Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
MARA
The dinner that breaks me is a Tuesday.
My mother's dining room. Good china because Auntie Bisi is visiting from London.
Jollof rice, fried plantains, pepper soup, egusi.
My sisters are there. Nkechi, pregnant with number three, glowing, her husband David rubbing her back while she eats.
Adaeze, the eldest, surgeon like our mother, already discussing which prep school her twins should attend.
And me. Sitting at the far end of the table in a sundress I bought at a thrift shop, beeswax under my fingernails that no amount of scrubbing removes, drinking palm wine while my aunt asks about Tunde.
"Such a good boy, that Oladipo family. Excellent stock. You know his younger brother just made consultant at Mount Sinai?" Auntie Bisi clicks her tongue. "Imara, when are you going to stop playing with wax and find another one like him?"
My mother doesn't correct her. Doesn't say Imara runs her own business or Imara's candles are in five boutiques now or even Imara is doing fine. She just passes the plantains.
Nkechi catches my eye across the table. Mouths sorry. But sorry doesn't undo thirty two years of being the daughter who can't get it right. Sorry doesn't fill the silence where my mother's pride should be.
After dinner, clearing plates in the kitchen, my mother corners me by the sink.
"Tunde's sister's wedding is in three weeks. She called me again today. She wants you there."
"Mama, I'm not going to my ex fiancé's sister's wedding."
"She considers you family."
"She considers me a cautionary tale."
The look she gives me could curdle the soup still sitting on the stove. "Imara. When your father was alive, he had plans for you girls. Good plans. University, good careers, good husbands. You had all of that in your hands."
"I didn't want it."
"Want." She says the word like it tastes foreign. "Your generation and your wanting. Your father wanted to see his daughters settled. He died before he could. The least you can do is honor that."
Using my dead father to win an argument about my dead engagement. A new low, even for her. The plantains in my stomach turn to concrete. My eyes sting. My hands shake against the wet plate I'm holding.
"Daddy would have been proud of me."
"Your father would have wanted you taken care of."
"I take care of myself."
She dries her hands on the towel. Folds it into a perfect square. Sets it on the counter. "Do you, Imara? In that garage?"
The drive home takes twelve minutes. My apartment above the garage is dark. The studio below is exactly as I left it, cooling racks, pouring station, shelves of oils. Everything orderly. Everything mine. Everything so small.
My phone is in my hand before I sit down.
I need to tell you something.
Three minutes. He's awake. He's always awake when I need him.
Tell me.
I've been looking up Crimson Hollow. For weeks. I know it has a population of about 2500. I know there's a café called Bean and Bloom. I know the Kootenay Rockies look insane in photos. I know you live twenty minutes outside of town on a logging road.
Mara.
I'm not asking for an invitation. I'm telling you the truth.
Because that's what we do at midnight. We tell the truth.
And the truth is I have been falling for a man I've never seen for two months, and tonight my mother used my dead father to guilt me about my dead engagement, and I'm sitting on my garage floor for the hundredth time, and the only person I want to talk to is you.
And I can't do that through a screen anymore.
Long silence. The longest he's ever taken. My heart is slamming so hard my ribs hurt.
You haven't asked for a photo.
You haven't offered one.
I know.
Why not?
The three dots appear and disappear four times.
Because I was afraid that if I saw you, I'd want you here. And I haven't wanted anything in five years.
Every molecule in my body stills. The garage. The candles. Toronto. My mother's voice. All of it goes quiet.
Holden. I'm coming.
What?
I'm getting in my car. I'm driving to Crimson Hollow. If you don't want me there, tell me right now. Right now. Because if you wait ten minutes I'll already be on the 401 and I won't turn around.
One minute.
Drive safe.
Five thousand kilometers.
Chioma thinks I've lost my mind. She said so from her couch at 11pm while I threw clothes into a bag, my hands moving faster than my thoughts. "You're driving to British Columbia in the middle of the night to meet a man you've never FaceTimed? A man who could be anyone?"
"He's not anyone."
"Mara. Baby. I love you. But this is insane."
"Probably."
"At least FaceTime him first."
"No."
"Why?"
Because a FaceTime call is safe. A FaceTime call is a controlled environment, good lighting, careful angles, a version of myself I can curate.
And I'm done with curated versions. Done with blowouts Tunde preferred and dresses his mother picked and the careful, contained, palatable version of Imara Adekunle that everyone keeps trying to build.
Whatever happens when I see Holden Briggs, it's going to be real. Messy and honest and terrifying and real.
"Because some things you can't say through a screen." I zip the bag. Kiss Chioma on the forehead. She's crying. Mango is chewing a sock. "I'll call you from the road."
The drive takes three days.
Through the flat dark sprawl of Ontario overnight, coffee at a gas station in Sudbury at 4am where the attendant looks at my packed car and says "Running to or from?
" and I say "Both" because that's the honest answer.
Through northern Ontario as the sun comes up, endless boreal forest, rock cuts, lakes that flash silver between the trees.
My phone mounted on the dash playing Burna Boy, then Wizkid, then Sade when the adrenaline wears off somewhere past Sault Ste. Marie.
Sleep in Thunder Bay. Four hours in a motel that smells like carpet cleaner.
Then Saskatchewan's flat golden nothing for a full day, fields stretching in every direction until the horizon feels like a dare.
Sleep again in Medicine Hat because my hands are shaking on the wheel.
Through the Alberta foothills where the mountains start appearing, faint blue shapes that grow into something enormous the closer I get.
Five thousand kilometers. Five provinces. Three days of highway, gas station coffee, and my best friend calling every few hours to make sure I haven't lost my mind.My sister Nkechi texts three praying hands emojis and a you're my hero. My mother doesn't call. Doesn't know I've left.
Crossing into British Columbia, the landscape changes so dramatically it hurts. Mountains everywhere. Rivers cutting through valleys. Pine forests so thick and dark they look black from the highway. The air through my cracked window smells like cold water.
Crimson Hollow doesn't appear all at once.
The highway narrows. The GPS takes me off a main road onto a two lane stretch through a valley.
Then a hand painted sign. CRIMSON HOLLOW, POP.
2,500, EST. 1890s. A main street with storefronts.
A café with warm light in the windows. Bean & Bloom.
It's real. This place I've been Googling at 2am for weeks, imagining while I poured candles, building in my head while a stranger on the other end of my phone described what the mountains sound like when the wind shifts.
Real.
Past the town. Twenty minutes. Logging road. Gravel rattling under my tires. Pine trees closing in. My heart is beating so fast my vision keeps narrowing at the edges. The road dead ends at a clearing.
A cabin. Log. One story. Porch with a rocking chair. Woodpile against the south wall. Exactly as he described.
And a man standing on that porch.
Tall. Broad. Blond hair going silver, too long. Full beard with copper in it. Flannel rolled to the elbows over forearms thick with muscle. Hands hanging at his sides. Ice blue eyes that I can see from thirty feet away because they're locked on my car like he's been watching this road for weeks.
He has. He told me.
He's been listening for me.
My engine dies. The mountain silence rushes in. No traffic, no sirens, no city sounds. Just wind in the pines, a creek somewhere nearby, my own blood roaring in my ears.
For ten seconds, we just look at each other.
Everything I imagined, every late night fantasy built on short texts and brutal honesty, all of it crumbles because the real thing is so much more than I prepared for.
He looks exactly like his words. Blunt. Weathered.
Serious. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with prettiness and everything to do with presence.
Then his mouth does something. Not a smile. A movement. A shift in the hard line of his jaw. Like something locked inside him just loosened.
My hands find the door handle. My legs find the ground. Gravel under my sneakers. Cool mountain air on my bare arms. The garage in Scarborough is five thousand kilometers behind me, my mother's dining room and Tunde's ring and every version of myself I built for someone else.
Here is just Mara. On a mountain. Looking at a man who knows only the truest thing about her.
"Hi." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
His eyes move over my face. Slow. Taking in every detail. Then down, and back up, and the ice blue warms into something molten.
"You're shorter than I expected."
A laugh breaks out of me so hard my hand flies to my mouth. "You're ruder in person."
"Been told."
The space between us is fifteen feet of porch steps and gravel. Neither of us moves to close it. Not yet. Because this moment, this first real look, is worth holding for as long as it lasts.
His voice is low. Rough like gravel, quiet like snowfall. "Welcome to Crimson Hollow, Mara."
My name in his mouth. The mountain air in my lungs. Five thousand kilometers of highway behind me and this man, this grumpy, beautiful, brutally honest man, standing on his porch looking at me like I'm the first thing he's wanted in five years.
"Thank you for texting back," I whisper.
The corner of his mouth lifts. Almost. Just enough.
"Come inside. Coffee's on."