Page 41 of Absolution

“I think your friend left town. She left it to me, saying she was leaving for a while. Or well, she sent me a letter in a box with the key.”

“Oh…” A stab of disappointment hits me, a feeling of betrayal, which is ridiculous. I haven’t kept in touch. She isn’t obliged to put her life on hold for an old friend who completely disappeared on her. “My hous—”

“It’s still there, hon. I haven’t had the heart to sell it. I kept seeing you in it, and Cecilia… her little legs running on the lawn, chasing butterflies—” Her voice chokes up and tears well up in my eyes at the imagery.

“Mom… I’ve been the worst daughter.”

“Well, I’m sure there are worse, but… I have missed you. When are you coming home? Please let me know if I can do something. Can I reach you on this number?”

Mrs. Anderson gave me an old phone. Her husband and a couple of men from town cleared the road and packed up my house. I don’t need much. I only asked for my wallet, laptop and our clothes, and Dad’s clothes. They’re giving away the rest.

“Yeah. I don’t even know the number myself yet, but this is my new phone. I’ll be home in a few days.” An urge to cough rises in my chest, and I fight it down. “I’ll call you,” I choke out, “gotta go.”

I disconnect before she can object, then I can’t hold it back anymore and an exhausting series of coughs erupt, feeling as if they’ll tear my chest apart.

“Mommy?”

Cece looks at me with dark, worried eyes.

“Mommy’s okay,” I grit out between the violent fits. “I’m okay.”

When I’m done, sweaty and spent, I stare emptily in front of me. I wonder how he died. Was he in pain? I just can’t see this magnificent, larger-than-life, human being dead. I press my fists to my chest to quell the ache, the never-ending pain. I wish I could have thanked him for our lives.

I wish I had let him in that last night, when he touched me, showed his passion for me, made me feel again.

I wish he was here.

Elisabeth Anderson picks us up. Together with her husband Stephan she’s the owner of Pond’s motel. A kind-hearted born and bred Middlebro resident who has done everything for me since I arrived. Now she’s also the new owner of the little grocery store.

Mrs. Anderson rolls us out of the hospital in a wheelchair, Cecilia sitting in my lap, gawking at everything we pass. I can definitely walk and it’s beyond embarrassing to be wheeled out.

She has found an old, stained child car seat and I buckle up my tired little daughter, panting from the exertion.

“Do you want me to do it, hon?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m okay,” I rasp.

“Just let me know what you need.”

I smile weakly. I just want out of here. I want to go home. I want my mom, my friends. “Let’s just go, please.”

She gives me a half smile as she puts the key in ignition. “Tired of hospitals?”

I glance at the large, modern building to my left, glass and concrete, connected to an older red brick building that lies partly hidden behind a large park, everything covered in a growing layer of snow.

“I just wanna go home.”

“I hear you.”

We make it in time to our appointment at the police station to get temporary passports sorted, then Mrs. Anderson maneuvers us through the dense traffic, leaving the city behind us onto smaller roads until we reach Pond’s motel in Middlebro. We’ll stay here two nights and catch our breaths. Recuperate a little. The day after tomorrow we’re taking a flight to San Francisco. Mom will pick us up and take us home.

That night, with Cece sleeping on a couch next to me in the otherwise empty bar at Pond’s, I nurture a whisky, grimacing as it burns hot in my chest. I sit with my laptop, looking over my finances, and weep. It’s not that I don’t have money. I have embarrassingly too much money. Evan has kept paying, and I have barely used anything for the last year. I cry for the loss of my life. I cry when I look at Cecilia, because she will never know her father. I cry because we will go home, build a life again, and a part will always be missing. Always. She looks so much like him, like Christian Russo, and I will be reminded of that for as long as I live.

“Will you be aw’rite, love?”

Stephan Anderson has driven us all the way back to Winnipeg, even though I tried to insist that we could take a taxi. None of the Andersons were having it. Elisabeth has packed us sandwiches and little cartons of juice, trying to wipe the tears out of the corners of her eyes without me noticing.

I want to say that I’ll miss them, because they have been nothing but amazing, the townspeople, all of them, but Middlebro will forever be too connected with pain.

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