about it afterward. It was stormy, we both remember that.
“Calvin was still at the hospital and I was worrying one of the trees would come down on our house while I was sick and in my housedress, and then a handsome fireman would have to rescue me while I looked like his half-dead maiden aunt.”
The idea of respectable, maternal Diana having fantasies about firemen might’ve struck me as funny at another time. “You had the flu, didn’t you?” When I’d knocked on her door halfway through the next day, wanting to know if she’d heard from my mother, she’d been dressed in a ratty robe and clutching a bowl in readiness for throwing up, her face gray and eyes red.
“Stomach flu.” Diana shuddered. “Let’s not talk about that. It was bad enough to live through it once. But I spent the night in my bedroom and it doesn’t overlook the street. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think if I saw anything that might help, but the best I can come up with is something from earlier that day.”
When she hesitated, I sat forward. “Diana, my mother is gone. She’s only got us to look out for her now.”
30
Diana sighed. “It was Alice. I saw her and Nina from the upstairs window out front and could swear they were arguing—not shouting, but just . . . Their faces were different from usual, the way they looked at each other, all tight and tense. I wanted to go out there and see what was wrong, but my stomach was already giving me trouble and I didn’t want to throw up on the street. I thought I’d call Nina later and ask.”
Her fingers clenched on the mug, her eyes wet. “I didn’t even know I’d half convinced myself she was out there living the good life until you told me that they’d found her. All this time, I was hoping for that phone call, for a postcard, for something to tell me she was all right.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
“Oh, Aarav.” She reached forward to squeeze my hand. “We loved her, didn’t we? She was so bright and radiant and she never let go of her people.”
“Yes.” It was all I could get out.
Breaking contact, I deliberately took another bite of cake before looking at the wall of photos that surrounded the television. It’d been there as long as I could remember, but the photos had changed. No longer awash with images of a dark-eyed, dark-haired toddler and her preschool-age brother with unexpected hazel eyes, it was now a wall filled with images of Mia and Beau as teenagers. Photos pinned atop photos.
Dramatically gorgeous Sarah with her dancing brown eyes and thick, wavy long hair had once been front and center along with the kids, but her slender form had long been hidden by more recent photos of the family. It made me sad.
The only photo that hadn’t changed was the one on the top left—a faded snapshot of a young Calvin with his parents and older sisters, all of whom he’d lost when he was only fourteen. “I understand, Aarav,” he’d told me a couple of months after my mother’s disappearance. “I know the hole it creates in a person when the people they love leave without warning.”
I’d never asked for the details of the terrible car accident that had taken them from him. I hadn’t needed to know to accept that he did actually get it. He was one of the few people who did. It was why I’d always been able to see beyond Calvin’s outwardly stoic face. He’d built a wall of cold pragmatism around himself in a successful effort to survive.
I should’ve followed his example. Instead, I’d fallen into the bottle.
“Children grow so fast,” Diana said, pulling me out of my alcohol-soaked past. When I looked at her, she had a soft smile on her face. “Nina would’ve been so proud of the man you’ve become.”
Even as I hesitated, my heart suddenly painful, her face grew bright. “Hold on a moment.” Putting down her coffee, she padded out of the room.
I was still staring down into my now-cold drink when she returned almost ten minutes later. “Sorry it took so long, but I knew I had it.” She passed across several photocopied sheets of paper that had been stapled together.
A laugh burst out of me when I saw the title: Energy Vacuum. “Where did you get this?”
“Nina gave it to me after you won that literary prize.