Page 104 of Promise Me Sunshine

I slide into leggings, the Big Bird sweatshirt, and my jean jacket. I have to go.

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After a briefstop at a bodega and a long train ride, I’m standing outside wrought-iron gates I can’t pass through.

Greenwood Cemetery is a beautiful, peaceful place. A pond is in there. Flocks of migratory birds. Blue skies and a patchwork quilt of rolling hills.

Lou is in there, too.

I’ve wanted Lou, mourned Lou, grieved her.

But this is the first time since she’s died that I’ve actuallyneededher. These feelings for Miles…it’s the first time in my life I’ve felt this way. I’m aching, panicking, and promptly rethinking every single leap in logic I just took to get myself here.

Why did I think coming here was going to help clear my head?

My stomach is churning, my heart burning. I put one hand on the wrought-iron threshold that I cannot make my body cross.

My hands shake and I jam them into the pockets of my jean jacket.

What will I say when I get to her grave?

Sorry I don’t come visit you? Are you taking care of the part of me that died along with you? Are you warm enough? Are you happy?

“Oh, Lou.” I drop down to a three-point stance, rightthere in the entrance of the cemetery. I can’t be the only person who couldn’t make their legs take another step inside these gates.

If I weren’t feeling so confused about Miles I’d call him and gripe.The change of scenery didn’t work,I’d tell him. I reach into my pocket and pull out the Snickers bar I bought at the bodega on the way here. I take half of it down in one bite.The something bad for me didn’t work either, you know-it-allis what I’d say to him.

But then I realize I’ve likely left out the most important component of his recipe for feeling better.

I pull out my phone and pull up a contact.

Something good for me.

Oh, this is going to hurt.

I swallow the rest of the Snickers bar and I can’t tell if my heart is racing from what I’m about to do or because I’m the closest I’ve been to Lou in months.

On a deep breath, I press call. The phone barely makes it through the first ring before it’s answered. I gasp words, reveal my location.

“I’ll be there in twenty.” The words come through the line, clear as a bell. “Wait for me.”

I’m grateful for the instruction. I lean against the iron fence around the cemetery and wait.

Twenty minutes later on the dot, I lift my head and look up toward the hill that Lou is buried on the other side of. The sun is off-kilter beside it and a woman atop it is backlit and distant. I push to a stand and now the woman walking down the hill is twenty yards from me.

When I called, I didn’t expect her to walk through the cemetery to get to me.

“Mom,” I shout, my voice like a frog.

She stops in her tracks, scanning for me. The wind musthave carried my voice because she looks back over her shoulder, in Lou’s direction.

“Mom!” I call again, this time my voice stronger.

She whips around, locates me, pauses, and then breaks into a flat-out run. She’s a marathon runner, so this is not shocking. Her peacoat flaps open around her hips; her long dyed-dark ponytail sails behind her. As soon as she’s upon me I’m in her arms, inside her coat, my hands gripping her sweater and hanging on like I’ve been lost in a grocery store and she’s just found me.

“Baby,” she gasps into my hair. She takes me by the shoulders and pushes me back to look at me. “Where have youbeen.”

Her tears are like glass spears down her cheeks. Her fingers turn into talons on my shoulders and she repeats her question. “Where have you been?”

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