Page 27 of Ask for Andrea

Grandma Rosie nodded and her smile softened. “When you are ready, Bubbelah. I can’t show you until you are ready.”

I shook my head, confused all over again. “I’m ready, though. What do you mean?”

Bubbie gestured around the kitchen. “Even now, this memory is changing. You are following my thread—instead of yours. In this kitchen, where you never were but I was. It will be hard to go back, after. If you continue, if you follow my threads, it will be impossible.”

“Go back?” I let her words sink in. I thought of the coral shoe. The forest road. My body moldering in the rocky ground, disappearing into bleached bones as the ants and the hornets did their work. “You mean, I won’t be able to get back to the other side. The side where my body is.”

Grandma Rosie nodded. “Yes, Bubbelah. And where your mother is. And your friends.”

“But I’m lost out there,” I told her, the despair sweeping back in. “I’m alone. I don’t think anyone is coming for me. He dumped me in the woods.”

The joy that had filled the air suddenly went flat. Grandma Rosie’s expression crumpled. “Oh, Bubbelah. Oh no.”

“I thought you knew,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “I can’t see the other side anymore. I stayed for a long time in the ‘real’ world. With you. With your mother. But when Ben died, it was time. Time to be here. To find each other in a way we could not while we were alive. Because this is real too, Bubbelah.”

I no longer felt like I was drifting. I just felt like I was here. All of me, here. I wanted to tell Bubbie about Jimmy Carlson. For someone to know what had happened to me in the woods. To meet my great grandparents. To see, through Bubbie’s eyes, my mother carefully and fearfully carrying spiders safely outside.

Part of me wasn’t ready though. Not yet.

“I think I need to go back for a while,” I said softly, trying to soak in all the love in the room, buoying me up. “I can find you again, here?”

Grandma Rosie nodded. “Yes, Bubbelah. You can always find me. Here or anywhere our lives touched. I love you, little doll.”

“I love you too, Bubbie.” The threads I’d tried to grasp so tightly earlier now felt like they were pulling snug. Falling into place.

For a moment, I panicked. Grandma Rosie and the sunlit kitchen with the challah bread rising on the countertop didn’t disappear like they had before. I thought of the shoe. I thought of the little shrine the raven had assembled. I thought of the Ophir Canyon campground signage, trying to piece together the place that suddenly felt far away. As if it were now the dream.

Then I found myself back on the shoulder of the rutted dirt road, beside the pebble and the little shard of glass, the coins, and the shoe.

I was reminded of the feeling of waking up from a too-late nap in the afternoon, when you sleep until dinnertime and aren’t sure, for a few moments, what happened.

The sound of crunching footsteps hit me before I recognized there was someone there with me.

Someone standing over me, looking directly at me.

Looking at the shoe.

The man had a thick auburn beard. He was in his fifties, and wearing a tan shirt and pants.

In one hand, he held a radio.

My gaze drifted in slow motion to the lapel of his shirt.

Forest Service.

17. BRECIA

Salt Lake Valley, Utah

18 months before

I took great delight in watching his face when he saw that Nicole had blocked him on MatchStrike. And not only blocked him, but reported him to the website’s admins who suspended his account.

He got the notifications in the moving van around the time we crossed the border into Utah. He pulled into the next rest area, April right behind him in the car with the girls. Then he opened the MatchStrike app.

An error message appeared. This account has been suspended and banned for violating our terms of service agreement. Please contact [email protected] or call 1-800-MatchStrike for support.

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