Chapter 18
Tucker
The day I learned about Ava’s escape started out the same as every other.
I got up, and like every morning for one hundred and eight days, I typed Ava Roberts into a Google search.
I was used to the links that always came up. The doctor. The actress. The microbiologist.
But, on this Saturday, something spectacular happened.
A police alert. Ava Roberts, a special-needs adult, aged eighteen, was reported missing by her mother.
I jumped out of my chair. She had gotten away.
How?
I circled my room, punching at the air. This was great.
But where was she?
Gram came to my door. “What’s got you in such a fuss?”
“Ava ran away. They were living out in the country near Wimberley.”
Gram peered at the screen. “Do they know where she’s gone?”
“No. But I have to find her.”
“Do you think she lost her memory?”
“She must have. She would have left on her birthday months ago if she remembered me. We always talked about what to do. They weren’t so far away that she couldn’t have gotten to me.”
She nods. “You have any clues where she might be now?”
“I’m going to see Grandma Flowers. Maybe Ava will find her way back to the duplex.”
“Okay, baby. When should I run you over there?”
I hadn’t been able to drive since things went downhill after graduation. “I’ll take the bus.”
“You have your emblem on?”
I pulled the engraved medical alert medallion out from under my shirt.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Gram’s mouth drooped with worry.
I hugged her. “Everything is about to turn around. I know it.” When I pulled away, I could see she was not convinced. But as always, she let me go. There would be no stopping me.
When I got to the old duplex, the porch was still covered with pots. A family with little kids lived in Ava’s old side, their toys strewn all over their half of the front lawn.
I knocked on Grandma Flowers’s door.
When she saw me, her face lit up with a smile. “Oh gracious, boy, I didn’t expect to see you again.” She touched her hair, covered in a tight pink cap. “I wasn’t planning on visitors.” She fussed with her floral house coat.
“You look great. I wanted you to know that Ava ran away. Her mom has the police looking for her. I thought she might come back here. She leaves notes for herself. She might have written this address somewhere.”
Grandma Flowers nodded. “That’s good. I hope she returns to me. Come and sit a spell. Do you think she might come today?”
“It just happened. I don’t know what notes she’s found, if any.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” We sat on her front porch, and she poured me a glass of orange juice. “Can I fix you some toast?”
“No, thank you. Can you tell me anything else about Ava?” I asked. “Or about her mother? I want to know everything, so I can guess where she might go.”
She patted my hand. “I should have made you stay that morning they left, even though you were in distress. There were things I should have said. Let me go get something.”
I sipped the juice while she disappeared through the squeaky screen door.
It was early in the morning, and the dew clung to the sparse grass beyond the balcony.
I remembered the yellow daffodils I’d brought Ava and glanced around the collection of pots.
I hadn’t been able to collect them on prom night like I thought I would. They might be in the back.
But no, they had been moved to the front, now only a bit of leaf, since the plant would shrink down to a bulb in its off season. I liked that something of ours was still here. It was proof that we’d existed, that Ava wasn’t some long-ago dream.
Grandma Flowers returned with a stack of paperback books, worn and yellowed from age.
“What are these?” I asked. The top book was The Color Purple by Alice Walker. The next was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I’d read that in a literature class. I spotted a Toni Morrison, then a mystery with a woman running on the cover.
Grandma Flowers picked that one up. “She liked all kinds.”
“Were these Ava’s?”
“No, but she read them. Before her mother decided I was a bad influence.”
I held The Invisible Man. I liked that she and I had this in common, even though she might not remember any of it.
“I’m not just showing off my collection,” Grandma Flowers said. “Open one up and pay attention to the highlighted words.”
I flipped to the first page and kept turning until I saw the first streak of yellow. It was the word available, but only the first three letters were highlighted.
Ava.
“Mmm hmm,” Grandma Flowers said. “She always started by finding her name in the text, so she would know the message was for her.”
My heart pounded. I didn’t have to go very far before I found more highlighted words, single random selections.
Your
Mother
Wants
You
To
Stay
Stupid
Find
Your
Notes
So
You
Can
Be
Yourself
Find
The
Paper
Flowers
Trust
Only
Your
Own
Hand
Writing
I looked up. “You knew?”
“Not right away. I rarely open these books. But after one of her bad seizures, I pulled them out. Thought she’d like to read them again, since she loved them the first time.”
“And you found this.”
“I was shocked. I confronted her mother.” Grandma Flowers rested her hands on the table, her brown fingers tightly locked together like a fervent prayer. “I shouldn’t have. She cut me off, forbade Ava from seeing me.”
“But you were right next door.”
“She had a good grip on that girl. The next time I saw her, she didn’t even know who I was.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Over a year ago. Before you met her.”
I picked up another book. The messages were similar. Warnings to herself. Locations of her notes.
“Do you know if Ava took meds for her seizures?”
“Not that I ever saw. But that doesn’t mean anything. I only saw the child when she was outside.”
“When we met in the hospital, Ava told me she thought her mother wanted to keep her from knowing about her old self. It was her way of making sure she didn’t have bad influences.”
Grandma Flowers shook her head. “Seems like the worst influence is her own kin.”
I could agree with that. “Even if I find her, she may not remember anything from when we knew her. She could be so lost.”
“I imagine if anybody can help her, you can. What are you going to do next?”
“I’m going back to the hospital where we met. If she ends up in an emergency room and still knows her name, they’ll get her records from there. I went there when she first left, so I know the staff won’t tell me anything about her, but I can make sure they know I’m looking for her.”
“Good thinking. You keep on doing that and you’ll find her.”
I left my number with Grandma Flowers and set about searching all over again. Now that Ava was eighteen, maybe I could make more headway.