Chapter 30
We traveled together through the last of that summer, both relishing our newfound freedom and completely and profoundly lost. From the beach, we doubled back to retrieve the RV.
We sold the station wagon at a car lot and forked over the cash from the sale to get the RV fixed, Riley presiding over the mechanics like an anxious mother watching surgeons operate on her child.
The RV pulled through, and we resumed our road trip to nowhere in particular.
We pored over maps and scrolled through internet forums to find the places we wanted to see.
We were almost out of money, so we lived as true nomads.
No checking into hotels or impromptu shopping trips.
We bought only what we needed, and what we couldn’t afford was paid for by cobbling together odd jobs—painting houses, cleaning up yards, washing cars, babysitting, and other gigs.
It was hard but good, and we knew it wouldn’t last forever. But I don’t think any of us expected things to dissolve as quickly as they did, on that brisk morning at the tail end of August, at a gas station in the middle of Utah.
“It’s time,” said Shiloh. She was sitting on a picnic bench, watching the sun rise over the distant hills. No one asked what she meant. We all knew.
Death’s experiment—our role in it—was over. It was time to disband.
We decided to pool the last of our funds into gas and food, to drive all the girls back to their homes or someplace where they could crash for a while until they decided who and what they wanted to be next.
Riley was the first to come to a decision. We drove with her to Montana, where the sky seemed bigger than it did in any place I’d ever been before. We left her at a rural hunting cabin where her grandfather spent his summers.
“I could use the quiet,” she said as she dragged her bags from the belly of the RV. “It’ll be nice for a change.”
Riley hugged me for the first and final time, a tight embrace, her shoulder cutting so deeply into my throat she choked me a bit. “You’re the best of us,” she said, and then she was gone, stepping into her new life.
We sold the RV just after that, for the gas money we’d need for the rest of the journey. It was a tearful goodbye at a car lot in the middle of North Dakota.
Chloe was the next to leave. She decided to go to Chicago to live with her godmother, a sculptor with an artist’s loft in the heart of the city.
“You know,” she said to me, just before leaving, “you could stay here if you want. We never did get your wardrobe figured out.”
I laughed aloud, but part of me was tempted.
I liked the city; it felt like it was a place where I could remake myself.
But as much as I dreaded the return to Michigan—and I did dread it, with a growing pit in my stomach—I knew that I needed to go home.
Not forever. But for now. There were loose ends to be tied up, parents I missed, and a plastic playhouse in the middle of the forest that I needed to see just one more time.
We left Chloe in Chicago and drove up to Michigan the next day, all of us packed into Shiloh’s truck. I choked back tears at the sight of my own house. The windows all aglow from the light of the TV. The same sun-stained patio furniture cluttered together on the front porch.
“Here we are again,” said Iona. She would be leaving after me. She’d picked a town in upstate New York where she thought she could make a life. Naomi—still in the worst of her grief after losing Skye—had decided to go with her. “Are you ready, Roslyn?”
I shook my head, holding back tears. “No.”
In the rearview mirror, Shiloh’s eyes met mine for the briefest moment, then she cast her gaze sharply away, her hand tightening around the steering wheel.
I got out of the truck and said my goodbyes, feeling half out of my own body. I gave Naomi a fierce hug, and Iona clutched onto me so tight our cheeks smashed together. There were tears and apologies and promises that we wouldn’t be able to keep, and we knew it and made them anyway.
Things came into focus again when I turned to Shiloh. She wiped my tears on the sleeve of her jacket and dragged me into a hard hug.
“It’s pretty down in Texas this time of year,” she said, murmuring into my hair. “You’d like it there.”
“I know I would,” I whispered. “But I can’t go with you this time.”
Iona and Naomi looked very pointedly at their shoes, giving us some privacy.
Shiloh tipped her forehead to mine, our lips just apart, eyes closed.
I could’ve stayed in that moment forever, but Shiloh pulled away, faster than I expected her to, and I had the urge to catch her by the arm, drag her back.
But instead, I let her leave me. I watched as she climbed back into the truck, Naomi and Iona following her.
They pulled around the cul-de-sac slowly. I watched them trail down the street and disappear around a bend.
I stood in the driveway for some time, waiting to see if they’d come back.
They never did.