Chapter 39 #2
“I thought I could just say it. You know, finally get it out after all this …” She took a ragged breath. “Lucas took an internship in Washington this summer.”
He had no idea what to say. But she clearly expected something, almost seemed to need it. So he tried, “That’s a long time to be apart.”
“He’s been working as an aide to Nancy Pelosi.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He’s graduating early and taking a year off before law school so he can join her staff.”
“In Washington?”
“Washington, San Francisco …” She examined him through a glaze of tears. “You really don’t understand, do you?”
“Mira … I guess not.”
“It’s Pelosi.”
The way she spoke that name, the anger and loathing emblazoned on her features, almost frightened him.
Colin had the sudden impression of seeing Regina standing there, just behind Mira’s chair.
Roland’s wife observed them from a safe distance, showing Colin the same timeless concern as when he had asked what was going on.
He knew whatever he said might inflame Mira’s tumult. Which was the last thing he wanted.
As if guided by Regina’s silent wisdom, he reached across the table and took Mira’s hand. “I’ve missed you.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Of course I did.” He kept his voice as calm as possible. Almost flat. “So much of what is good in my life has come from meeting you. This incredibly beautiful girl who just plonked down beside me at the pool and started talking.”
She sniffed. “I don’t plonk. I never plonk.”
“Everything has been so natural with you ever since. Your family have just pulled me in. The investments, the way my life has been shaped because of them. And you. Especially you.”
She wiped her eyes. “They miss you almost more than me. Not quite. But close.”
“I miss them too. Mira, no, I don’t understand. I don’t need to understand.” He gave that a beat, then added, “Whatever you need, however I can help, I’m here.”
From that point, her words came out in tight snippets.
He sensed she used the public place as a way of maintaining at least some control.
He heard how she and Lucas had spent over a year arguing over his political direction.
How Lucas had become increasingly involved in the current election.
How he wanted to make this his life’s work.
How it reached the point where they simply could not discuss it any more.
Not and stay together. Which they couldn’t. Not if Lucas insisted …
“Of course,” Colin said, when in truth he had no idea why these two people, so much in love and so right for each other, could not see their way past politics.
When she was done, he rose and walked her back to the boundary of her pristine campus.
They hugged, and she thanked him, and he left more confused and uncertain than when he had arrived.
As he drove away and rejoined the highway south, for the first time in what felt like months, he did not think of anything except his hurting friend.
Four nights later, two-thirty in the morning, Colin woke from a dream so terrifying he had no choice but call her. Soon as Mira answered, he started in. “Mira, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t … I had to call.”
“Colin?”
“I’ve had the worst dream. It wasn’t just a dream, it was …”
“Colin, wait, I can’t … All right. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I dreamed about my mother.”
There was a long pause. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren wailed. A chopper drummed softly from far overhead. When Mira came back on the line, every vestige of sleep was gone. “Has this happened before?”
“Not ever.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
He didn’t. The memory still scalded. But he needed to. “She called to me. Soon as I heard her voice, I knew who she was. She said …” A shuddering breath. “She said I owed her. I carried a lifetime debt. There was something I needed to do for her. I had to do it.”
“Did she say what that was?”
“Live.” Saying the word again relaunched his heart rate.
“Just that one word?”
“Yes. Then I woke up. Screamed my way out of bed, more like.”
“Your mother told you that you had to live. That was the debt you owed her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you actually see her?”
“A shadow. Sort of a silhouette. But I knew it was her. Instantly. Almost before I heard her speak. I knew.”
“Colin, if that had been me, if that had been …”
He spoke her brother’s name for her. “Bacha.”
“I would be skinless. I mean …”
“I know what you mean.”
“I would have jumped right out of my skin and gone screaming into the night.”
“That is how I feel. Exactly.”
“Live,” Mira said. “Wow. I’m sure glad I don’t need to sleep anymore.”
“I’m sorry to have called.”
“No. You don’t get to apologize.” She breathed the word. Live. “What do you think it means?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
A long pause, then, “What’s the name of that wise woman who’s helped you through the hard times?”
“Celeste Talbot.”
“Maybe you should tell her about this.”
“That’s a great idea. I will.”
“Only not just yet. You don’t need all three of us to go into heebie-jeebie overdrive at three in the morning.”
“No. I’ll wait until tomorrow. Two doses of heebie-jeebies is enough for one night.”
“Is that a smile I hear?”
“Not even close.”
“Yeah, it is. You can’t fool me.”
“Good night, Mira. And thank you. So much. I’ve missed you.”
“Go smile yourself back into bed. And, Colin …”
“What?”
She whispered the word again. Drawing it out low and deep, her version of a Boris Karloff moment. Almost laughing as she did so.
“Live.”
The next morning, Colin hired an online research firm to identify his mother’s maiden name and locate her burial place. If he had gained anything from the dream, it was a sense of having left this visit far too long.
The firm’s response did not make for easy reading, as they included the formal burial announcement, which stated that Brenda Everett was survived by her loving parents and three sisters. No mention of either her husband or her son.
He might as well never have been born.
The following week, as Colin cycled back from the pool, a single solitary thread of an idea wove its way into the early morning air. He spent the rest of that day and much of the night following along, seeing just how far he could take it. And the answer was, quite far indeed.
Nine days later, Colin drove the hour north on Highway 17 to Jacksonville.
He was extremely reluctant to break from his work.
He worried that the visit might erase his growing sense of having finally found what he had been looking for.
The grand theory of everything, or at least the concept that might drive all of the various fragments together.
But this was the anniversary of his mother’s death.
He parked at the boundary of the Mill Avenue Historic District and bought a bouquet from a neighborhood florist. The Everett family cemetery fronted onto Ward Avenue.
The surrounding wrought iron fence had recently been painted, and an NC historic site placard explained that the family had settled its Jacksonville farm before the American Revolution.
The quarter-acre property and its several dozen gravestones were sheltered by the two largest live oaks Colin had ever seen.
His mother’s name was carved into a polished slab of granite the color of a winter sky. Just the name and dates. No benediction, no regret.
Colin stood surrounded by birdsong and a soft rush of wind through the overhead branches and the murmur of traffic.
He found himself wondering what toll this loss had taken on his father.
He suspected Roger Eames had carried the slow-burning internal fire since his own childhood.
The main difference now was, Roger Eames had a purpose that fit his character.
In any case, his father had loved this woman, and together they had granted him the gift of life.
Colin lay his bouquet upon the grave and stepped back.
After a time he walked back to where the car waited, leaving her surrounded by the family who had no interest in whether he lived, or who he was becoming. Colin was both sad and fractured. And glad he had come.
But as he started to drive away, an idea struck.
Colin cut off the motor and drew up Google maps on his phone.
The nearest ocean access to Rocky Mount was Atlantic Beach.
Colin knew instinctively this was not where his father would have taken them.
His clearest memory from those shared moments was how empty the shoreline was, how few people, how the only sounds were the waves and the gulls.
He walked back to the same florist and bought a second bouquet, then drove east. Colin took the Emerald Isle bridge, then turned south, past the Islander Hotel and the Emerald Isle Country Club, and parked in the lot fronting a sign that read simply, ‘The Point’.
He stripped off his shoes and socks and crossed the dunes, carrying the bouquet.
The beach was almost empty, the sand soft and sparkling in the late afternoon sunlight.
He stood there a long moment, surrounded by all that was no more.
After a time, he lay the bouquet in the sand, on a spot he thought his mother might have loved.