Chapter 34
They’re put up in a four-star Midtown hotel for a couple of nights, but James finds no rest. He and Nelle sleep back-to-back like in his truck bed, though their current circumstances are a far cry from last summer’s carefree travels up the East Coast. Not only the street noise keeps him up; when he closes his eyes, he is back in the waiting room, Nelle telling him she has to end her life, that the fire was her fault.
Through the window, the city sparkles. Tragedies happen out there every day, people’s lives irrevocably changed: a drowning, a paralyzing car wreck, an unnoticed gas leak. This time it was his tragedy. Tomorrow it will be another’s.
Nelle must think he is asleep because she slowly peels back the stiff hotel sheet. At the foot of the bed, her silhouette pulls on pants, a sweater, a pair of black loafers, before tiptoeing to the door.
“Hey,” he says.
She startles, her hand on the knob. She is leaving, of course, to do exactly what she promised.
James tugs on his sweater and jeans and meets her at the door.
Nelle’s nostrils flare. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not going alone.” He says the words because he loves her, but on the inside he is fuming. How can she follow through with this? He’s angry with the world, with the universe, with God for putting him in this position. For cursing her like this. Make it go away. Make her okay.
She sighs. “You can’t stop me.”
“I’m not, I—” He chokes up and shakes his head.
She was alive during their rift last fall, yet he barely survived, even knowing he could find her if he needed to.
How is he supposed to carry on if she is gone forever?
But he can’t argue with her choice. She is a walking bomb, and neither of them knows when she will explode again, or who will be in her blast radius when she does.
“What about Jessie and Lena?” She’s grasping for anything to keep him away, but nothing will.
“I’ll send a text.”
“School?”
“Hasn’t started yet.”
“You just came back from Lincoln—”
“My mom’s always happy when I visit two weekends in a row.”
“But . . .” She blinks rapidly and looks down. “I think it’ll be easier if I do it alone.”
He tilts her chin up. Eye to eye. “After everything, don’t I deserve a real goodbye?”
She sinks into him, and that’s all it takes. He is going with her to Lincoln.
James calls to ask his mom to pick them up from the airport in Atlanta.
Which means he has to explain, using the fewest descriptions possible, who Nelle is.
She’s from Lincoln, too. She lives in New York with us.
That is all his mom needs to know about the girl he’s bringing home, for the first and last time.
James spots his dad’s tan Tacoma in the pickup zone, and he guides them through lanes of buses, shuttles, and cars. All his earthly possessions having burned to ash only forty-eight hours before, he and Nelle have no luggage, and it feels odd to walk around the airport empty handed.
Shit, he’s nervous. The shaded windows are rolled up.
He’d only just seen his mom, and they’d parted on bad terms. The story he told everyone the night of the fire was only a half-truth.
Yes, he and his parents had a civilized conversation about his choices, and they had a lot of questions.
Then they went to dinner. His dad had to leave for an early-morning conference in Macon before the check was paid, so it was James and his mom alone on the ride home from the restaurant.
She went off as soon as the truck door shut.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she said, the swear word clumsy in her mouth. “Don’t you realize how much stress you’re putting on your dad and me?”
“How?”
“Well, you’ll have to take out student loans.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s for me to stress about.”
“But you don’t understand how much of a burden it’ll be. When you could go to school nearby, get a good degree, and graduate with no debt!”
“Don’t you have student debt?” he asked.
“Yes.” She blinks back tears, right on cue. “And it sucks.”
“But wasn’t that something you had to do? How can you tell me not to get student loans when you have them, too? We want different kinds of lives, and I respect that, but you don’t.” He’d been practicing those words, whetting them for a blow.
She was silent the rest of the way home. That drive was twenty minutes. This one will be two hours.
James gulps as he opens the back door for Nelle. He is clammy, shaking, a stone in his throat. He opens the passenger side, steps up into the truck, and buckles his seat belt. He checks the rearview mirror to make sure Nelle has hers on. Then he faces his mom.
“Hey, baby,” she says.
The ice around his heart melts. “Hi.”
They reach across the console and hug, and suddenly James is seven again.
Nostalgia settles sweet in the back of his throat.
He has fallen outside and scabbed his knee.
She sits him on the bathroom counter, opens the medicine cabinet high above his reach, and treats him.
Wipe with cold alcohol. Apply ointment. Tape on bandage.
Kiss it to make it better. His mom used to be his rock.
Now that rock is Nelle. But Nelle is leaving.
Once upon a time he was that timid little boy. Now he is James Finch, New York City writer. James Finch, the friend. James Finch, the roommate. James Finch, the lover.
“Mom, this is Nelle,” he says. “Nelle, this is my mom, Teresa.”
“Lovely to meet you Nelle,” says his mom. “Welcome to the family.”
The house smells like chili when they enter.
His mom says it’s winter food, but the fifty-degree cold feels like July to James after his first northern winter.
First, he finds his dad, tugging Nelle along behind him.
Despite their reason for coming back to Lincoln, he’s smiling, and when he looks back he sees Nelle grinning, too.
His dad is stirring a pot in the kitchen.
James circles the butcher-block island and hugs him.
He is caught off guard, chili spoon in one of his hands.
Peter Finch is a tall, muscular man with blue eyes and dark hair.
People remark on all the traits he gave James, but James spent his teenage years counting everything he didn’t get.
Tree-trunk muscles, election-winning charisma, and a talent for stringed instruments.
“Uh-uh, watch out,” he says over James’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get chili down your back.”
James laughs as he pulls away. He gestures behind him, to the girl of his dreams. His heart aches every time he dares to look at her. It twists him up like a rag to think about what she has to do.
“Dad, this is Nelle. Nelle, this is my dad, Peter.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Finch.”
“Please, just Peter.”
They exchange the usual chatter, and James’s attention turns upstairs.
Desperate for the quiet comfort of his books, he excuses himself.
His parents have discussed converting his bedroom into a home gym, but for now, his little library is still perfectly preserved.
Old childhood chapter books. Waterlogged teenage obsessions.
Hardcover editions of paperbacks he already owns.
A museum of his life, told through his shelves.
Floorboards shift behind him.
He expects to see Nelle, but it’s his dad.
When was the last time his dad stepped foot in his bedroom? He ducks to avoid hitting his head on the sloped ceiling, then circles the haphazardly installed ceiling fan.
“So, that’s uh . . . Nelle,” says his dad, sticking his hands in the pockets of his khakis.
“That’s Nelle,” James says. “What do you think of her?”
“She’s funny. Jessie told us a little. All good things.” He stares the floor, the bookshelves, anywhere but his son. “She’s pretty, too.”
“Yeah,” James says. “About everything I said the last time I was here—”
“It’s all in the past.”
“No, Dad, listen to me.” He takes in a breath to steady himself.
Just be honest. “I love you, and I respect your lifestyle, but I want to be a little riskier and live in an expensive city and have a flaky job. I know you don’t understand that, and I know it sounds idiotic to you.
Maybe it is, but when you were my age, you followed your dreams, and you never regretted it. Shouldn’t I get to follow mine, too?”
His dad blinks and opens his mouth. “I . . . uh . . . I agree, yeah. I just wanted to tell you that I hope you’re being safe up there. You know, it can be a dangerous place if you’re not careful, so . . . watch out for your cousin and Nelle.”
James nods.
“And . . . uh . . . just make sure you’re being safe in . . . every way . . . you know . . .”
Despite being twenty-one, James’s cheeks go hot when the subject of sex comes up with his parents. “Yes, I am. Always. Thanks.”
His dad clears his throat. “Just making sure that you’re doing . . . uh . . . everything you need to do in that department.”
“I am. Promise.”
“All right.”
James rocks on his heels. “Where’s Midi?”
“Guess.”
“A friend’s house.”
His dad sighs. “Mandy.”
“Good to know Mandy Tucker is more important than the brother she only sees twice a year,” James jokes, and though sadness lingers behind the statement, he doesn’t hold it against her. He is certain there have been milestones in her life that he has missed over the past six months.
But melancholy befalls his dad, weighing his shoulders down. “She does love you, James.”
“I know, Dad. I know.”
“We all do,” his dad says. This time, he doesn’t break eye contact. “You know that, right?”
“I know. I love you, too.”
Nelle sits at the kitchen island, feet dangling, a mug of tea warm in her hands.
A maw of sadness threatens to swallow her up.
This is the life she should have: visiting Lincoln twice a year with James, getting to know his parents, sitting around on holidays and drinking tea.
Nervously, she finds herself fingering the tea bag’s little paper tab.
The phrase printed on it distracts her: Look how far you’ve come.