting on top of her patient boyfriend. It was like a sketch out of Saturday Night Live .

Karen said, “Finally he says, ‘Jeez, woman, stop wiggling!’

“And she just throws her head back and laughs like she normally does, and just goes on, doesn’t even miss the beat. It doesn’t even faze her at all. She just keeps wiggling and talking.

“She laughs at him and he just laughs back and he just continues to let her sit there and wiggle all over him, even though he is so uncomfortable, obviously. But he is so patient with her and he adores her.”

The bottom line was clear not just to Karen but to Emily, Hunter Johnson, Josie, and Linden—all of whom were assembled in the room that night:

“Ethan would rather have Xana wiggling on his lap than be sitting anywhere else.”