Out of the Woods

Chapter One Present Day

One

Present Day

My mother was religious in the same way that leggings are pants. By that I mean whenever times were desperate or for comfort. Never one to shy away from a passive-aggressive “Bless her heart” or an exasperated “Lord give me strength,” my mom mostly expressed her beliefs in empty platitudes that I often flat-out dismissed.

But she did teach me to pray. Not before bed every night, as her parents so rigidly instructed her, or at a Sunday mass, or to apologize for a laundry list of transgressions that one didn’t need to feel all that sorry for. Instead, my mother, the no-nonsense woman that she was, taught me to treat my one-way calls to the big man in the sky as more of a crisis hotline and less as a suggestion box. “God’s got enough problems,” she’d said. “Don’t waste his time with things you can handle yourself.” Or, at the very least, have the saints handle.

And so, over the course of many years, I discovered what qualified as worthy of God’s attention. Like the time my mom’s shitty Ford Mondeo broke down on the highway during a snowstorm, an hour from home without a pay phone in sight. Or, when my aunt June’s—who’s not actually my blood-relative but rather my mom’s best friend who we shared an apartment with—boyfriend started throwing shit in the adjoining room. Or when my best friend and daughter of Aunt June, Win, didn’t come home right away after swim practice one time and we’d watched a little too much Dateline that week for comfort. Then, of course, when Mom’s doctors said there was nothing left to be done but to make the most of the time she had left. After that, we started to pray a lot.

Desperate prayer is the only kind I’ve ever known.

After Mom passed, I relied on my own instincts to tell me when it was appropriate to pull on that heavenly pair of tin cans tied together with angel’s-harp string. I’d shut my eyes tight and ask something bigger than myself to intervene. A force of some kind. Some deity. Some all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, all-capable thing. Something my mother called God. Something I haven’t been bold enough to name for myself just yet.

And even though I’ve never seen an answered prayer, I still find myself giving it a go. Rarely and only when there’s nothing left to be done, just as Mom taught me. Like right now, for example. Because this event, the gala that I’d decided to host in honor of my late, brilliant mother, is about to fail spectacularly. And there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

“Sarah? Are you back here?” Win, my lifelong best friend, turns the corner of the darkened hallway where I’ve hidden myself away. Her black hair is tied into a low bun, curtain bangs framing either side of her face. The squiggly horizontal lines she gets between her brows when her nose bunches up with worry are visible from here. The moment she sees me leaned against the wall, her shoulders slump and she picks up the bottom of her floor length, purple silk gown to hurry over to me at the far end of the corridor.

“You caught me,” I whine pathetically, wishing there was somewhere left inside of myself to hide.

“I did.” She looks me over, head to toe, with increasing anxiety behind her eyes. “Caleb sent me to find you. The auction is almost over.” After growing up in the same home as Win for our entire childhoods, we know each other at a level deeper than most friends would. Closer to sisters, I’d like to think. Twins maybe, given that we’re the same age. And so, because of that, I know that Win’s tone, the slight hesitancy in her voice when she said the word auction, means that I was right to be back here praying for a miracle. We’re still nowhere near to our fundraising goal—no nearer than we were when I snuck away.

In quick succession I clear my throat, shake my head, and look up to the ceiling—all attempts at avoiding the onslaught of tears threatening to spill over. But they still come, slow and burning as they gather along my bottom eyelids. “Fuck…” I whisper, dabbing under my eyes with the sides of my thumbs. The last thing I need is mascara running down my cheeks when I eventually make my way back out there.

“It was a beautiful evening,” Win offers gently, her mouth tilting up on one side. She reaches into her handbag, pulls out a tissue, and offers it to me.

I take it, holding it up to my water line to dab tears away. “Beautiful doesn’t exactly fund research though, does it?” I reply, snarkier than I intended before I sniff back more tears. “Sorry,” I whisper. I’m not mad at Win, I’m angry with myself. So fucking angry.

“No…I guess not.” I watch as Win hikes up her dress past her knees, and then lowers herself to sit on the floor, letting the silk material pool between her crossed legs.

I ungracefully drop to sit next to her, my knee-length forest green dress is too tight to do anything but keep my legs extended out in front of me. “I don’t want to go out there,” I say through a heavy sigh as my ass hits the ground.

Win nods slowly, looking back toward the door at the end of the hallway. “Do you want me to tell Caleb to handle it? I’m sure he could—”

“No,” I say forcefully. “No, definitely not.” The last thing I want is for my husband to come to my rescue again. I’ve already wasted so much of our money on this event. His money, if I’m being completely honest with myself. I can’t ask him to also step in to give the saddest goodbye address to a crowd mostly consisting of his business associates and their far-more-accomplished-than-his-own spouses. This isn’t Caleb’s failure; he shouldn’t have to own it. It’s all mine.

Isn’t that what you wanted? some malevolent part of my psyche whispers. Something that’s only yours?

“Then I don’t really see any other option here, babe.” Win pats my thigh and lowers her head onto my shoulder. “You still pulled off an incredible event and it was your very first one. I know you wanted to do it all yourself, but maybe that’s too big a task for anyone to take on. It was also a really big fundraising goal. Maybe next time—”

I tense, straightening my posture, which forces Win to sit up, removing her head from my shoulder. The last thing I want right now is the gentlest possible version of I told you so from the person who’s consistently cheered me on since we were in diapers.

“How much have we raised?” I ask abruptly. “When you left to find me, what was the total?”

Win clears her throat, looking at the hem of my dress, just above my knobby, freckle-covered knees. “Just under one-hundred-and-eighty thousand.”

Shitting-fuckity-fuck.

The goal for tonight is three hundred thousand. Between the hall rental, catering for a crowd of almost four hundred people, entertainment, auction items, décor, and advertising, the event cost just over a hundred and twenty thousand.

I automatically do the math. “Sixty grand,” I murmur, barely audible.

“That’s a lot of money, Sar.” I don’t even think Win heard me; she can just see my obvious disappointment.

I struggle to stand in my tight dress by clawing for a grip at the wall. I begin pacing back and forth as Win’s eyes track me like I’m the ball at Wimbledon.

“Caleb and I could have saved everyone a Saturday night and donated double that amount without all of this…” Fanfare. Effort. Time and energy. Ego. Performance. “Bullshit,” is what I land on.

“But you raised awareness, too. Doctor Torres’s speech moved people to tears, Sar. This doesn’t just end tonight. The impact—”

“Dammit,” I whimper, grinding my high heel into the ground as I move my hands to my hips and grip tightly. “Am I some fucking cliché? Some bored, rich housewife who has to have a cause?” I throw my hands up, then wrap them around my shoulders as I gently sway side to side. “What the fuck am I doing, Win?” I ask in soft desperation, clinging on to her eye contact like a lifeline. “I could have stayed at home and toasted to Mom with a glass of her favorite Pinot Grigio and made more of an impact by writing a check for what this stupid event cost. What a waste of fucking time. What a waste of money. What a waste. ”

“Sarah, you’re not being fair to yourself. You didn’t know it was going to—” She stops herself, but I hear the last, unspoken word regardless.

“Fail?” I ask, my chest falling on a wounded breath.

Win’s lips tighten, as she holds eye contact, firm yet pleading. As if to say, Don’t make me say it.

“Fail,” I repeat, raising my palms to press against my neck, cradling my jaw in both hands.

“Marcie would be so proud of you,” Win says gently. “I don’t want you doubting that for a second.”

I shake my head stubbornly as I turn away from her. Mom may have been a mother figure to Win from the moment she and Aunt June brought Win home from the hospital, but she was my mom. I’m the one with her DNA flooding my veins. Her auburn hair, her tea-stain eyes, her slightly crooked left incisor, her long legs and disproportionately short torso, her ugly feet with bent-in toes she’d joke were our family’s curse. A stranger’s nose, I once pointed out. A parting gift from my poor excuse for a father, she’d less-than-affectionately replied.

All that to say, I know my mom better than anyone. I am the closest thing to her left living. And I don’t think she’d be proud of me. Not tonight. Maybe not for a long, long while. Because at thirty-one years old, I’ve accomplished next to nothing.

My mom was seventeen when she got pregnant and eighteen when she had me. She scraped every penny together with my also knocked up Aunt June, got a half-decent apartment, and did the best she could with so little.

Marcie Green could throw together a Michelin-star-worthy meal with a couple of cans, whatever else we had in the pantry, and a few bags of frozen vegetables if you gave her an afternoon and a Shania Twain CD to blast on repeat. She’d transform a dilapidated, thrift-store dollhouse into Barbie’s Malibu dream home with a little bit of paint, time, glue, glitter, and effort. She wasted nothing. Not a dollar and certainly not a moment of her life.

While I can proudly claim I have all the physical attributes of my mom, it often feels as if Win inherited the majority of Mom’s personality. After quite literally being dealt the short hand in life—that joke will never get old—Win has overcome so much to be the woman she is today. Her limb difference never once held her back. Hell, I think it somehow even propelled her forward. Stubbornness, maybe. Pride, partially. Tenacity, mostly. All of Mom’s best qualities. Eventually, she found herself in the arms of her dream man and accidental baby daddy, Bo. Ever since those two collided they’ve been unstoppable in making Win’s dreams come true. Dreams they now share.

In just under two months Win and Bo will officially open Camp Cando. A summer camp she has designed for kids with varying disabilities, and their families, to explore nature and have community with one another. And she’ll do it all with my adorable not-quite-two-year-old niece, August, strapped to her back. So, believe me, if Mom’s somewhere looking down on the two of us with pride, it’s sure as shit not me she’s watching.

“Win? Sar?” Bo, Win’s husband, rounds the corner from the opposite end of the hall.

Bo is six foot five, conventionally handsome in a nerd-next-door kind of way, has swoopy blond hair with a middle part, and a beard that could probably use a trim. But I know for a fact that Win likes him to keep it more unkempt. I like to think that Bo was cosmically forced to knock up Win’s stubbornly independent self because the universe knew we needed him and she had sworn off dating.

Since their infamous Halloween romp—at my party—he’s become an irreplaceable member of our family. He reaches all the shit off the high shelves and changes out lightbulbs, for example. But mostly it’s his big heart that we were missing. The affection he gives so easily to all of us but to his daughter and my best friend the most.

I usually refuse to call him by the same name more than once per time spent together, just to keep things interesting. It started as new-kid hazing but Bo, like he does with most things, took it in stride and now it’s just for fun. Variations of his name include Bo, Robert, Roberto, Rob, Robbie, Rob the Builder, Bo-Nus, Bo-bonic plague, Robo-Nerd, Bo the hoe, Daddy Bo, Father Roberts, and—his personal favorite—Bil bo Baggins.

“This place is a fucking labyrinth,” Bo says, looking over his shoulder toward the dimly lit hallway behind him. “Did you two get lost?” He slows, assessing me with just as much care as his wife had only a few minutes ago.

With an audible sigh he steps around me, offering a hand to his wife who holds out her arms in the air expectantly. He pulls her up, and then they both turn toward me, matching worry across their features. I swear they’re starting to meld into one mutant, overly astute, annoyingly cute being.

“You doing okay?” he asks, wincing playfully in a way that tells me he already knows the answer.

I sniff, feeling my sadness metamorphize into bitter resolve. “You’re in finance, Robert…so, tell it to me straight. The event cost one hundred and twenty thousand and we’ve made…?”

He swallows heavily, making his throat bob. “About one-ninety when I came to find you both.”

“Right.” I nod, my eyes falling closed. “So…Good investment?” I ask.

I look up at Win’s gentle giant as he nervously paws at the edge of his beard. “You made a profit,” he says, avoiding eye contact.

“Hmm,” I mumble indifferently.

“And the night isn’t over yet,” he adds, lowering his hand to his trousers’ pocket.

“You’re both too nice.” I check my watch to find that we have about ten minutes before my scheduled farewell address. It was my mom’s watch, actually. Chain-link, gold-plated. It probably cost her less than thirty dollars at a big-box store. I don’t usually wear it, but I thought it might have been a good luck charm tonight. I fiddle with it, fighting the urge to take it off. “I should probably get out there,” I say, brushing my finger across the clock face.

“Caleb told me he can handle it if you want him to. He—”

“No,” Win says, interrupting Bo with a gentle pat to his chest. “She wants to do this herself.”

Bo turns to face me and nods once, wearing a sweet smile. His hand finds his wife’s arm, still draped across his chest, and squeezes her wrist.

Without a single word being spoken, the three of us nod, share a wistful sigh, and then begin walking down the hall. We pass by the storage rooms containing extra tables and chairs, the bustling kitchen as the caterers tidy up for the night, and the side corridor where staff are running back trays of emptied champagne flutes and water glasses, until we reach a set of double doors.

The venue on the other side of the doorway is a classic ballroom containing glistening crystal chandeliers, white draped linens, thin carpeting with intricate swirls of a similar gray color. At the far end there’s a stage, brought in specially for tonight. On top of it sits a clear plastic podium, a large sky-blue backdrop featuring the clinic’s emblem, and, off to the side, a photograph of my mother set upon a white easel.

The photo, from my and Caleb’s wedding, is the only one from Mom’s last year of life that I can stand to look at. She doesn’t look sick at first glance. In it, Mom’s wheelchair is parked next to the first row of pews with Aunt June and Win out of focus behind her in the frame. She’s smiling subtly toward the front of the tiny sanctuary, wearing a feathered, wide-brimmed blue hat. Pride shines across all her features as she watches her blissfully na?ve nineteen-year-old daughter promise forever to a man who would have been better described as a boy.

“Ready?” Bo asks, hand on the door in front of us, ready to push.

I force a smile, and feel it does not reach my eyes.

“You’ve got this,” Win says, rubbing my shoulder as Bo opens and holds the door ajar for us to pass through.

Immediately, my ears perk up in confusion. The room we enter is not at all what I was expecting. The vibe is…joyous. It’s celebratory. The guests are applauding…Smiling…Cheering.

Win squeals at my side just as Bo turns on his heels, his face lit with excitement as he stares down at me. I look past them toward the stage where my husband stands tall, presenting an obnoxiously large check written out to the ALS Research Institute of Southern Ontario for three-hundred-thousand dollars to Dr.Torres.

Something in my gut twists as they turn to pose for a photo, laughing like old friends, and the photographer’s flash flares.

This is not an answered prayer.

This is Caleb’s doing.