Everything Leads to You

“Hey. Come in,” I say, but I’m fighting the urge to tell her never mind.

Charlotte and I have involved ourselves in other people’s lives in a way that suddenly makes me uncomfortable. Like there was a NO TRESPASSING sign in front of a family’s driveway, and not only have we trespassed, but we’ve gone through their garage, opened all of their private boxes, rifled through their photo albums and diaries to discover dozens of secrets that were never meant to be revealed.

Ava is here, though, in the middle of Toby’s cozy living room, thanks to luck and fate and our will to find her. Charlotte is offering her the last of our Ethiopian iced tea and she is saying yes. She’s slipping a worn brown leather purse from over her shoulder and apologizing.

“What for?” Charlotte asks.

“I must have been difficult to get ahold of,” she says. “You must have tried hard.”

“It took us a while,” I say, pouring the tea into a little blue glass.

“Yeah,” she says. “Well, it’s been a strange year.”

She tries to say it casually, like her year has been just averagely strange, which doesn’t really fit with the kid on the phone who had no idea where she was or if she would ever be calling home again.

I hand her the glass. Her fingertips graze mine in the transfer.

She takes a sip of tea and looks at us, expectant. She wants answers, obviously, the reasons that we tracked her down, the information that we have. But all I can do is take her in because it’s uncanny, her resemblance to Clyde. Even more than the red hair and the green eyes, her features are like his: the slant of her cheekbones and her delicate nose, the slight crookedness of her smile as she looks quizzically at us. These are the features that, in spite of Clyde’s bravado, made him always a little bit vulnerable, made us always worry for him and hope that he would survive the shootouts and get the girl.

Ava pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and I notice that she’s even dressed a little bit like Clyde. Everything she has on looks vintage: brown leather boots and high-waisted denim shorts, a leather belt with a dulled brass buckle.

“This is really good,” Ava finally says, breaking our silence. “I’ve never had tea that tastes like this.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Charlotte replies, and I wonder if she’s been thinking the same things that I have. Between her gift for social interactions and my tendency to over-share, we don’t usually suffer through awkward silences like this. I try to pull myself together.

I say, “It’s Ethiopian, from this restaurant around the corner.” And then I launch into an explanation of Toby’s charm and this apartment and the request he’s made of us, and as I do, I can feel myself getting farther and farther from the reason we have her here with us right now. “He said we have to do something epic,” I say. “So if you have any ideas feel free to share them.”

I know that I’m going on about nothing of any importance to her but I can’t stop talking. Clyde Jones’s granddaughter is sitting in our kitchen and trying to downplay some kind of distress, something that’s kept her away from home for a long time.

I can still feel where her fingers brushed mine.

And we have a letter that is going to change her life.

“How did you connect Caroline to me?” she asks once I’ve stopped rambling.

“The library,” Charlotte says.

“The library?”

“I know, right? It was Charlotte’s idea.”

Charlotte says, “We found Caroline’s obituary in the newspaper, and it had Tracey Wilder’s name in it. Emi guessed that Tracey Wilder might be your mom? Your adoptive mom? That’s what we’ve been thinking.”

“Caroline and Tracey were best friends. Tracey adopted me when Caroline died. I was just a baby, though.”

Ava lifts her hands to her mouth and bites a short, unpolished nail. I notice the small freckles that dot her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She catches me staring at her and my eyes dart away. So stupid. I should have just smiled.

“So what is it that you have?” she asks. “For Caroline?”

I glance at Charlotte, hoping she’ll know how to take it from here. I’m not good at this at all. I’m so much better with imaginary people and their imaginary lives.

Charlotte says, “I really don’t know the best way to tell you this, so I’ll just show you what we found.”

She walks into the living room and takes the letter off the coffee table. I can’t even look at Ava, I’m so nervous. Charlotte gives her the envelope and Ava takes out the letter. I go sit on the sofa to wait. I would leave the apartment and walk around the block a few times if I could.

Ava is quiet for a long time, standing in the kitchen. I hear the pages rustling. She must read it several times. Charlotte comes to sit next to me but we don’t say anything.

Finally, I hear Ava walking over to us. She sits on Toby’s orange chair.

“Am I reading this right?”

Charlotte and I nod.

“Is this Clyde . . . ?”