22 Christian
I haven’t slept. I’m on what has to be my twelfth cup of coffee by the time she finally steps out onto the porch.
I knew she would, eventually. It’s the reason I’m out here.
But knowing doesn’t prepare me for actually seeing her again, and even now, even after everything, my heart stutters.
“Got any more of that?” she asks, nodding toward my cup.
“I didn’t think you drank coffee,” I say, watching her carefully.
She lets out a small laugh. “I didn’t three years ago. Now I do. Strong, black, and a lot of it.”
I nod once and push to my feet, heading inside. The brief distance helps and by the time I come back out, I’ve calmed my feelings. Or at least pushed them all down.
I sit beside her on the step and hand her the mug.
She takes a sip and lets out a soft, almost surprised sound. “Shit, that’s good.”
“Thanks.”
We sit there for a moment in silence. There’s so much to say but it’s hard to know where to start.
Without a word, she holds out Gram’s letter.
“I told you,” I say, not taking it. “I didn’t read it.”
“I know,” she says softly. “I want you to.”
I take the envelope, my thumb brushing over the familiar shape of Gram’s handwriting. I’ve seen it countless times over the past few years. Seeing it now that she’s gone hits hard.
I unfold the paper and start to read.
Francesca,
I forgive you for leaving. You scared the hell out of me, but I understand why you did it.
If you’re reading this, I hope that you’re finally home.
I’m sorry about how everything turned out. I know your mother would be too. She loved you. I hope you know that. She just made the mistake of loving the wrong man.
You are so deeply loved, by more people than you probably realize. I hope you stop running from that.
And more than anything, I hope you’ve found your way to something better than just surviving.
I love you, always.
Gram
Well, I have absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
So I don’t.
I fold the letter carefully, hand it back to her, and sit there with my coffee, staring out at nothing, saying nothing.
The silence stretches.
Eventually, she breaks it.
“I didn’t go far,” she says quietly.
I don't ask what that means. I don't think I trust myself to speak.
So she keeps talking, explaining that she'd been living a little over an hour away. In a city close enough that I've driven through it probably two dozen times since she left. A city close enough that I could have reached her before my coffee got cold.
But it had been far enough to disappear.
We spent months looking for her- checking for bank activity. Calling hospitals. Getting told from shelters that they wouldn’t release resident information. Getting told by the phone company they wouldn’t let me track the phone. We found nothing. No trace.
“I had like a hundred and twenty bucks,” she continues, staring down at her hands. “I bought a bus ticket and asked to be dropped near a shelter.”
She lets out a small, humorless laugh.
“I didn't even have an ID. I never got my driver's license, remember?”
My chest tightens painfully.
Because of course I remember.
I remember every conversation about it.
Every form Gram helped her fill out.
Every time I took her out to practice driving in my car and watching her get more and more confident over the months.
I remember all of it.
What I can't stop thinking about is the fact that she left with a hundred and twenty dollars.
No identification. No plan. No one.
And somehow that seemed safer to her than staying with us.
“Anyway,” she goes on, quieter now, “I got lucky. It was late, but the shelter took me in. Gave me a place to sleep.”
I don’t want to hear this.
I don’t want to hear how the woman I love- the person I was supposed to protect, to take care of- walked into a shelter in the middle of the night and calls it lucky that they didn’t turn her away.
“The next day the shelter director met with me,” she continues. “I told her too much, and she wanted to move me into a home for juveniles. But that would’ve put me in the system, and I didn’t want that.”
She takes a sip of her coffee, then exhales slowly.
“Luckily, I met a woman who helped me get a waitressing job. And then some of the girls at the club helped me find a room at a nearby motel.”
My eyes close for a second as anger surges up from my chest at what she’s saying. At what she’s been through. At myself. For letting her slip through my fingers.
“It wasn’t great,” she adds. “But it was okay. I mean, at first I thought I might have to start dancing, but the manager made it clear I wasn’t… stage material.”
My mouth goes sour. I swallow hard against the sudden rush of nausea.
A strip club. She was working at a fucking strip club.
She pulls out her phone- the pink one I gave her. The screen is cracked now, the whole thing scuffed up.
She lets out a small laugh. “I’m probably fired after not showing up last night. I’ll have to find something else,” she adds, almost lightly, as she unlocks it and scrolls through her messages.
“I am sorry,” she says quietly, not looking up from her phone. “I know you’re mad at me. And I get it. I left you to handle everything. And Gram…” Her voice catches, but she forces herself through it. “I’m just… I’m sorry.”
Her words trail off and I’m not sure what to say. Everything feels loaded, like one wrong sentence could blow the whole thing apart. I say nothing, mainly because I have too much I want to say.
“When I saw she’d died. That I couldn’t come home to her.
That I’d missed her funeral- ” Her voice catches on a sob, and something in me lurches hard toward her.
The urge to pull her in, fix it, take care of her is so immediate, so automatic it takes effort to just sit there and watch her rub her thumb over the cracked phone screen again and again.
“You need a new one,” I say.
She looks up, blinking. “Huh?”
I nod toward the phone. “You need a new phone.”
She huffs out a soft laugh. “I guess I owe you for that, huh? For the phone, and for paying for it. I kept expecting it to get shut off. I planned on getting my own plan, but it never… you never- ”
“Gram liked to call,” I say.
The words come out quieter than I expect. “She left you messages. For a while.”
“I know,” she says softly. “I got them. And yours. And Jamie’s. And Ryan’s.” She swallows. “I listened to them every night. Read all your texts- even the angry ones- so many times I had them memorized.”
My grip tightens around the coffee mug.
“I should’ve called you back. I just…”
She trails off.
“I’m sorry.”
Every voicemail.
Every text.
Every desperate attempt to reach her.
She heard all of it.
And she stayed gone anyway. And that hurts worse than if she’d just forgotten us.
I stand up abruptly.
“It’s over,” I say, not looking at her. “If you leave again, say goodbye first.”
Then I set my coffee down on the railing and take off- running like I haven’t in years.
Running from the images she just put in my head- the shelter, the motel room, the strip club.
Running from the anger and helplessness clawing at my chest.
Running from the overwhelming realization that despite everything, despite all the hurt and fury still burning inside me, all I really want is to hold her and beg her to never leave us again.