“CF?”
It took a moment to realize the voice was addressing her. Miriam looked over her shoulder. Magazine woman. “I’m sorry?”
“CF.” The woman nodded toward the closed door. “I recognize the paraphernalia. My cousin died of it when she was nineteen.” Perhaps seeing the look on Miriam’s face, she added, “But I hear the life expectancy’s improved a ton.”
Miriam gave the woman a stiff smile and sat down, pulling out her phone to look up everything she didn’t know.
… Mucus that’s too thick or sweat that’s too salty …
… sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and digestive system …
… compromised lung function …
… some people are living into their 40s …
Suddenly, everything made sense: the videos and photos for her daughter, the scrapbook. The loud music and long showers, cover for breathing treatments Dicey didn’t want Miriam to know about. Her vehemence about living life fully. The cryptic comments about death.
Miriam clicked her phone off and dropped her head between her knees, hoping the blood would rush to her brain and knock her out. Because the chasm opening in front of her was one she wasn’t sure she could crawl back out of.
39
Sunday, May 8
5:52 AM
Alamosa, Colorado
THE TV STAYED ON all night. The Weather Channel guys couldn’t stop salivating over the storm now pounding the hell out of Colorado Springs. Miriam supposed she was lucky she’d even gotten to see the Milky Way in Hooper. From twisters to blizzards in two days: #Gr8AmAdven, indeed.
Somewhere down deep, she must be hysterical, if she was thinking in sharp signs. Hash tags, she corrected herself.
“Please,” she said to Día de Muertos woman again. “Please, just tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry, privacy …”
“Forget the privacy regulations! Just ask her if she wants me to know! Is that so difficult?”
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down, or I’ll have to call Security.”
Miriam gritted her teeth. She’d never felt so powerless.
“Do you really want to be responsible for her health and safety?” her mother had asked.
No, she replied silently. No, I don’t. But I’m all she has right now.
Miriam took a deep breath and refocused on the desk attendant. “I’m going to get a breath of air, and then I’ll be back,” she said. “I’m not leaving.”
The woman stared back, expressionless.
Miriam glided out the door, projecting the calm, with-it image she knew she needed in order to have any chance. For heaven’s sake, she’d brought Dicey in. Surely that ought to count for something!
As Miriam walked out the door, a helicopter approached, heading for the landing pad in the corner of the parking lot. The noise disrupted the quiet of a small-town Sunday morning. She shivered as she stretched her neck in the cold wind. The sky glowered in the gray predawn. She imagined she could see the blizzard clouds to the north, covering highways she and Dicey had traversed only a couple days earlier.
The chopper powered down. Miriam walked to the end of the drive and then continued. A walk around the block might help clear her mind. So would finding a church to go to Mass. How could it be Sunday again? In the real world, people had gone through an entire workweek, an entire school week, a week of lessons and sports practices. The last seven days had passed in a flash, yet she felt years older.
Miriam set off at a brisk clip. How could she convince them to give her information? Someone had to get word to Dicey’s family. Or had Dicey been coherent enough to give the hospital personnel contact info?
She’d been coherent enough to show that orderly her bracelet. The bracelet she’d refused, again and again, to let Miriam see.
What if Dicey had specifically told them not to tell Miriam anything?
“Stop it,” she said aloud. “That makes no sense. She just asked you to be her baby’s godmother.” She rubbed her eyes. In the corner of the parking lot, the landing pad buzzed with activity: one swarm of people loading equipment onto the chopper, another shepherding a stretcher toward it.
Wait a minute. Was that guy putting Dicey’s suitcase into that chopper? He closed the door and retreated, and the helicopter powered up again.
Miriam took off running. “No!” she shouted, running toward them, waving her arms. “Wait! Wait for me! Please!”
Too late. The icy wind from the blades sliced through Talia’s flowing brown skirt and peasant blouse as if they weren’t there at all. In the gray predawn, the chopper’s spotlight blinded her. As it banked right and turned, nose-down, into the wind, Miriam blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her vision enough to see the emblem on the side. All she caught was one word, written in black just forward of the tail rotor:
Albuquerque.
Her head spun; her vision blacked over. She sat down hard on the ground, her ears roaring. By the time sight and sound returned, the helicopter lights had shrunk to a point, the noise fading from a deafening roar to a faint murmur. Dicey was gone.
Miriam put her hands to her forehead, the emptiness inside so vast, surely the whole universe could fit inside. Except emptiness shouldn’t hurt, and this hurt like hell.
The sun broke the horizon and flowed across the valley, bathing the mountains and everything between them in a deep orange-pink glow. She felt the warmth on the backs of her hands, her eyelids, and the tip of her nose.
And Miriam knew:
She loved this girl.
She’d thought herself incapable of love. She’d thought she’d spent everything she had on her children, an entire life’s supply poured out, wasted now that they were gone. She’d thought she had no more to give.
She knew now she was wrong. Maybe she’d buried it, maybe she’d turned her back on it, but here it was, coursing and raging like a river swollen by spring rains, sweeping away all the barriers she’d erected to keep it in and everything else out.
She could feel it now, for the first time since she’d seen Simeon and
