“Oh.” He relaxed and closed his eyes again.
I was glad he didn’t care. A moment passed and he was snoring again, fogging up his window, leaving me alone.
I drew in a deep breath.
Back to the paper. Back to the photo. Back to Coral McCray.
Proof of life after death.
Proof of life.
I should have felt nothing but betrayal and disgust. What kind of person disappears, leaving us all to assume she is dead? Even if she was able to abandon our parents, how could she have abandoned me? I loved her more than anyone in the world. How could she have let me ache for over twenty years? She knew I had nothing. I was just a child when she left me. I was so terribly alone.
I should have hated her. I should have been sick with anger. Or numb, empty of any emotion for her.
But I was none of those things. Instead I was elated. Ecstatic. Thrilled.
The world, flat and barren for so long, filled with color and sprang into the shape of a perfect sphere. Dead ends to questions that had been hanging like webs for my whole life connected to obvious, clear meanings. New questions flooded my brain, but in a pink lemonade rush of excitement. No longer the slow trudge sludge of problems that can never be solved.
Then I did something completely foreign to me. I didn’t even see it coming.
“Thank you, God,” I whispered.
Adrian kept snoring beside me.
Chapter 69
“Wake up, Adrian. We’re here,” I said.
People were standing at my parents’ front window, watching us drive in. The driveway was filled with cars. My long-lost cousin BobbieMae had also just arrived. I hadn’t seen her for years. The man who must be her husband lifted a crying baby from its car seat. They pretended not to notice us parking, getting out, removing bottles of wine from the trunk, walking towards them. They hurried up the front steps and rang the doorbell.
Some small child I did not recognize answered the door and then dashed away, leaving it wide open. BobbieMae and her family disappeared inside, closing the door behind them, even though we were just a few steps behind. All the reasons I hated being here were quickly coming back to me, not that I had ever forgotten. Adrian’s hands were full since he was carrying the wine, so I reached out to open the door. It was locked.
“Jesus Christ,” said Adrian.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Adrian shifted the weight of wine from one hip to the other. No one came.
“Ring it again,” he said, so I did.
Finally my mother appeared, looking about a hundred years old, wiping her hands on one of those old house aprons that is so old it’s back in style. They sell them for fifty dollars at places like Anthropologie.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, stepping forward to give her a hug. She stepped back.
“I don’t want to get your fancy dress covered in gravy,” she whined. “What are you doing ringing the doorbell? I had my hands full in the kitchen. Nice to see you, Adrian.”
“Hello Patricia. Nice to see you, too.”
“The door was locked,” I told her.
“Why would the door be locked?” She shook her head at the silliness of it.
“Here,” Adrian said, showing her the crate of wine. “We brought a nice mix of some of our favorites for you.”
“Well, I don’t know a chardonnay from a cabernet, so it’s all the same to me. You’ll have to teach me what’s good.” Wink, wink. It was nice to see she had not lost her flirty spark.
I waited for her to make some comment, good or evil, about how pregnant I was. Instead she turned around and bustled back to the kitchen, singing, “I better take a look at how Mr. Turkey is doing!”
I turned to Adrian. “May I take your coat?”