Return To You - Leia Stone Page 0,89
going to listen to Autumn's voicemail, so I'm left with no choice. I have to ask her what the hell is going on.
I pull open the sliding glass door and stick my head out. "Food," I yell to Faith and Autumn.
We sit around the small table in the adjoining dining room, barely speaking as we shovel the food into our mouths. Autumn catches my eye and smiles at me, and though I manage to return the smile, my heart isn't really in it.
My heart is terrified Autumn's going to leave me behind a second time, and this time … I’m scared I won’t survive it.
Chapter 24
Autumn
I can’t believe yesterday I smoked weed with my mom and Owen, and tonight she smoked again and ordered a bunch more food. It’s amazing. She’s laughing, her appetite is up, and I think she might actually gain some weight, which Owen said could prolong her life.
I skip to the kitchen after asking my mom to pause the movie so I can make popcorn. Owen is working a late night, doing rounds at the hospital, and I’m getting just what I need. Quality time with my mom.
As I toss the popcorn in the microwave, my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I see it’s from Jeanne, I hightail it to my bedroom to talk in private.
"Hi," I say quietly, the phone pressed to my cheek. I close my bedroom door softly so I don't draw attention to what I'm doing.
"Autumn, hello. Is this a bad time?"
"No, no, it's fine," I answer, even though it's really not fine. I've already told Jeanne I don't plan to return to the city. I have no idea what I'm doing here in Sedona, but I know I can’t live without Owen. I need to tell him about Jeanne and the job offer, but I know what he will say. He'll tell me to go for it, that we can figure out logistics, that I can't pass up an offer like this. He’ll tell me to follow my dreams—the same shit my mother did when I left for college. Well, look where that got me…
Fucking marzipan. No way. Not leaving again.
"I talked with a couple other members of the team and, despite what you've already said, we're hoping if we were to sweeten the comp package you might look differently at the offer."
"Jeanne, I—”
"Autumn," I hear my mother's voice through my closed door. Her tone doesn't sound like an inquiry as to why I'm taking so long with the popcorn. It sounds more like worry. Panic rises in my throat, filling the space, and I wrench open the door. My mom stands there, her expression blank.
"Mom?" The panic I feel saturates the word.
Her knees begin to buckle and, in the doorway to the room she painted lavender after I'd begged her to when I was twelve, she wilts like a flower.
"Mom," I scream, catching her under the arms before she hits the ground. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear my phone clatter to the floor.
"Autumn?" Jeanne's voice floats into the air. "Autumn?"
Holding my limp mother in one arm, I grab the phone. I hang up on Jeanne and dial 9-1-1. It's a sequence of numbers I've never dialed, and hoped to never need to.
The woman who answers is kind, efficient, and knowledgeable. She stays on the phone with me until the ambulance arrives.
My mom doesn't wake up, not when she's lifted onto a stretcher, not when I sob over her in the back of the ambulance, not even when Owen runs into the emergency room and tells the doctor about her current condition.
I've never seen him so in command and confident. At least that's how he appears on the outside. But I know Owen. That authoritative exterior? A facade.
On the inside, he's got to be as terrified as I am.
I hear Owen before I see him. He's speaking to someone else, someone beyond the white and blue patterned curtain that gives my mother a bit of privacy in the emergency room.
Owen's face appears around the curtain. He looks at my mom first, then at me, and straightens, pulling the curtain aside.
"Good to see you awake, Faith." He smiles the easy smile of a man being handed a cocktail on a tropical beach. As if he doesn't have a care in the world, as if he isn't in a place that smells like cleaning products and sounds like scuffed shoes and beeping.
I forget for a minute that he