Some people came out of trauma with thick scar tissue. They could handle anything. They had been through the worst and could take any kind of hit because they knew they could survive.
On the other hand, there were people like me, who survived but with thinner skin than before. Some of us ended up wrapped in an organ even more delicate than tissue paper, with bodies and spirits buoyed only by our will to keep going. And coping mechanisms. And therapy.
“This hiker was out and came across some bones. He happened to be a trauma surgeon and thought he recognized… some of them as human. He called it in, and the authorities took what he found.”
“Okay….”
Rhodes licked his lips and squeezed my hands a little tighter. “They matched the DNA.”
A memory of that time about three years after my mom had gone missing, when remains had been found and they’d thought it might be her, filled my head. We’d been so disappointed when, after I’d provided DNA samples, it had come back that it wasn’t a match. A few years ago, the same thing had happened. A search party trying to find a missing hiker had come across a hand and a skull partially buried, but nothing had come of it either. The remains had been of a man who had gone missing two years before that. That had been the last time I’d had any hope of ever finding her.
But I knew. I knew before he said anything what was about to come out of his mouth next. My skin started prickling.
“The coroner’s office is going to be calling you soon, but I hoped you’d rather hear it from me first,” he said carefully, calmly, still holding my hands. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed.
I pressed my lips together and nodded, my lips suddenly feeling numb. My chest started to tingle. “Yeah, I would,” I told him slowly, knowing… knowing….
He blew out a breath, that square jaw moved from side to side before he gently said the last words I would have expected and, at the same time, the only thing I could have imagined, “They’re your mom’s, sweetheart.”
He’d said it. He’d really said it.
I repeated his words in my head, then again, and again.
I bit my bottom lip and found myself nodding, fast and for too long. I was blinking quickly too as my eyes started to get watery. And I almost didn’t hear the tiny choking whimper that bubbled out of my throat unexpectedly.
My mom’s.
My mom’s.
Rhodes’s face fell, and the next thing I knew, his arms were around me and he was pulling me in tight, pressing my cheek against the buttons of his shirt as another choke worked its way into my throat. I tried to suck in a breath, but my whole body shook instead. I was trembling. Worse than the day of the Hike from Hell.
They’d found her.
They’d finally found her.
My mom who had loved me with her whole heart, who hadn’t been perfect but had always made it known that being perfect was overrated. The woman who had taught me that joy came in all different shapes and sizes and forms. The same person who had battled a silent illness as best as she could for longer than I would ever know.
They’d found her. After all these years. After everything….
The memory of the moment twenty years ago, when I’d realized she wasn’t picking me up, kicked me right in the very center of my existence. I had cried. Screamed. I’d howled my throat and my soul raw. Mom, Mom, Mom, please, please, please, come back—
“You can put her to rest now,” he whispered right before a big, wailing cry got muffled against his shirt. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”
I cried. From the deepest place in my body, I pulled the tears. Over everything I’d lost, over everything she had lost too, but also, maybe in a way, in relief that she’d didn’t have to be alone anymore. And maybe because I didn’t have to be alone anymore either.
* * *
Hours later, I woke up on the couch in the living room. My eyes felt puffy and crusty, and they hurt as I squinted. My head was in Rhodes’s lap. He was slouched against the couch, head resting against the back of it. One of his hands was on my ribs, and the other was on the back of my head.
My throat hurt too, I realized as I sniffled. The television was still on, softly, some infomercial playing. But I focused on the recliner, on the boy passed out on it. The same one who hadn’t left my side since Rhodes had broken the news. Since the coroner’s office had called and the woman’s words had gone in one ear and out the other because my brain had been ringing.
And that made me sniffle again.
I had always felt like I’d lost so much. I knew nobody got through life without losing something, sometimes everything. But the knowledge brought me no comfort then.
Because she was still gone.
I was never, ever going to see her again.
But at least I knew, I tried to reason with myself for not the first time. At least I knew now. Not all of it, but more than I ever would have expected. A huge part of me still couldn’t believe it though.
It felt so final now, her loss.
Nearly as fresh and painful as it had been twenty years ago. My body and soul felt cracked open, with all the vulnerable soft bits out for exposure. It was like I’d lost her all over again.
I tucked my cheek against my Rhodes’s leg and grabbed his thigh. And I cried a little more.
* * *
I would have wanted to believe that I took the news as well as could be expected in the days afterward, but the truth was that I didn’t.
Maybe it was because it had been years since I’d last let myself feel a shred of hope of finding her. Maybe because I’d been so damn happy lately. Or maybe, just maybe, because I’d felt like everything that had led me here had been for this. For these people in my life. For this hope of a family and happiness, and while I’d give anything to have my mom back, I’d been at something close to peace finally.
But I hadn’t been prepared for how hard I handled the days that came.
In those first few days after Rhodes’s confirmation, I cried more than I had since she had initially gone missing. If someone had asked me to tell them what happened, I would have only been able to recall pieces because everything became so foggy and felt so desperate.
What I knew for sure was that after that first morning, waking up again in Rhodes’s living room with exhausted, swollen eyes, I’d sat up and gone to the half-bathroom to wash my face. When I’d come back out, feeling stiff and almost delirious, Rhodes had been standing in the kitchen yawning, but the second he’d spotted me, his arms had dropped to his sides and he’d given me a flat, level look and asked, “What do you need from me?”
That itself had been enough to set me off again. To force me to suck in a shuddering breath through my nose a moment before even more tears welled up in my eyes. My knee had started shaking, and I’d bared my teeth at him and said, in a ragged, tiny whisper, “I could use another hug.”
And that was exactly what he’d given me. Wrapping me up in those big, strong arms, holding me against his chest, supporting me with his body and with something else that I was too heartbroken and numb to sense. I spent that day at his house, showering in his bathroom and putting on his clothes. I cried in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed, in his shower while the water beat down on me, in his kitchen, on the couch, and when he tugged me outside, on the steps of his deck while that long, solid body sat beside me for who knows how long, lined up completely against my side.
Rhodes didn’t let me out of his sight, and Amos brought me glasses of water randomly, both of them watching me with calm, patient eyes. Even though I didn’t feel like eating, they pushed small things at me, nudging me with their gray irises.
I knew for a fact I managed to call my uncle to give him the news, even though he hadn’t been all that close to my mom. My aunt had called almost immediately afterward, and I’d cried some more with her, remembering when it happened, that it was possible to run out of tears. I spent the night at Rhodes’s house, sleeping on the couch with him as my pillow, but tha
t’s all I was able to process other than the finality of the news I’d been given.
But it was the day after that, that Clara came over, sat beside me on the couch, and told me all about how much she missed her husband. How hard it was to keep going without him. I barely talked, but I listened to every word she said, soaking up the tears that spiked her eyelashes, soaking in her mutual grief at the loss of someone she had adored. She told me to take as much time as I needed, and I barely said a word. I hoped the hug we shared had been enough.
It wasn’t until that night, when I was sitting on the deck after texting Yuki back and forth while Rhodes showered, that Amos came out and squatted on the step beside me. I didn’t feel like talking, and in a way, it was nice that Rhodes and Amos weren’t big talkers in the first place, so they didn’t push me, didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do other than eat and drink.
Everything was hard enough as it was.
My chest hurt so bad.
But I glanced at Am and tried to muster up a smile, telling myself like I had a thousand times over the last couple of days that it wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was gone. That I had gotten through this before and I would get through it again. But it just hurt, and my therapist had said that there was no right way to grieve.
I still just couldn’t believe it.
My favorite teenager didn’t bother trying to say anything though as he sat beside me. He just leaned over, put his arm over my shoulders, and gave me a side hug that seemed to last ages, still not saying a word. Just giving me his love and support, which made me want to tear up even more.
Eventually, after a few minutes, he got up and headed over to the garage apartment, leaving me there by myself, in my tangerine jacket on the deck, under a moon that had been around before my mom and would be there long after me.
And in a way, it made me feel better. Just a little as I gazed up. As I took in the same stars that she had to have seen too. I remembered being a kid and lying out on a blanket with her while she’d pointed out constellations that years later I’d learned were all wrong. And remembering that made me smile to myself just a little.
None of us were promised tomorrow, or even ten minutes from now, and I was pretty sure she’d known that better than anyone.
My head hurt. My soul hurt. And I wished for about the millionth time in my life, at least, that she was here.
I hoped she was proud of me.
It was then as I was sitting there with my head tipped back, that I heard the chords to a song I knew well.
Then Amos’s voice started carrying lyrics that I knew even better.
The cold air filled my body just as well as the words to the song did, with tears I didn’t know I was still capable of wetting my eyelashes as I listened. I took in the message I had a feeling he was trying to share with me, absorbing it into my very essence. A memory I myself had shared with all the people who had ever downloaded Yuki’s version of it.
A tribute to my mom, like every song and most of my actions had always tried to be.
Amos pleaded to not be forgotten. To be remembered for what he’d been, not for the pieces he’d become. And his beautiful voice belted out for the one he loved to be whole, and one day they’d be together again.
* * *
Almost a week after the news, when I was in my garage apartment going through my mom’s oldest journals, even though I had them memorized at this point, someone knocked on my door. Before I could say a word though, it opened and familiar heavy footsteps made their way up, and then Rhodes was there. His face even, hands on his hips. He looked somber and wonderful as he stood there, as steady as a mountain, and said, “We’re going snowshoeing, angel.”
I looked at him like he was fucking nuts because I was still in my pajamas and the last thing I wanted to do was leave the house, even though I knew that I should, that it would be good for me, that my mom would have loved—
My throat burned. I shrugged at him and said, “I don’t know if I’d be good company today. I’m sorry….”
It was the truth. I hadn’t exactly been good company lately. All the words that usually found their way so easily into my mouth had mostly evaporated over the last few days, and though our silences hadn’t been awkward, they’d been foreign.
It had been so long since I’d felt the way I had lately, that even though I knew I would get through it and was fully aware it wasn’t some overnight thing I’d randomly wake up from feeling fine, it was still like treading water against a changing tide.
I couldn’t find my way out of it.
It was grief, and some part of me recognized and remembered that there were stages of it. The one no one ever told you about was the final one when you felt everything at once. It was the hardest.
And I didn’t want to put that on Rhodes. I didn’t want to put it on anyone. They all knew me as being cheerful and happy for the most part. I knew I’d be happy again just as soon as the worst edge of this faded—because it would, I knew it and I’d been reminded of it—but I wasn’t there yet. Not with my mom’s loss feeling so fresh again.
I was exhausted on the inside, and that was probably the best way to describe it.
But this man who had slept beside me every night the last week, either on his couch when we’d pass out in silence, or who would coax me into his room, tilted his head to the side as he took me in. “That’s all right. You don’t need to talk if you don’t want to.”
I blinked. I swallowed hard before I snorted, which even that sounded sad. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d told him months ago? When he’d been upset with his dad?
Rhodes must have known exactly what I was thinking because he gave me a gentle smile. “You could use the fresh air.”
I could. Even my old therapist, whose number I’d found a couple days ago and had only hesitated for about an hour before calling—she remembered me, which wasn’t surprising considering I’d gone to her for four years—had told me it would be good for me to get out. But I still hesitated before glancing back down at the journal in my hands. Rhodes had been beyond great, but I’d been feeling all kinds of ways. He’d been there enough for me lately; I didn’t want to push it either.
Rhodes tilted his head to the other side, watching me closely. “Come on, Buddy. If it was me, you would tell me the same,” he said.
He was right.
And that alone was enough to get me to nod and get dressed.
Before everything that had happened, I’d told him I wanted to try snowshoeing someday. And part of that pierced through my mood, reminding me of how lucky I was to have him. Of how lucky I was for a lot of things.
I had to keep trying.
Rhodes didn’t leave; he sat on the bed while I changed my pants right there in front of him, too lazy to even bother going into the bathroom. He didn’t say a word as he nodded at me to ask if I was ready, and I nodded at him back that I was, and we left. True to his word, he didn’t talk or try to get me to either.
Rhodes drove toward town, turning left down a county road and parking in a clearing that I was familiar with because I’d driven by it before when I’d gone for hikes. Out of the back of his Bronco, he pulled out two sets of snowshoes and helped me put them on.
Then and only then did he grab my hand and start leading us forward.
We moved quietly, and at some point, he handed me a pair of sunglasses he must have had in the pocket of his jacket because the only things he’d brought in his backpack were bottles of water and a tarp. I hadn’t even noticed I was squinting with the sun reflecting off the snow, but the sunglasses helped. The air was so crisp it felt cleaner than ever, and I filled my lungs with as much of it as I could every chance I had, letting it soothe me in its own way. On we went, and maybe if I’d been feeling any better, I would have appreciated more how well the snowshoes worked or how pretty the field we were going through was... but I was trying my best. And that was all I could do. I was here, and some part of my brain was aware that that mattered.
/>
About an hour later, we finally stopped at the top of a hill, and he stretched out the tarp on top of the snow and gestured me onto it. I had barely sat down when he took the spot beside me and said in that husky voice of his, “You know I wasn’t around for any of Amos’s firsts.”
I crisscrossed my legs under me and looked at Rhodes. He was sitting with his long legs stretched out before him, hands planted a few inches behind him, but most importantly, he was looking at me. The sunlight was reflecting off his beautiful silver hair, and I couldn’t think of a single man I’d ever seen that was more handsome than him.
He was the best, really, and that made my throat hurt in a way that wasn’t bad.
“I wasn’t there for his first word or the first time he walked. The first day he used the toilet on his own or the first night he didn’t have to wear diapers to sleep.”
Because he’d been gone, living on a coast far away from Colorado.
“Am doesn’t remember, and even if he did, I’m not sure if he’d care, but it used to bother me a lot. It still does bother me when I think about it.” The lines across his forehead deepened. “I used to send money to them—to Billy and Sofie. For things he might need, even though they both said they had it, but he was mine too. I used to come and visit him every chance I had. Every vacation, any time I could swing it, even if it was only for a whole day. They told me I did enough, said I didn’t have to worry about it, and maybe that should’ve been good enough for me, but it wasn’t.
“It took him until he was almost four to start calling me Dad. Sofie and Billy corrected him every time he’d call me Rows—he couldn’t pronounce Rhodes, and that’s what they called me—but it took a long time for him to start calling me something else. It used to make me jealous when I’d hear him call Billy Dad. I knew it was stupid. Billy was with him all the time. But it still kind of hurt. I’d send him presents when I saw something he might like. But I still missed birthdays. I still missed his first day of school. I missed everything.
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 47
