31. Anouk
Anouk
It’s a lazy Sunday morning.
Luther and I are planning a bike ride—playing tourist on the Golden Gate Bridge.
We’ve been sort of dating again for the past few weeks, ever since the dinner at his parents’ place. We haven’t had sex, though there’s been mild kissing.
It’s all very new and, somehow, still familiar.
I’m happy, which is obviously a sign to the universe to screw my life up.
The call comes while I’m drinking coffee, scrolling absently through the news. I answer because the number flashes Central California Women’s Facility, and there’s no use pretending I don’t know what that means.
I brace myself.
For months now, I’ve been waiting for the call that tells me she’s gone.
“Miss Anouk Starling,” a man asks gently.
“Yes.”
“This is Father José Perez. I’m the prison chaplain.”
“Hello, Father.”
Is she dead? And if she is—what does that mean to me?
“I wanted to let you know that Cristina doesn’t have much time,” he continues. “They don’t believe she’ll last the day.”
And what, exactly, does that have to do with me?
“I know you’ve said you don’t wish to see her,” he adds carefully. “And you don’t have to do it for her. But I hope you might consider doing it for yourself.”
He sounds kind. Thoughtful. Like a man who believes in redemption.
I have nothing to give him in return. No gratitude. No reassurance. No softening.
“She’s spoken to me about you,” he says. “She’s…repented.”
I close my eyes.
I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know it. She doesn’t get to make peace with what she broke. She doesn’t get absolution that costs her nothing.
“I only wanted you to know,” he says. “And I’m sorry if I’ve intruded.”
My throat tightens. I can’t speak. I just breathe in—then out.
There’s a pause on the line, respectful, waiting.
“Alright, Miss Starling,” he says at last. “Goodbye.”
The call disconnects.
I turn the phone off like it’s something I need to do in case it rings again.
I sit in the kitchen, coffee cooling in my hands.
She’s dying. And whether I want it or not, that fact now belongs to me.
I thought I was done with her. I told Luther I had all the closure I needed. Turns out closure isn’t something you decide once and lock away forever.
Finn finds me rooted to the chair a half an hour later. “Hey, Luther called, he said you haven’t been answering your…Annie?”
I look at him, dazed, and then at my phone.
“I turned it off,” I whisper.
He crouches by my chair. “Talk to me, Annie.”
“The chaplain called. She’s dying. Today.”
He nods.
“He said I sh-should go see her. F-for c-closure.”
He takes my hands in his.
“You want to go,” he says. Not a question.
“I think I do.”
“Okay,” he says immediately. “I’ll come.”
I nod.
“And Luther?” he asks.
I don’t have to think about that. “Luther, too.”
Finn studies me for a moment, then pulls out his phone. “I’ll handle it.”
It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Chowchilla, but Luther insists we take a helicopter.
I don’t argue. I don’t have the bandwidth for it.
Within an hour of Finn calling him, after I turned my phone off, we’re standing on the helipad near the Embarcadero.
The wind is whipping at my jacket, the chop of the blades is loud enough to drown out thought. Luther keeps one hand at my back while Finn stands on my other side, solid as a wall.
The helicopter is sleek, impersonal inside with headsets, leather seats, and the smell of fuel. Once we’re strapped in, the doors shut with a finality that makes my stomach dip.
As we lift, San Francisco falls away beneath us.
The city contracts into geometry—grids, bridges, water flashing silver in the sun.
Life is going on below.
People are biking across the Golden Gate like we were supposed to do today—not going to see a dying or dead woman in a prison hospital.
I press my forehead lightly against the window.
Luther threads his fingers through mine. Finn sits across from us, watching my face instead of the view.
The farther south we go, the more the landscape flattens. Green gives way to dry gold. Orchards appear in neat rows, then disappear.
Time stretches, thins.
When we land near the facility, the heat hits, thick and dusty. So different from the sharp, clean lines of San Francisco.
After we disembark, the helicopter lifts away, leaving a ringing silence behind. A car drives us to the prison. It rises out of the land as something poured rather than built.
Concrete. Wire. Angles meant to discourage hope.
I’ve never been here. Not once. Not for the years and years she’s been inside.
We present our IDs and names, which are checked against lists. I don’t know who got us access—probably Luther or Finn. I am grateful because I wouldn’t have been able to.
We surrender our phones, watches, bags, and belts.
Our shoes are scanned.
A correctional officer explains the rules in a flat voice that suggests repetition has long ago stripped the words of meaning.
No photos. No recording devices.
We nod, obedient.
They give us visitor badges with our names printed in block letters.
Seeing it there—ANOUK STARLING—feels surreal. Like I’m checking into a place I was never supposed to come to.
We’re escorted down a long corridor, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
Every door locks behind us with a heavy, mechanical click. Each one feels like a sentence ending.
Here, everything appears to slow down. It’s like death.
We’re escorted through the medical wing. The air smells of antiseptic and metallic.
Fluorescent lights hum overhead, harsher here, less forgiving.
Gurneys line one wall, curtains half-drawn, machines murmuring quietly behind them.
My mother is in a room all by herself. I still. Finn and Luther flank me—my protectors.
She is smaller than I remember; shrunken into the bed.
Her hair is thin and gray, her skin waxy, her eyes half-open, unfocused.
This woman once terrified me. Now she barely exists.
I step away from them and walk to the bed.
“Hi, Cristina.” I haven’t called her Mama since she killed my father, since I screamed Mama hoarsely a hundred times, begging her not to hurt us.
Her eyes flicker. Her mouth moves, but no words come out, just a sound escapes—broken, unfinished.
A man comes inside the room. He’s wearing a collar.
“Father Perez.” I hold out my hand.
He is a kind-looking man with warm eyes. He probably has a big heart, has to, so he can give comfort to the worst of society, those who hurt others, who forsook their humanity.
“Anouk.” He clasps my hands in both of his. “I’m so glad you came.”
I swallow. “I didn’t come for her. I came…”—For what, I wonder, and then because I know, I say, “For me.”
His compassion is open and honest. He nods. “Good.”
He leads me to a chair by the bed. “Would you like to sit a while?”
I turn to look at Luther and Finn, who are at the doorway where I left them. “What should I do?” I ask them, my voice is that of a child.
They both rush to me. Luther reaches me first and wraps me in his arms.
“You do whatever you want to,” Finn says.
So, I sit a while on the plastic chair by the hospital bed where my mother is dying.
She’s barely conscious. There are no apologies, explanations, or final confessions like in the movies. There is just the soft rasp of breath, the faint rise and fall of her chest.
“I’m not angry,” I whisper after what feels like forever. My throat is dry, and the words have to be pushed out of me—it’s laborious, but I don’t stumble on them.
“I’m also not sad.” I don’t know who I’m talking to—her, myself, Luther, Finn, or the universe.
Her eyes move under closed lids. A tear slips from the corner of her eye.
I watch it dispassionately.
Maybe it means something. Perhaps it doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
We stay until the machines stop beeping and the doctor comes in to record the time of death.
It feels like when a movie ends, and the sign comes The End—though these days almost every film seems to have a sequel. But not this one. And that’s a good thing.
The chaplain wants to talk to me about the funeral.
I shake my head. I can’t do this. I don’t want to.
I hear Luther speak to him in low murmurs while Finn keeps his arm around me, so I can lean my head on his shoulder as we stand in the room where my mother lies dead, the woman who killed my childhood.
When we leave, the world feels brighter. I know it’s not because anything has been resolved—I think it’s because I don’t have to wait for her to die any longer.
“I’ve got an early shift.” Finn rubs the back of his neck once we’re back in San Francisco, night pressing in. “And if I don’t sleep, I turn into a real asshole. Nobody wants that.”
“That’s not true,” I tell him automatically.
He snorts. “It absolutely is.”
He pulls me into a hug. It’s anchoring. Reminds me I’m still here, that he’s always been there for me, no matter what. But today, he wants me to lean on Luther, not because he doesn’t want to take care of me, I know that. It’s because he knows that I need Luther more right now.
“You okay?” he asks into my hair.
I shake my head against his chest. “No.”
He leans back, studies my face the way he’s done since we were kids, searching for cracks. Whatever he sees must satisfy him, because his mouth tilts into a small, proud smile. “But you will be.” It’s not a question.
“You’ll take her to your place,” he tells Luther.
“I will.”
Finn kisses my forehead before he heads for his truck. He doesn’t look back. It almost feels like a handover. It’s cute. It’s Finn.
Luther’s apartment in the Four Seasons is just what I need. Its clinical, hotel-like feel is both distant and comforting.
I sit on the couch, and my body gives out all at once. I curl in on myself, sinking down until my cheek rests on my folded hands.
“Tea?” Luther asks.
I nod.
“Chamomile?”
I nod again.
When he comes back, mug in hand, I’m crying. Not ugly sobs. I’m just…leaking. It’s how you cry when you’re exhausted, when something that has been holding you in a tight, nasty grip lets you loose.
He sets the mug down and sits beside me. He doesn’t say anything, just pulls me into him, fits me to him on his lap. I fold into him.
He understands this isn’t about him fixing anything. Just like Finn, he knows what I need.
His hand moves up and down my back, steady, patient, letting me fall apart without trying to stop it.
“I said goodbye, didn’t I?” I whisper at some point.
“You did.”
“I…don’t know who I said goodbye to,” I admit.
His chin rests against my hair. “It’s okay not to know.”
“Maybe it’s to the mother I never had,” I muse.
“Maybe.” He kisses the side of my temple. “Maybe…you said goodbye to the idea of how it could’ve been different if she’d been different.”
That! That’s when I know he gets it. Gets me.
“I don’t feel relief. Just…finality.”
“That’s allowed,” he assures me.
I cry harder then.
For the childhood I survived. For the woman she never was. For the fact that even now, part of me still wishes it could have ended another way.
Luther doesn’t let go.
When the tears finally slow, he carries me into the bedroom. He helps me undress and gets into bed with me.
He wraps himself around me in bed and holds me. We lie skin to skin. I fall asleep with his arm around my waist, his heart beating steadily under my cheek.
At some point, I hear him on the phone.
“No, Mom, I don’t think she can eat soup when she’s sleeping.”
I smile at that and fall into darkness.
I sleep through the night—the times I wake up, he’s with me, and that reassurance helps me go back under.
The rays of the sun are peering through the curtains in his bedroom when his lips brush against my cheek. “I love you.”
“Luther?” I kiss his chest.
He stills. “Yes, my starling.”
“I forgive you,” I murmur.
He exhales slowly, like he’s been holding his breath for weeks.
“Thank you.” His voice is thick. “I won’t waste it.”
“I know.”
In the quiet, I let myself grieve—not just for my mother, but for the version of me who never got the chance to be unbroken. But I don’t do it alone.