Chapter 16 Cora #2
I drove the last three quarters of a mile at twenty miles an hour because I was crying and the windshield was hard to see through.
I was crying.
Drew said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"I have the wheel."
"You don't have to."
"I have it."
He put his hand on the wheel.
I let him.
He steered.
I cried for the seventh time in three years. Three of the seven had been on this trip. Four of them in the last ten days. The crying was not what it used to be. The crying was the body doing the small daily release of the thing the body could no longer not put down.
The seven was the seven I would tell Crystal about later. The seven was the seven I would tell Drew about later. The seven was the seven that had stopped being a hiding-place and had become the count.
I cried.
Drew drove.
The gate was at half a mile.
The gate was at a quarter mile.
The gate was at a hundred yards.
The gate was at fifty.
Drew slowed.
We stopped at the gate.
I wiped my eyes.
I put the truck in park.
I looked at Drew.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"I love you."
"I love you."
I opened the door.
I got out.
Crystal was running.
Crystal ran the last fifty yards. She had not run in eight months.
The running was a thing the body remembered without having to be reminded.
The body of a mother running toward her daughter at a gate after eight months of waiting was a body that did not need to be told how to run. The running was the running.
Crystal hit me.
Crystal had aimed for me, not for Deedee.
Crystal hit me because I was the one out of the truck first and Crystal had been counting on the radio that I would be the one out first and Crystal had run for the count she could verify.
The body of a mother running toward a gate did the count it could do.
I was the first count. Deedee would be the second.
We held each other for a long time.
She smelled like the kitchen tent. Smoke and beans and the small lemon-sachet from the family-tent closet. The smell was eight months of her at the kitchen tent and the family tent and the radio table. The smell was Mojave. The smell was home.
She said into my shoulder, the way she had said it on the radio: "Cora."
I said: "Crystal."
She said: "You came back."
I said: "I came back."
She said: "Mara."
I said: "Mara's in the truck. She's home. The rosemary's right there."
She nodded into my shoulder.
She did not cry. The crying had been done on the radio. The body had spent the crying. The body was now the holding.
Behind me, Drew opened the passenger door. He helped Deedee down from the bench. Deedee handed him the Polaroid. She said: Hold it. Give it to Cora. I want to run. Drew took the Polaroid. Deedee ran.
Crystal heard the running. Crystal turned.
Deedee hit her.
Crystal caught her.
Crystal lifted her.
Crystal had not lifted her in eight months.
The lifting was a thing the body remembered.
Deedee was lighter than she had been at five because the fever had taken three pounds in three days and the recovery had given two back, but Crystal lifted her without registering the weight-difference, because the body of a mother lifting her daughter at a gate after eight months did not register weight.
The body registered the shape. The shape was the shape. The body lifted the shape.
Deedee put her arms around Crystal's neck.
Deedee said: "Mama."
Crystal said: "Baby."
Deedee said: "Mama, I'm home."
Crystal said: "You're home."
Deedee said: "Mama. Cora brought me home. Drew brought Cora. Drew is the best."
Crystal said: "I know, baby."
Deedee said: "Drew gave Cora the count. The count was correct. Drew told her."
Crystal looked at me over Deedee's shoulder.
Crystal looked at me with the look Crystal had not given me in a long while.
The look had been the look at the family tent when we had drunk the moonshine in year three and I had told her about Talia.
The look had been the look of Crystal seeing me without the cover I had been wearing all the years since.
The cover was gone now.
The cover had been gone for ten days, since the bridge.
Crystal had heard the rumor on the radio. Crystal had not been sure. Crystal looked at me now and knew.
She said: "Cora."
I said: "Yes."
She said: "Later."
I said: "Later."
She said: "Tonight. After dinner. The rosemary. Mara. You and me."
I said: "Yes."
She carried Deedee into the camp.
I watched.
Drew came up beside me. He had the Polaroid in his hand. He gave it to me. He did not say anything. He looked at Crystal carrying Deedee.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"That was the count."
"Yes."
"That is the count."
"Yes."
The rest of the camp was at the gate. Mark was at the wall now, his arm around Crystal as she came back with Deedee.
Cassi and Elena were at the second walking-path with Elena leaning on Cassi's arm and looking at me with the look that had been Elena's look for a year now.
The slow recovery, the present-but-not-fully-here look.
Loren was on the watchtower with Kiera. Brecca was at the medical tent door with Sebastian on her shoulder.
Tess was at the kitchen tent with Auriel on her hip. Kal was beside her.
Elena had reached the second walking-path. She had walked two hundred yards on her own legs in front of the whole camp. She stopped at the path. Cassi stopped with her. Elena looked at me. Elena said:
"Cora."
The camp went quiet.
I walked across the dirt to her. Drew came with me. We stopped six feet from Elena. I let her have her distance.
I said: "Elena."
She said: "You brought my best friend's daughter home."
I said: "Yes."
She said: "You are my daughter."
I went still.
I had not been Elena's daughter. I had been Cora King, the day-staff lead from Urbana, the woman who had married Cassi's mother's youngest sister's son thirteen years ago and had been widowed in year one and had been part of the Urbana-then-Mojave alliance for the eleven years since.
I had known Elena since year ten. I had known Elena in the tank farm and out of it.
I had not been called her daughter. The word daughter was for Cassi.
But Elena had spent two years not saying sentences and had spent the last six recovering them, and the sentences she had said today were my daughter brings them home and you brought my best friend's daughter home and you are my daughter, and the three sentences were the sentences Elena had been preparing for the whole eight months of waiting, and the sentences were now mine.
I said: "Elena."
She said: "Yes."
I said: "Mama."
She nodded.
Cassi was crying.
The whole camp was watching.
The whole camp was watching me walk into the gate with the photograph in my hand.
I walked.
Drew was beside me.
The team came in behind us. Renn drove the second truck through the gate.
Cruz drove the third. Veron rode in with Cruz.
Sylvia walked the last hundred yards on foot because she had wanted to be on foot when she crossed the gate; she had told me this last night and I had not asked why.
Nina and Jet and Saul and the eleven kids climbed down from the second truck once it was inside the gate and the camp folded around them.
The camp folded around all of us.
I walked into the camp with Drew at my elbow and the photograph in my hand and the convoy of twenty-three behind me and Mara in the truck-bed and the count holding.
I crossed the gate.
I was home.
The gate closed behind me.
I had not been able to be home for two hundred and seventy-three days.
I was home.