“The orange drink. I remember.”
“When I first got out on the street people started calling me D, then SunnyD, then just Sunny. Everybody calls me that now.”
“Would you rather I called you Sunny?”
“No,” she said, answering quickly for once. “To you, I’m Dani.”
“Okay.”
Dani started to cry, her eyes filling and spilling over so suddenly that it was like someone had turned a spigot on inside her. She covered her face with her hands.
“I stole your purse, Mom. I’m sorry. I am. It’s just . . . I get so sick. Sometimes I feel like I want to rip off my own skin. And if I don’t get—I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“I know, Dani.” I laid my hand on her shoulder. “I forgive you. Do you want to get well? Can I help you?”
She lowered her hands. Her eyes were dilated pools of pain and shame. “I want to get well. But I don’t want to quit. I can’t. I wish I could. I wish I were somebody different. If Daddy saw me like this—”
“He would love you,” I said. “Just like he always did, like we both did and I still do. I hate seeing you in such pain, baby. And I hate thinking of you in danger. But I will never, ever stop loving you.”
I reached inside my new bag, into a pocket I’d never had occasion to use but knew very well, and pulled out a card I had been carrying with me for weeks.
“Here, Dani. Put this somewhere so you don’t lose it. This is my cell phone number.”
After staring at the card for a moment, she slowly lifted her head.
“You hate cell phones. You always said that anybody who knew you would know enough to call you at home.”
“But I’m not always at home.” I pulled my new phone from my new purse. “Dani, I’m going to keep this with me day and night. There’s only one person who has the number, and that’s you.
“But I need you to understand, I am never, ever going to give you money. And unless you’re clean and sober, you can’t stay at my house. But if you’re ever in trouble or hurt, you can call me. If you’re hungry, I’ll bring you food. If you’re cold, I’ll bring you warm, clean clothes. And if you ever, at any moment of the day or night, decide you want to quit, I’ll be there. I love you.”
Her eyes swam again. She looked so hopeless and defeated.
“Why?”
“Because I do. Love isn’t something you negotiate. It just is.”
Dani leaned forward and I wrapped her in my arms. She smelled of dirt, and pot, and sweat, and God only knew what else. And I never wanted to let go of her.
Because love just is.
Chapter 42
Grace
“Let’s stay here forever.”
That’s what Jamie had said to me, two years ago to the day, as we sat on this same ledge, gazing at a vista of gray, and green, and granite to a spot on the horizon that might be the end of the world or the beginning, a scene so majestic it felt like the threshold of heaven itself. For Jamie, it was.
“Let’s stay here forever,” he’d said as the sun, cut in crescent, flamed orange, red, and gold, halfway between the old day and the new, a day we knew nothing about, when our two paths, blessedly converged for so many years, would finally part as we journeyed toward the far horizon by two different roads, one direct but delayed, the other delayed but circuitous—at least so far.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. None of us does. That’s why we get up and go on because, until forever comes, you can’t stay where you are.
Jamie said, “Let’s.” I squeezed his hand and said, “Okay.” And then we got up anyway. Though we had no way of knowing the distance, we knew we weren’t there yet and so we had to get up and walk on, continue the journey.
Jamie said, “Let’s.” We both understood it was kind of a joke. But it was also a wish, the kind you murmur under your breath because if wishes were horses, beggars would ride and the beggarly, sensible side of your soul doesn’t really suppose that wishes come true.
I’d decided some weeks ago, ever since Jamie slipped over the horizon, that I wanted to come to this beautiful place, on this day, and grant the wish that neither of us realized was his last.
The longer I live, the less I am certain of what will happen and the more I understand what can happen. For so long that frightened me, left me living in an emotional crouch, worrying about problems I knew I could never see coming. The curse of living like that, bent low and bowed down, is that you can’t see anything else either.
On the first night of my pilgrimage to retrace my last happy days with Jamie before saying a final farewell, I couldn’t get the tent to stay up—one of the poles was bent. It was dark and hard to see and, after driving so far alone, I was tired. The third time the canvas collapsed, only minutes after I’d put it back up, having tripped, fallen down, and whacked my wrist on a rock in the process. I crawled out from underneath the canvas, dragged my sleeping bag to a flat spot, and slept in the open, under a canopy of stars as bright as diamonds scattered on velvet.
They were so beautiful. I’d never seen stars like that before. If I had stayed in the tent, curled up in a false wall of protection that kept falling in on me, I’d have missed them.
Lying there, looking up, allowing my vision to expand and my mind to travel the universe and memory, I became a cartographer of my own life, recording the events with a wider scope, standing back to see,
