“We’ll be there as long as your house doesn’t stink like incense and pot and you use one of Nan’s recipes.”
“What the hell is wrong with my recipes?”
“They’re disgusting.”
“They’re works in progress,” I grumbled, looking out the door to my office—that was really a utility closet I’d stuffed a desk in—to see how many we had for the ‘Mommy and Me’ class Kali was teaching in ten minutes.
“You’re not a bloody vegetarian!”
“I could be if my son didn’t insist on eating the carcasses of dead animals.”
“You’re nuts.”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I ignored the twinge those words brought me.
“Hey, I better go. I’ll call you tonight before—” I dropped the phone to my side as I caught sight of a woman walking in the door with her daughter.
She was lovely, with creamy skin and straight strawberry blonde hair, and she was wearing expensive yoga gear that only a woman with too much money and too much time would wear.
A few years ago, when Nix had gotten a job offer from a growing ski and snowboarding company in Portland, I’d packed up and followed him. There was nothing left for me in Texas by then except for the acquaintances I’d met through my old studio, so I’d sold my house and settled down in the Oregon town, even though the thought of being so close to Patrick had made me nervous. I didn’t regret it, either.
I’d opened up my tiny yoga studio on the west side of Portland between an Indian restaurant and a funky thrift store, and while the space was limited, I couldn’t complain about the foot traffic. We were busy from open to close, and last year I’d been able to hire Kali to teach more of the classes so I could work on the business side of the desk.
I had realized quickly that there were two types of people that came into our studio. The first type were serious, mostly crunchy people like myself that came in to do more than just stretch their muscles. They wore beards and sandals and beaded necklaces and they used the same ragged yoga mat for years.
The second type, well, they were my favorite and I also hated them a little. They were the housewives who never carried cash and bitched every time the credit card machine was down because they couldn’t pay for their class without it—even though it had happened to them twice before and they should have remembered that the thing was a bit temperamental. Their hair was always styled to perfection, they wore clothing that cost more than my car, and I’d never seen one with a broken nail. I called the studio’s popularity with those women The Dharma and Greg Effect. It was the idea that those women came in because they wanted their workout to sound sexier than it was. Their rich husbands wanted to be able to mention how their wives could put her feet behind their head, and the wives, well, they just wanted to find the hot new thing before everyone else… and what was hotter than a flexible woman?
The redheaded woman ushering her little girl into the shop was one of the Dharmas. I hadn’t seen her before, but I usually worked from home on Tuesdays when I didn’t have class. I wondered how long she’d been attending.
I didn’t know what it was about her that made me look twice, but I knew it was something. I completely forgot the phone in my hand as I watched her set her stuff down. When she suddenly tilted her head and smiled, it was like being punched in the chest.
It couldn’t be. I didn’t even know if she lived in Portland, or even if she was in Oregon anymore. There was no way she’d walked into my shop.
I watched her for a while longer as Kali started the class, and the more I saw, the more my heart raced. The mannerisms. The head tilt. The way her hair curled into tiny little ringlets at her neck as she began to sweat.
I stumbled back inside my office and closed the door quietly, finally realizing that my phone was still clutched in my hand.
“Nix?”
“Mum? What the hell was that?”
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up the phone and sat heavily in my chair, reaching for the member files in the drawer next to my desk.
I checked for Gallagher first and there was nothing, but I wouldn’t let myself relax. She was what, twenty-five now? Just a few months older than Nix, and plenty old enough to be married. I rubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath before pulling out every single file for members who had last names that started with A.
I went through the files letter by letter and it took me hours.
And then there she was.
Brenna and Beatrix Richards.
Twenty-five years old, according to her driver’s license.
I stared at it a lot longer than I should have.
Classes were over for the day and the studio was quiet as I stared at the little black and white photo our copy machine had printed out. She was a little blurry, and without the red hair I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a lineup. There was nothing about her in that little grainy photo that would have made me look twice, but I had a hard time looking away.
She was the single most influential person in my life, her mere presence on the earth the catalyst of every single thing that had happened to me in the last twenty-five years.
Yet when I stared at her photo, I couldn’t see anything but a beautiful mix of Moira and Patrick.
I dropped the sheet of paper on my desk and sobbed into my hands.
***
I wasn’t proud of myself, really I wasn’t. And I knew that I was acting like a lunatic.