“Sorry.”
“It is truly amazing, the damage one human being can do to another human being without ever raising a hand,” she tells me.
I think about my dad, whoever and wherever he is, and I wonder if he understands the damage he inflicted just by walking away. I wonder if he knows what it feels like to walk around knowing that you are unwanted.
“But she hasn’t responded to any of your letters? Even as an adult, she hasn’t—”
Minna holds up a hand. “Enough, Bridget. I’m tired.”
“Right. Sorry.” I crawl into bed next to her. I don’t think she minds, because she closes her eyes without saying anything. The light from the bedside table settles in the valleys around her eyes and mouth.
When Minna’s breaths are slow and even, I slip out from under the covers. I swallow a yelp when my toe slams into a clear plastic container beneath the bed, the kind Mom stores her sweaters in. I’m nudging it back into place when I see the name on an envelope in uneven script, pressed against the plastic from the inside: Virginia.
Instinctively, I know what this is, and I know I should leave it. Instead, I slide the container from beneath the bed and I pop open the top. The container is filled with envelopes. Letters, all of them addressed to Virginia. Stamped but not dated. Some of the envelopes are yellowed and old. There are hundreds, thousands, maybe, years and years worth, and there are three identical containers jammed behind this one. The letters show addresses in California, in Colorado, in Florida, a few hours south of here. Minna has followed her daughter through childhood into adulthood, across the country. But she’s never mailed a word.
The room tilts a little. All of Minna’s years are here, faded and tucked away. Unwitnessed. Maybe the letters are apologies, explanations. Or maybe they are crammed full of the small details that make up a day: rude comments from an ignorant boss, a whole paragraph on the best doughnut in the world. There is a whole life here. Shoved under the bed like a secret.
I take one of the newer envelopes. Its edges are still sharp. I stuff it into my back pocket and shove the bin under the bed again. I move quickly down the hallway and out the front door. I twist the lock in the knob before I pull it closed behind me. In the sunlight, I look at the envelope again. Minna’s handwriting is tired. Minna is tired. Life has wrung her out. How much more time does she have to find her way back to Virginia?
I jump in the truck and balance the envelope on my thigh. It wasn’t mine to take. But this is my chance to do something for her, before a life storm swoops in and wrecks the possibility of Minna connecting with her only child.
And Virginia, I think as I back out of the parking lot. I couldn’t stand wandering the world without the mother who made me. In this world, there are men hitting their wives and sons. There are mothers deserting their babies. Parents who don’t deserve to watch their children grow. But Minna is not that parent. She deserves to find her way back to Virginia.
I roll down the window and slow to a near stop as I approach the guard gate. There’s a mailbox there. I could do it. It would only take a second. There are so many broken families in this world, and maybe Minna is right. Maybe every family is broken in its own way. But not every family is beyond repair.
I pull open the slot, close my eyes, and slip the letter inside.
BRIDGE
Summer, Senior Year
ALL day, I think about Minna and Virginia and Wil and me and what it means to be a real family. In the evening, after Mom heads to work and Micah ditches me for his friends, I drag our bedsheets and towels to the Laundromat downtown and camp out in the orange plastic chairs by the window while I wait. I stare at the bricks that carry the names of people who love one another now, or did once. The more I think about the bones of what it means to love another human being, the more I know: There can be no secrets. You have to know everything: the darks and the lights, the befores and the afters. To love Wil, all of Wil, I have to understand what happened that night.
When the buzzer goes off, I pull the hot sheets from the dryer. I don’t bother folding them, just stuff them in Mom’s wicker laundry basket and heave the basket into the passenger seat of the truck. I drive to Wil’s house, my skin damp with early evening heat and adrenaline. My hands slip against the steering wheel. I’m going to ask him.
I see him the second I turn down his street. He doesn’t notice me right away. He’s standing in the bed of Wilson’s old truck, sweeping dead leaves into precise piles and then spilling them into the drive. He’s neat like Wilson was. Watching him, my inside seams might burst. My throat gets tight and my eyes get full. He is good to his depths. There should be more of him. It strikes me as the saddest thing in the world that there are people on this earth who don’t know Wil Hines.
I pull up to the curb and he spins around to face me. He shields his eyes with one hand and gives me a wave. I roll down the window.
“Getting your Sunday chores done?” I tease. “Good boy.”
“Actually . . .” He draws out the word in a way that makes me shivery and warm at the same time. “I was on my way to see you.”
“Me?” I flutter my lashes like a coy girl in an old movie.
He nods. “I want to take you out tonight. On a real date. Not a bonfire, and not your old lady friend’s house. You and me and a beach, and nobody else.”
“That sounds really good,” I say.
“Only one condition.” He jumps down from the truck bed, and doesn’t even wince when his bare feet hit the cement. He leans through my open window, and the truck is filled with the warm, earthy smell of him.
“What?” Anything. Everything. Always.
“No talk about any of the big stuff. Off-limit topics include graduation, next year, and my dad,” he says. “Deal?”
I nod. Instantly, everything outside of us can wait.
“Deal,” I say, and we kiss on it.
I park my truck on the street and wait for Wil in the yard while he tells his mom we’re going out. Summer is ripening quickly. I close my eyes and listen to the reedy thrum of the cicadas. The sound reminds me of summer nights when I was a kid. Mom would prop my bedroom window open with an old dictionary, and the cicadas’ mating calls mixed with the sound of the waves would lull me to sleep.
I hear the crunch of Wil’s feet on the grass.
“Making a wish?”
I open my eyes. “I guess you could say that. I was just thinking that I like it here. With you.”
He smiles. “I like it here with you.”