Page 58 of A Night to Remember

“Have you really been trying to find him?”

She nods. “For years. I call hospitals, homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, wherever I can think of. At first I just looked in Missouri, then I started calling all over the country. But he fell off the map pretty soon after he left.”

“Is he…” I begin, struggling to formulate the obvious question.

“I don’t know. I search for a death certificate sometimes too.” She sets her mouth in a hard line.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”

Mom looks away from me and shrugs. For the first time in a long time, I feel like a child. Totally naive and self-centered. How could I have missed the fact that she had been going through all this? Why hadn’t she asked me to help?

“I know you judge me for not putting my painting first when I was young,” she starts.

“No, I’m sorry, that isn’t what I—” She cuts me off with a glance.

“But any success I might have had would have been hollow without a person to share it with. I hope you achieve whatever you want in life. Just make sure it doesn’t come at the expense of what actually makes life worth living.”

She speaks to me more sternly than she has in years. I feel chastened. Humbled. I feel like I know fuck all about life and that my problems are absolutely nothing compared with what she’s faced. But it’s as if she’s asking my brain to do a somersault. And that sounds spectacularly uncomfortable and not a little dangerous.

“I don’t think I’m as brave as you,” I tell her frankly. “I like Gabe?—”

“I think you more thanlikeGabe,” she corrects me, surprising me with a smile. “You’ve been wearing that shirt of his to bed every night for eight years.” I blush furiously. Yes, okay, I kept the shirt he gave me when he pulled me out of that flooded ditch in high school. Yes, I wear itsometimes, but that’s because it’scomfortable.

“First of all, he doesn’t know that, so please don’t tell him, second of all, it isn’teverynight, third of all, how doyouknow that?”

“I see more than you think.” She chuckles and wipes the last of her tears from her cheeks. “And I see how you’ve changed since he started coming over. I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh so much since you were five.”

“I like Gabe,” I start again, brushing this off. “But I was going to say that I really don’t know if I can give him what he wants. And I don’t know if it would be fair if I tried and then ended up making us both miserable.”

“Okay, then, answer me this,” she says, settling back on the couch and smiling more broadly now. “How would you feel if he got back together with his ex?”

My anger is swift and intense. “WHAT?” I shout, bursting out of my chair like a crocodile exploding out of the water. “He wouldn’t! I mean, she saidshewants to, because why wouldn’t she, he’s—but no, he would never do that! She’s awful, she’s totally wrong for him! You should haveseenher at the grocery store, who contours their cheeks to buytonic water—” I gesticulate violently with the Meyer lemons.

“Is she going to this dance tonight?” Mom asks slyly.

“Oh, fuck,probably. Sorry,” I say quickly. I try not to curse in front of my mom. “But it’s not like these are his choices, me or Gretchen, there are lots of other women, not that I want him to date other women, or even dance with them, or—” I’m babbling, I realize, and pacing around our tiny living room with the kind of adrenaline that allows mothers to lift cars off their babies. Gabe justwouldn’t… would he?

Mom laughs at me outright. She drops the half-finished afghan on the couch and comes to put her arms around me. I stop frantically pacing and try to will my heartbeat to return to normal.

“Kayla, sweetie,” Mom says soothingly. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. I just want you to realize how lucky you are. Gabe’s a good boy. Take my advice and don’t let him slip away.”

27

Gabe

It’s 7:00 PM,but I’m only half-hungry-heartedly getting ready for Hungry Hearts. I’d gotten so far as to put my suit pants on, but then I flopped on my bed to turn the rock Kayla bought me for Valentine’s Day over and over in my hands.

“It’s world-renowned Missouri lace agate, according to the internet,” Kayla had explained over dinner at Rosie’s, the only good restaurant in the county besides the Kentwood Café. “I don’t know what’s so special about it, besides the fact that it’s pretty.”

“It’s not just pretty,” I said to her with a smile. “It’s tough, too. It can be up to 7.5 on the Mohs hardness scale.”

“Mm. That does sound hard,” Kayla smirked.

I grinned back at her. “It’s a rock that’s ready for anything. Drinking horns. Inkstands. Mortars and pestles. Jewelry, of course.”

“I wouldn’t want destroy a pretty rock for something I’m just going to drop down the drain.”

“Some people actuallywearjewelry, Johnson. It looks nice under the right circumstances.”

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