She thinks of the child’s spark like a tiny, sputtering flame, and now it’s up to her to keep it burning, to tend it, no matter what. She may have failed in that job once before, but she won’t fail again.
Patricia doesn’t know what will happen when they find Chelsea. She’s fairly certain that there will be a place for Brooklyn with her mother; no one would deny a mother her child, and surely Chelsea told her new cohort about her situation. It’s Patricia that’s the problem. Her daughter has every right to hate her, not only for what she’s done recently, but perhaps, she’s beginning to see, for what she’s done all along.
She has never been a woman who apologizes. She’s never been a woman who needed to.
She is, she can admit to herself, a bit of a bitch, but then again, a bitch is just a woman who doesn’t do what you want and then refuses to feel bad about it.
All the way to Jacksonville, Patricia practices in her head, the same way she used to practice for her big speech to open the auction.
The opening line is the hardest. “Chelsea, I’m so sorry…”
51.
Ella is in the slow lane doing fifty-nine in a sixty-five, hands at ten and two, the only car on the highway. The Miata may have been built for speed, but Ella definitely was not. She’s running late because there was a semi truck accident, and she got lost on the detour. According to her map app she should still get to the fairgrounds in time to see her mom, or at least find someone who knows her before the fights are over. Now all she has to do is get there safely.
Headlights appear in her rearview mirror, getting closer much faster than they should. Her eyes bounce from the road ahead to each mirror, and panic begins to creep in. She’s not in the fast lane, not bothering anybody, so this guy should just go around her, right?
He’s nearly caught up, and she holds her breath as she waits for the car to zoom around her, rocking the little Miata. But instead, he slows and turns on his high beams. She can barely see now, and she’d like to shield her eyes, but she can’t take her hands off the steering wheel or she might lose control. She wants to slow down, but if she does, she knows he’ll hit her. He revs forward and backs off, revs forward, and backs off. He gets so close that she can’t see his headlights, can’t see anything but the flash of streetlights on tinted glass. It’s a sedan, but it’s so much bigger than her car. One tap, and he could send her skidding into the guardrail.
Whoever he is, he won’t let up. He lays on the horn, and she winces. Her speed has gone down, below fifty now.
He must enjoy this, the absolute turd. Must love knowing he’s scaring someone to death.
Somehow, she instinctively knows it’s a man. She’d bet her life on it.
“Just pass me,” she growls. “You goddamn asshole, just pass me.”
After a few more honks and flashes of high beams, he finally does, screeching around her and hurtling off into the night at what’s got to be at least a hundred miles an hour, maybe more. When his taillights are so far ahead that they look like dying stars, she slows and guides the tiny car onto the shoulder under a streetlight, feeling like she’s driving an aluminum can that nearly got steamrolled. Her entire body is shaking, her hands clenched on the wheel, her feet and fingers freezing cold.
“He’s gone,” she says out loud. “It’s okay. He’s gone. I can do this.”
She’s almost got her breathing back to normal when her phone buzzes. What she sees there sends her heart back into overdrive.
It’s an email.
From her mom.
She has to reread it three times before it sinks in.
Her mom didn’t want to leave her.
Nana closed the gate on her.
Just like she closed the gate on Ella.
Her mom isn’t hiding—she wanted to be found, at least by her daughter.
Ella isn’t particularly surprised by what Nana did, but still. How rotten does your heart have to be, to throw your own blood to the wolves like that?
And the old bitch still has Brooklyn. It chills Ella to the bone, thinking about Brooklyn waking up from a nightmare and finding grim, disapproving Nana standing there, hands on her hips, mouth puckered up like she’s sucking on a lemon, commenting that nice girls don’t scream in the middle of the night.
But that’s not the focus now.
Mom finally found her message and explained everything. How Nana had her stricken from the clipboard. How she went home to figure things out. How Jeanie offered what felt like a good chance at making money, and Mom jumped at any opportunity to get vaccinated and get her girls back.
And then, what happened with Jeanie…
Knowing is one thing, hearing it firsthand is another.
It’s a huge weight off Ella’s chest, knowing that her mom wasn’t ignoring her frantic texts for some dark reason but instead lost her phone weeks ago when she also lost her car and all of her belongings. She wonders if maybe there’s some officer with a desk full of confiscated phones, keeping them charged and checking them regularly for updates that might lead to arrests. If so, they’ve definitely gotten a wide range of emotions from Ella over the past few weeks as she vented her fears and frustrations into the ether, hoping every moment for an answer that would suddenly bring this new world into focus.
Now she has that answer.
She immediately texts the number Mom sent in the email, her hands shaking and her thumbs as sloppy as a numbed tongue after a root canal.
Dear Mom,
It’s okay. I understand now.
I’m on my way, tonight. Should be there in twenty minutes.
Please tell me how to get to you. I miss you so much. We have to get Brooklyn back.
Love,
Smella
She stares at the phone for several minutes, keeps running a thumb over the screen to keep it glowing, hoping for an instantaneous response. It doesn’t come. She glances at the car’s clock, as if that will add some additional magic the phone clock can’t provide. Of course nothing changes. Because the event is starting, and her mom’s match is probably going on soon. Or maybe she’s getting ready and doesn’t keep her phone with her. Her outfit is pretty skimpy, after all—it’s the kind of thing that, just a few months ago, really would’ve bothered her, the thought of everyone on earth seeing her mom’s thighs and boobs, but now she doesn’t care what her mom is wearing or how stupid she’s acting, she just wants the solidity of that hug, the surety of those arms pulling her close. She told her mom years ago she didn’t like being hugged, but really, it was always more of a dare.