he’d pay for these fun seat covers I want. It’s going to be the best birthday!”
“You didn’t want a big party?” I asked.
“Ugh, no.” She made a face. “People can be super fake, you know? I’d rather have an awesome night with my actual ride-or-die friends.”
“So wise so young.”
Bright laughter.
“That’s a pretty nice gift.” I nodded in the direction of her watch. “Aunt Sarah obviously got it right.”
“Yes, she’s good at giving presents.” Mia admired her watch again. “Plus she gets them from all over the world! Last year, she went on a cruise to Venice with a bunch of her girlfriends, and she brought back the most amazing glass sculpture for me—and she sent Beau old sheet music that he freaked out over. Nerd.” It was said with laughing affection.
“I mean, if she and Mum talked, I’d think Mum must’ve told her what to get, but they don’t. Aunt Sarah just listens, you know?”
“You two talk a lot?” I slowed down to allow an elderly man to cross the road.
“I mean, we email once a month. She’s so nice, she never judges me.”
“No phone calls?”
Mia shook her head. “Maybe from next year? That’s when I get my own phone.”
“But you already have one,” Pari piped up from the backseat.
“Yeah, but it’s linked to my mum’s so she can see all my messages.” A roll of the eyes I could hear in her tone. “But Beau got his own phone from seventeen, and Mum says I can, too. She’s freaked out that I’ll be groomed or something by child mo—” She threw a glance at the very interested backseat passenger. “You know, bad people.”
Pari was unfazed. “We learned about online safety in school.”
“You think Sarah doesn’t call so your mum can’t get her details?”
“It’s so weird,” Mia responded. “I mean, Beau can be a butthead, but I’d still never totally not talk to him. I guess whatever happened, it was a super big deal. Neither one of them will ever say what it was.”
“Does she call Beau?”
“No, but he hates talking on the phone. He just doesn’t pick up.”
I wondered again what had caused the irreparable schism between the sisters. Diana appeared ready to bury the hatchet, but Sarah clearly wasn’t in agreement. So unless Sarah was an asshole, Diana was the one who’d done the unforgivable.
It wasn’t any of my business, but I kept thinking: what if one of the two died? What if they never got a chance to fix the relationship? It would haunt them. As my final moments with my mother haunted me.
We hadn’t fought. Nothing like that.
“Ari, beta, we’re off.” A quick kiss on the cheek as I sat in front of the computer.
I’d barely looked away from the game on the screen as I said, “Party hard.”
My last glimpse of my mother might’ve been a fleeting snapshot of her in my bedroom doorway, her lips parting as she laughed—but something had made me get up and go to the landing, watch her walk down the stairs. She’d looked up once, and then she was gone . . . for the last time.
All three of us went quiet as I drove deep into the shadowed and rainy green of Scenic Drive, past the sheer drop where my mother’s car had gone off the road. It was Mia who broke the silence at last. “That must make you sad.”
“Yes.” She was too young to understand that I was full of as much rage as sadness, as if one couldn’t exist without the other. “But I’m glad we’ve found her after all this time.”
“Will you have the funeral soon? Mum was crying and saying she hates it that she has to bury her best friend, but she also wants to stand up for her. She said she’ll wear a dress your mum gave her even though it’s bright red.”
“I have to wait until the police say it’s okay.” In truth, I hadn’t thought about burying the bones since the day they’d been found.
My mother was dead; there was nothing of her left in those bones. But maybe a funeral would help turn over some rocks, bring more dark secrets to light. Checking everyone’s alibis for that night was an impossibility at this point—ten years on, spotty memories weren’t exactly suspicious.
A motorcycle wheel on wet tarmac, rain hitting the face shield of my helmet.
Transcript
Session #10
“She had a profound impact on your life.”
“Yes. Some days it’s all I can do to stop thinking about her—as if she’s taunting me.”