Chapter 40
Sloane
I wriggle from Andy’s grip when I hear Grant’s voice the moment he’s distracted, my heel catching on a small rock as I try to stand and I fall forward again on to my knees.
Feels like I’ve been down here my whole life, begging for someone to say those words to me.
I look up from the asphalt laden puddle.
I love you.
I feel the shape of the phrase in the way my heart is slamming into my chest, in the small pebbles of gravel lodged into my palms forming ravines of blood in the lines.
I love you.
Has there ever been a more painful phrase?
Its impermanence, how many conditions it comes with?
An idea we’ve turned holy, a wish that never comes true?
It’s Santa or the Easter bunny. It’s the window I’d look out of, waiting to see my mom’s beat up old Volvo, the tread on the tires screeching around every bend as she made her way back to us.
It’s the hope that someone would stay, just because you asked them to, just because you wanted them there.
That someone could see you and want you and make you something they care enough about not to leave.
I feel slender arms on my shoulders, a second pair pulling me into a warm but slippery body.
“Sloane,” they whisper and I wonder if this is all the love I’ll ever deserve.
Love from people who care but only in the periphery of their own lives, whose hearts are so full of someone else they can only give you the sharp edges of what's left until all you are is a series of those edges.
You try to make them whole, pushing them together to make them mean more than they do.
Where did these people leave me though, these relationships I’ve poured so much of myself into? With bloody palms, knees raw from where I knelt, waiting to matter.
I pull out of Gen and Olivia's embrace, using my bloody hands to push the hair out of my face. “Stop. Just stop.” I wonder if anyone can hear me over the downpour. I can see their mouths moving. See Grant holding Andy by the collar, pushing him back. Away from me.
“He’s been working with Ian the whole time.” “He’s been lying to you.” “Look at the blast! He was hired to watch us.” “He’s a liar!”
A steady pulse of conflict thrums between me and all of them and I feel it now—the distance, the one that seems to follow me. And for the longest time I thought other people created it but maybe it’s just another way I’ve protected all of them.
I step backward, feeling rain or tears or both fanning my cheeks. Grant said this would happen. He said I’d come here and mess things up. He’s always right.
“Sloane, please! Please!” Andy’s shout breaks the night air, heated and desperate. That false promise lives somewhere inside it, but he was never mine—I know that now.
Grant shoves him back. Ben grabs his arms, keeping him from me and even though I want to look away, I can’t. The agony in his eyes tells a different story than the mouths around me, than this throbbing ache between us. Will it hurt more if I step forward or back?
“Hey. Hey—” Pale hands are on my face, shifting my focus. “We need to go, Sloane.” Jean takes his jacket off wrapping me in its dry interior. “We have to go.” His body is a shield between me, my brother, the world of Astor… and Andy.
Andy.
I see the door to the art show open, Elliot standing there, his victory carved into the sharp lines of his smile, celebrating the knowledge that I am exactly who he said I was.
Exactly who they’ve all said I was. I look back at Andy one last time, let my eyes linger on the expression I’ve worn so many times.
The one you wear when you realize someone’s leaving. When they’ve left.
Fingers in my hair stir me from my sleep and I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn as gray light peaks between the blinds of the unfamiliar space.
It takes a second to remember that Jean put me up in a hotel.
We didn’t talk much, but he agreed to not tell anyone where I was as I turned the location off on my phone.
It’s a formula I’ve followed a few times now—to disappear.
Somehow she always finds me.
Evie’s fingers untangle my blonde strands the way I’d sometimes let her do late at night, when she thought I was sleeping. When I needed her as much as she needed me, but I’d never tell her that.
I roll over, see her lined face, dark circles framing her eyes, a crease between her brows, a woman who's been worried for years. “I think...I really need you.” I don’t know if I meant to say it out loud, but there it is out in the open.
I roll my lips together, pursing them to the side, as if the movement will hold back the tears that are already falling.
“Oh honey.” She pulls me into her and even though her embrace was never a place I wanted to be, the comfortable familiarity of her arms is the kind that can only be achieved when someone's wrapped you in them a thousand times over.
Where Connie's arms always felt like they were slipping away, Evie's were a constant looming thing, silently begging me to fall into them.
I let myself inhale her powdery lemon scent, the poison edge of the Aqua-net missing, her hair in a low unwashed bun.
“I want to tell you…about California.” I don’t know why this feels like the insurmountable thing I need to cross before I can divulge anything else, why this feels like a betrayal.
My breath stutters as I bury my head into the comforter, her palm rubbing small circles across my back.
“Just please, don’t leave. You can hate me, just please.
Don’t leave.” My body folds in on itself, sobs breaking me open until I can’t tell where this grief ends.
I'm unraveling. I’m small again. I’m being ripped from front porches by unfamiliar hands, the wood still warm beneath my feet, the air ripping out of my lungs as I twist my head back over my shoulder, searching.
Always searching. Years of my mother’s face circle my memory in flashes.
Eyes, mouth, the way she’d hold herself still so I wouldn’t be afraid, because I never knew if this would be it.
The last time I’d see her. Because leaving has always come without warning, love always something that disappears while I’m still reaching for it.
And then there's Evie. Fingers in my hair, like if she can untangle the strands she can untangle my knotted heart and find herself at the center of it.
“Sloane.” Her voice is a careful caress trained by all the times I’ve pushed her away, kept her at arms length. “Sloane, honey. Look at me.”
My swollen eyes find her face and I see a version of myself reflected back, the pieces I’ve broken off and tried to abandon so many times before.
Tears form at the corners of her own eyes, her delicate jaw still, like if she moves too quickly I’ll run away and I wonder how many times I have left.
How many times she’s memorized my face and wondered if it was the last time she’d see it.
“I had…I had—” My voice tumbles over itself, my chest a wicked trembling thing as I try to find the words. Her hands brush back my tears, our faces so close as we lay on the queen sized hotel bed.
“I know. I know you did.” She nods, her tears breaking the surface as she tries to sniff them away.
“How—”
“Clem called.” She gives me a sad smile, and guilt folds up my stomach until it reaches my throat and I feel like I can’t breathe.
She sucks in a small breath until her face morphs, the mask she's worn all the years I’ve known her slipping away until she’s small too.
A girl who just wanted to be loved. “I’m so sorry baby.
I—” Evie inhales sharply, trying to stifle what is already out.
“I wish that things were different, I wish I wasn’t so—” she sniffs, wiping her tears away quickly, as if she’s to blame for their presence.
“I just wish I was someone you could’ve told. I wish I could have been there.”
My face crumples as I realize she’s not disappointed in me but herself. “I thought you’d hate me. I was giving up something you wanted so badly, something you prayed for.”
“Hate you? Sloane, you are mine.” There’s a fierceness in her voice followed by another sob and I don’t know if it’s hers or mine.
“I could never hate you. All those years of praying, hoping I’d have a little girl one day.
” She shakes her head, her eyes desperate for me to understand.
“You are the answer to every one of those prayers. You and your brother. You are all I ever wanted. All I want.” She takes my fingers, rubs warmth back into them with her hands like she’s been waiting to do this forever.
“You are my perfect, wild thing, Sloane. There is not one hair on your head I would change.”
Her mouth tightens, words gathering behind it.
“I just wish…” she swallows. “I wish you’d let me in.
I wish you didn’t have to brace yourself every time I reach for you.
Wish you knew that nothing about you, not your fire, not your grief, not the way you feel everything fully, has ever been too much for me.
I wish I would’ve pushed harder, broken the part that kept you silent when you so badly needed to be held.
You were just a little girl, Sloane. You were my little girl and I gave you too much space, let you think that you were anything but the miracle that I prayed myself hoarse for. ”
She presses her forehead to mine, a steady stream of our trembling breath and tears between us as she sniffs back a smile.
“Honey, I would go to the ends of this earth searchin’ for you, would rip it apart with my bare hands if I had to.
You’re mine, Sloane. You always have been. And I will always find you.”
“Connie left again.” The sentence is choked and broken when I let it out and I watch her bite the inside of her own cheek. She nods this sad grave nod, the permanence of it signaling she knows more than I do.
“That’s why I’m here.” Her eyes squint with tears, like if she looks at me hard enough I might see what's behind them. “She called me.” My eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “To be transparent, she’s called me quite a bit over the years. Just to see how you and your brother were. I’d always give her your number.
Update her on where you two were. She said you might need me…
I didn’t realize it meant she was leaving.
” She shakes her head, her sorrow so deep, so palpable that it feels like my own and I wonder if it is.
I wonder if this is how it feels to let someone carry some of your pain.
“Being a mom is hard, Sloane. Harder than anyone ever tells you.” She lets out a sad laugh and I sniff, realizing the pain I felt just hours ago has dulled, isn’t fresh and hot, ready to erupt.
“There is always something to feel guilty about,” she continues softly.
“Connie...she has her own battles, but she loves you enough to know you deserve more. Leaving has never meant she's stopped loving you. The world can be so cruel, especially to us moms and even more so to the moms who aren’t ready. All the pain that comes from having a child, all that guilt? It can eat at you and there’s rarely anyone there to make it stop.
Most of the time they just push us to the side, make us feel worse for not knowing exactly how to be what our children need.
” She swallows. “I know that even when Connie’s been stumbling through her own storms she's carried her love for you kids with her. Her love has always been yours Sloane, always, just as mine has.” She uses her thumbs to wipe the last of my tears away, my eyes falling shut as she brushes my hair with her hands, and we lay in a comfortable silence.
I think about what Andy said, that night at the pizza restaurant, think about how I was so scared that I'd been running too long, that I’d never be found. But laying here, Evie's gentle breathing lulling me to sleep, I realize I was found a long time ago.