Rushing to my side, Mom scooped me into her arms. For the first time in my life I felt like I had a mother after all. Inside myself, I shut out her fearful stare and shut in something more beautiful. All the panic, the pain, the sadness lifted as I glided further and further away, toward memories of evenings when we shared a blanket on the couch while binging on chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, snuggling through chick flicks and the occasional classic Hitchcock film. Or when we held each other and cried the day we buried the stray dog I named Antonne—after the first boy who broke my heart—on that gray misty afternoon. Or when we laughed until I peed myself after I tripped over that same dog who always slept at my feet. And the day Mom told me she was pregnant with my new baby sister, and her vow to sobriety. The nostalgia tasted good. Or were those figments of my imagination floating on the surface of memories that didn’t actually exist?

No, they were real, just like she was really kneeling next to me, waiting for me to come back to her. Her hands roughly grabbed me—I could feel her frantic touch—and shook me hard, but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t do anything but feel her shaking, calling me from the end of the tunnel. Her hair tickled my cheek as I felt her body heat warm my chin, her ear pressed against my chest. “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod,” she repeated.

For an instant, time froze in a breathless moment like when you’re sailing off the cliff, into the gorge. I was Thelma to Mom’s Louise. Then she was gone.

I wanted to call her back, tell her that yes, now I was okay. Maybe for the first time in my life I was okay. I wanted to remind her of everything we had been through together, how much I loved her, but the words wouldn’t come. My mouth wouldn’t obey. I heard her voice echoing from the other distant end. I wasn’t scared anymore, though. I felt safe and warm and loved, ready to be with my birth dad on the other side. With that last breath I made peace with the woman who birthed me, who chose drugs over me, who abandoned me, but who came back for me. If only she could have saved me.

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Josie

OCTOBER

“Go reconcile with your daughter before it’s too late, Josie.” Those were Bennett’s last words to me when I found him slowly deteriorating alone in the yellow brick house perched atop Grandview Avenue—and what a grand view it was—that we had once called home together. Although we had been estranged for fifteen years, he had never filed for divorce because he loved me. I never filed because I hated him.