Page 81 of The Challenger

“Listen,” he says, bristling. “If I gotta suck it up and let Brandon Dixler help my ass, you can deal with Mama.”

I relayed the news of Brandon's offer earlier in the day, and Chavez had no choice but to reluctantly agree by saying, quote: ‘Just my luck, it has to be him with the fucking solution.’ End quote.

The kettle starts to scream and I wrap up our call. “I should run, babe. I’ll FaceTime you later.”

“Tell her I say hi, all right?”

I steep two peppermint teas and wander into the living room with outrage swirling hot in my belly. What Earl did today was so wrong. That he can get away with it bothers me the most. Cori clocks my shaking hand when I set her mug on the side table. Immediately after I sit next to her on the old love seat, she drapes a knitted blanket across my lap and tucks the blue wool under my thighs. She lowers the volume on the TV, blows on her tea and waits. Her general approach to mothering was to let me come to her if something was bothering me.

Eventually, the silence gets to me.

“Chavez says hello.”

She smiles. “How was his day?”

“A little crazy.”

“Everything okay?”

I fleetingly mentioned Chavez and the betting circumstances at dinner. And we spent a lot of time discussing my desire to switch career gears away from non-fiction. But I didn’t share everything.

“There’s a lot going on right now,” I say.

Cori reaches for my knee and squeezes it. “I’m glad you found someone special. I wish you could see your face whenever you talk about him. Consider yourself lucky.”

I slurp my tea and try to mask my upheaval. On the shelf beside the TV are all my books, shelved in publication order. Next to them is a photo of the three of us grinning, taken on the day my Stanford acceptance letter came in the mail. Cori and Edgar both look so young. The sting of lost time cuts deeply again.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I blurt out. “I’m sorry for everything.”

Her lips press into a tight line, all the fine wrinkles around her mouth bunching. She sets her tea down and hugs me fiercely.

“I want you to know you are loved, Flynn. You have always been loved. The biggest regret of our lives was not telling you sooner.”

Cori rocks me gently, sniffling between ragged breaths, and I have never needed the comfort of a mother more. When I pull back to cuff my nose, Cori reaches for a nearby Kleenex box. We honk loudly into our tissues, eyes bright with tears. The space around my heart widens with every passing second. I go for it, addressing the elephant in the room.

“I looked for her,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “Up in Oregon. In Madras, where she was living when you met her.”

Cori stills. We have never had a rational discussion about my birth mother, Ava Reid.

“And?”

“Nothing, aside from her obituary.”

Over two days on a stinking hot July, I had canvassed strangers on the street, in cafes, and at the supermarket. But either I came across as unhinged, or Ava had lived like a ghost. Whatever the case, no one knew anything about her. A clerk at the local newspaper office searched their online files and sadly informed me of her death five months prior.

“I am so sorry you never had the chance to meet her,” Cori says quietly. “And I know you never believed what we told you, but I swear she was adamant about not keeping you. And honestly, she seemed mentally unstable. Not quite all there.”

Ava had been part of a cult, is what they told me. Because I could never confirm this, I lied about her inPieces of a Pisces.Shaped her into who I wanted her to be. She became a mother who had died in childbirth—a good and honest woman and not some cult freak who abandoned her bastard daughter. Considering my fame, I’m surprised no one has ever dug deeper into that lie. But what kind of heartless fool questions a mother dying so brutally and poignantly?

And no one ever did.

In retrospect, I think it was my way of testing the universe. To see if someone would come forward.

“My adoption records said the father was unknown, but … did she ever mention anybody?” I ask.

Cori strokes my arm with a far-away look. “It’s funny, the things you remember about people. For some reason, I distinctly remember that she spoke in the singular. Neither Edgar nor I sensed she was involved with anyone. And she insisted she never knew who your father was. Why do you ask?”

I chew on my thumbnail. With the topic of Ava broached, it feels like the right time to bring up the stalker. Maybe Cori can offer some insight or recall a lost detail. Remember something.

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