He put coffee in a thermos and they got into his truck, starting the drive down the coastal highway to the small town of Coos Bay, Oregon.
Rebecca filled the silence with chatter, which was funny, because he had never taken her for much of a chatterer, but apparently when she was nervous she did a bit of it.
She told him about her first horse, and her second, about learning to ride and doing it even when her injuries hurt because it was the only thing that had brought her some comfort in the months and years after their mother had left. In the large amount of time she had learned to spend alone while her brother worked and she rattled around a small, empty house. It was why she had preferred the outdoors.
That made him wonder about something. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wondered about another person, but he wondered about her endlessly.
“You love the outdoors, so why do you run a shop on Main Street? It seems to me like it’s a pretty claustrophobic choice for somebody who spends all of her free time rambling around in the mountains.”
She paused for a moment, a stretch of silence and road passing before she spoke again. “Because it’s like a home. It’s every great holiday, warmth and spice. I had a friend for a little while when I was growing up, and her mom used to put spices on the stove, not for any practical reason, just to make the house smell good. She decorated for every holiday. I mean, meticulously. She kept it perfect. And it was so warm. To me, that was what home should be like. I had a house. Which, trust me I knew was lucky. Because if Jonathan wasn’t willing to work as hard as he did I wouldn’t have had that. But to have a home like that... I aspired to it. So, I guess I work in that home. My store is that slice of happiness I never had. And I want to give people a little piece of it. People who maybe don’t have it. Or people who want to.” She took a deep breath. “Other than the outdoors, it’s pretty much the perfect place as far as I’m concerned.”
“Why doesn’t your house look like that then?”
He had a feeling it wasn’t something he should ask. Had a feeling that he shouldn’t take things deeper like this, not when it was so difficult for him to give anything else in return.
“I don’t know. It just never seemed like I could.”
Silence lingered between them for a moment before Gage spoke. “Sometimes I wonder which one of us is really punishing themselves, Rebecca.”
It was the last thing either of them said before he pulled the car onto a narrow, two-lane road that turned into dirt, leading to a small trailer park just out of town. “According to the directions you gave me, it should be here,” he said.
He watched as Rebecca clasped her hands in her lap, twisting at them nervously.
“Maybe nobody’s home,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “Maybe. Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath, putting her fingers on the passenger side handle. “Will you come with me?”
An unexpected slug of emotion hit him in the chest. She had gone with him when he’d gone to the hospital to see his sister, and he had been happier about that than he would like to admit. All things considered, he supposed he needed to be with her now.
“Of course.”
They got out of the truck and the two of them walked up to the small, faded yellow house with metal siding that was peeling up and a porch that seemed like it might collapse beneath the weight of the two of them.
She took a deep breath, raising her fist and knocking on the tin door, the sound hollow and unsatisfying.
Then the door opened, and Rebecca took a step back, leaning against his chest as though he were the only thing keeping her on her feet.
* * *
FOR THE SECOND time in the space of a few weeks Rebecca was staring down a person she had built up to be much larger in her mind that she was in reality. Much like Gage, her mother had become something of a legend in her imagination. Not a real person anymore, not an accurate memory.
The woman standing in front of her was, undoubtedly, her mother.