I head on over, thinking she won’t be home but at least she’ll know I made somewhat of an effort. When I get there I see she’s home and the door is open. On the kitchen counter is a pile of mail, probably all junk, for me.
The shower is running but I still yell, “I’m here!” so she doesn’t come out and think I’m a robber and attack me with her pointy nails. I know those things hurt.
I grab a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and crack it open as I stare at the mail on the kitchen counter, expecting to see a mound of letters.
It’s not a mound of letters at all. There are two envelopes and a postcard from Amber in Bali, but the rest are packages. Some are a square foot, others half that size, and they’re all wrapped in plain brown paper.
I pick up the one on the top. It has my address but the return address is Henare Wines in Bay View, New Zealand. I feel the blood drain out of me.
My heart is waterlogged.
With shaking hands, I pull back the paper and reveal a pastel-painted canvas. A seascape at sunset. Blues and corals and tangerine. It’s so gorgeous I want to cry. I blink a few times, turning it over. It doesn’t have Gemma’s name on it or a note but it’s from her. It’s her soul.
And she’s showing it to me.
I put it down and open another. And another. There are about fifteen of them, all gorgeous horizon lines, sunsets, sunrises—dark and stormy, happy and light. I’m surrounded by her.
“Josh?” I hear my mother say, and I whirl around to see her tucking her wet hair up into a towel, her face bare, her glasses off.
I point to the paintings. “What the hell is this?”
Her brows furrow as she comes closer. “Oh, they’re paintings. Quite nice. What do they mean?”
I’m incredulous. “I don’t know what they mean,” though I do. “How long have you been getting these?”
She shrugs, picking up one of a red sunset on a black sand beach. “For weeks now. A new one comes almost every day.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!”
She gives me a sharp look. “I did tell you. I kept telling you to pick up your mail. It’s not my fault you don’t have a second to spare for me.”
Oh, I see. She’s using the mail as leverage.
I sigh, rubbing my hand vigorously across my face, trying to force some sense into my fried brain. “Okay, I’m sorry that I haven’t been around.”
“It hurts, Joshua,” she says. “Everyone is gone. Everyone has someone except for me.”
I wince, my heart sinking even more. It’s hard to hear my mom be vulnerable. I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know if she’ll just go back to being the cold stone that she usually is.
“I don’t have anyone, Mom,” I tell her, though now, looking at the paintings—Gemma’s soul, her love, her passion spread out on the table—I think she might have me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. Things are . . . tough sometimes. You know how it is.”
She sighs and nods. “I do. Just say you’ll try.”
“I will, Mom,” and I mean it. “I just can’t believe these are all here. How did she even know where to send them?”
“Who is sending you these? Seems like promotion from a winery.”
“It’s a girl, Mom. One I . . . she’s in New Zealand.”
She studies the art. “Did she make these?”
“Yes,” I say proudly, as if I had something to do with it. “She’s very talented.”
“Very,” she says. Her eyes flash. “Oh, I forgot, someone came this morning with something for you. But there’s no return address on it.”
She disappears around the corner and comes out with a thick package in her hands. She places it on the counter, and just from the shape and the weight I know what it is.
“When you say someone . . .” I say, my eyes glued to it.
“I don’t know. A girl dropped it off. Not the regular postman. Must be a courier.”
I feel my face growing cold. I can barely speak. “What did she look like?”
“Like a girl,” she says. “Pretty. Long hair, tanned. Healthy looking. She looked a bit mixed.”
That would be my mother’s way of saying “not totally white.”
“Didn’t you ask her questions, like where this came from?”
She taps her long nails on the package and nods. “I did. But the girl just turned and ran down the steps. For a second, I thought maybe it was a bomb.”
“It’s no bomb,” I say.
I start unwrapping, slowly at first, then fast.
Mom pats my shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
When I rip all the paper off, my sketchbook is in my hands. I marvel at it, turning it over, and I start flipping through it. I see the inscription, If you lose this, please return to Josh Miles, and my address on the inside cover. I flip through, hoping to see something new, but all it does is bombard me with a million memories.
Each page is a trip back to New Zealand—every beautiful day, every moment captured. The clear, pale water and golden sand of Abel Tasman. The cold, dramatic ice of Franz Josef Glacier. Dawn at Key Summit. Foxgloves and milk-blue Lake Tekapo. Dolphins. Gemma’s attempt to paint in Kaikoura. Christmastime. The sunrise at East Cape.
This is where I pause. Her painting is glowing brilliantly off the page, like I’m seeing that sunrise all over again in her saturated, waxy lines. I feel just how messy life was at that moment.