Sallie blanched.
“I think the exact words were, ‘The minute she moves out, I’m done.’”
Her mother’s eyes were wide. “Oh, Mira,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you heard that.”
“I know you didn’t!” Miriam clenched her fists on the counter. “Do you understand what that did to me? I thought love meant cooking dinner and fixing drains and gutters and planting flowers, and if you two hardly ever touched each other, so what? But that was all a lie. And you made it about me. I spent my senior year trying to decide whether to flunk all my classes so I could keep living at home and keep my parents together a little while longer. Even though I was miserable there, because you’d made it perfectly clear you thought everything that was important to me was worthless! How could I ever love Teo? When that was all I had to go on?”
Her mother pressed her fingertips to her lips. They were trembling. “So this is why,” she said softly. “Why everything changed.” She shook her head. Suddenly she looked old.
“I never wanted to divorce your father, Mira. He just … he couldn’t hear me. No matter what I said. He wouldn’t talk to a counselor. I thought if I brought up divorce, it would shake him out of it. He’d recognize the stakes.” Sallie brushed at her eyes. “But he just went and found a lawyer. So I did too. We might have drifted into a divorce by accident, except you stopped talking to us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you went to Curtis, you never called. Not once.”
“I talked to you all the time.”
“We called you. You never called us. We had to make all the effort ourselves.”
Miriam sat silently, replaying that pivotal year in her mind. She didn’t remember. Could Mom be right?
“That was what broke your father,” Sallie said, brushing her eyes. “We went on a Marriage Encounter. We figured if the marriage was all we had left …” She shrugged. “That weekend changed everything for us. Except you.”
Miriam stared at her. If things had changed, she’d never seen it. They’d still never been romantic. Not demonstrative, like Teo.
Had she been right in the first place? Did none of that really matter?
And if so, what did that say about her and Teo?
Her mother’s hands were clasped so tightly on the edge of the counter, her fingernails turned white and red. “I tried so hard not to be hurt. I told myself you were just growing up. But it does hurt. Being pushed away by a child you’ve carried in your womb and given your entire life to.”
The words cut deep. Losing a child was a raw wound, a steam burn that just kept sinking deeper and deeper into the soul. How must it feel when loss came not from death, but from a child’s own rejection?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry too.” Her mother’s voice was a thread. “Sorry you felt like we didn’t value your gifts. We knew you’d spend your life struggling, just like we did. But we tried to support you.”
“How?”
At the derision in Miriam’s voice, Sallie looked up. “We moved the TV downstairs, for goodness sake. So you and Brad wouldn’t fight over the front room every time he came home for the weekend.”
Miriam stared at her, blank. Mostly what she remembered about that move was how hateful he’d been. That, and the fact that ever after, her family had spent most of their time in the basement, as far away from her as they could without actually leaving the premises.
But Mom was right; they’d given Miriam the best room in the house.
That realization jarred loose other memories. Cookies in the shape of music notes in her lunchbox. Pristinely ironed concert dresses laid out on her bed on performance days.
What if she’d been looking at everything all wrong? What if she’d spent all these years chasing a notion of love that didn’t actually exist?
For the first time, she recognized the terrible, long-suffering patience on her mother’s face. “Mom, I …”
Dicey’s phone flashed an image of an apple, followed momentarily by a predictable cascade of sound effects. Slowly, Miriam reached out and laid her hand on it. She needed to find Dicey, but abandoning the conversation now felt like all wrong.
She withdrew her hand.
“That’s hers, huh?” Sallie gestured with the knife. “The girl you were riding with.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her mother sighed. “Well, it’s clear you’re not going to be able to concentrate on anything else until you know. Go on. Find her.”
Miriam searched her mother’s face to make sure she meant it. Then she snatched up the phone. “Be right back,” she said.
She went out onto the front porch before pushing the unlock button. What was the passcode? Dicey had given it to her a few days ago when she got a text message. Something symmetrical with nines, right? She closed her eyes and summoned her muscle memory. Nines alternating with the left side of the keypad. 9291? A buzz. 9197? That felt right.
The screen unlocked. “Yes!”
Miriam scrolled down until she found the text message Dicey’s mother had sent while they were in Omaha—five days ago? Already? The article outlined pregnancy and gastrointestinal problems in cystic fibrosis. Miriam felt slightly queasy.
She typed the number into her own phone. It rang four times before connecting.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Um … my name is Miriam. I’ve been … Dicey’s been riding with me …?”
Silence.
“Is this … Dicey’s mother?”
The reply came out low and trembling. “Yes.”
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. “Did they find you? The hospital?” Oh, Lordy. Could she possibly handle this any worse? “I’m so sorry, she only has ‘mom’ on here. What’s your name?”
“Dayana. Dayana Porter.”
Miriam gave a shaky laugh. “I would never have found you. I was going to go through every ‘Smith’ in East Palo Alto. I had to take Dicey to the ER, and—did they contact you?”
“Yes. I caught a flight in. I’ve only been here an hour.”
“In Albuquerque?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God,” Miriam breathed. She rubbed her forehead. “The hospital
