Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Nash went very still. Someone he checked on? Could that be Christian?
“Anything else?” Nash asked. “Doesn’t matter how small it seems to you.”
Earl scratched the side of his neck. “He filled extra cans.”
“Cans?” he repeated.
“Two five-gallon gasoline cans, in addition to filling his tank. Every trip, far back as I can remember.” He set the pencil down. “I figured a generator. Ain’t no power up that way. Never has been.”
Nash looked through the window at the road and tried to keep his thoughts from hyper focusing on the wrong theory.
“One more thing.” Earl said the words slower now. “The last few months he started buying two sandwiches out of that cooler. Same two, every time. Ham and a turkey.”
“Two?” Luke said.
“Two.” Earl nodded. Then his face changed, and he pointed at the counter as if the memory had magically appeared. “Once, there was somebody with him.”
Nash’s chest went tight. “When?”
“Middle of the summer. July, I want to say, because I had the door propped. He come in for the cans same as always, and there was a fella waiting in the truck. Passenger side.”
“Did you see him?”
“Can’t say I did.” Earl shook his head slowly. “I was behind this counter, and the sun was coming straight in that window.”
“Old?” Luke asked. “Young?”
Earl shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. But someone was in there. I know that for sure.”
Wren was still turning over everything the doctor had said when the doors slid open and her mother practically sprinted into the room.
Black sweats. Black T-shirt. Her hair still damp at the temples, like she’d come straight from wherever she’d been standing when the phone rang.
She stopped in front of all of them, her eyes wide and frantic. “You’re all here? What’s going on? What happened?”
They all rose and went to her.
Nora placed her hand on her mom’s shoulder. “Everything is okay. It’s . . . Christian. He’s back.”
Her mom’s eyes widened even more. “Christian? What? I mean—I . . .”
“It’s true,” Wren murmured.
Mom’s eyes began to dart around, an almost wild look to her gaze. “Where? Where is he? I need to see him.”
“Mama—” Marlowe started.
She froze, her breathing uneven and frantic. “Where is he? Where’s Christian?”
“He’s in the back,” Nora said. “The doctor has him in a room. They won’t let us go back yet.”
Her mother’s face came apart. “They what—”
“They need twenty minutes,” Nora quickly explained. “He’s resting.”
“I want to see my son.” Their mother’s voice shook, and her eyes widened until it looked like her pupils might burst from them. “I want to see him. I want to see him right now!”
“I know you do,” Wren murmured.
“I have waited ten years to hear this.” Her mother’s voice climbed high and thin. “Ten years, and you’re telling me to stay in a waiting room when my son is close enough for me to touch?”
“Mama, sit down with me,” Wren murmured.
“Don’t Mama me! I want to see my son!”
“Sit down, and I’ll go up to that desk myself and ask.” Nora used her gentle voice. “Come on.”
Nora and Wren led their mom to a seat, and she sat. While Wren sat beside her, Marlowe slipped away to the vending machine and Nora headed to the nurses’ station.
Her mother had worn black every day for ten years. Not mourning, exactly. Wren had decided a long time ago it was simpler than that—black didn’t require a decision.
She was still slim. Still had the dark hair and the blue eyes she’d handed down to all three of her daughters. People used to turn their heads when she walked into a room. They’d stopped somewhere in the last decade after their mom had stopped taking care of herself.
Every six weeks, Wren got her into the chair at Shear Bliss. On the house, though her mother still tried to leave a twenty under the register every time. Wren always gave it back.
Marlowe came back with a can of Sprite and handed it to her mom.
Instead of opening it, Mom started to cry.
Wren’s heart twisted so hard that an ache formed in her chest.
After a few minutes, her mom sniffled and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Marlowe said as she took the empty seat on the other side of their mother.
“I got all the way to the car with no shoes on. I had to go back in for them.” She laughed, but the sound came apart in the middle. “Forty minutes I drove, and I couldn’t tell you one thing about where I was going or what I passed.”
“Tell me where he’s been,” her mother said through the sniffles.
They all exchanged a look, each understanding the weight of the question.
“He can’t remember,” Wren said. “He’s got pieces. A room. Somebody’s voice. He knew us, and he knew the house, and past that it’s mostly gone.”
“Gone how? Gone like he won’t say, or gone like—”
“Gone like he doesn’t have it,” Nora said. “The doctor scanned his head tonight, and there’s nothing on the results to explain the gaps.”
Her mother turned the Sprite can around in her hands without opening it. “But he’s all right. You’d tell me? He’s all right.”
“He’s tired and confused.” Nora kept her explanation simple. “He’s got stitches in his hand from tonight.”
“Stitches?” Her eyes widened.
“It’s a long story,” Nora continued. “I’ll tell you all the details later. But the important thing right now is that he’s in better shape than any of us expected.”
Despite the good news, more tears began to pour from their mom’s eyes until she was sobbing.