Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,25

sight of the other, after having gone so long with phone calls and Skype sessions as their only points of contact.

It was just after three p.m. Bell had heard the Kia grinding its way up the street—an hour ago the plow had whittled a path up Shelton Avenue roughly the width of a single car—and she leapt up from her chair and raced over to open the door. By the time she got there, Carla was already crossing the porch.

The moment Bell touched her, it was all over. Carla’s stoicism crumbled. She wept, just as she had done in the little roadside store. Her body trembled, caught as it was in accelerating waves of an emotion too intense to be held inside a second longer.

“Mom,” Carla whispered. She was about to say the thing she did not want to say, because her mother was the bravest, strongest, steadiest, steeliest person she knew, and to admit this to such a person—even if the person loved her, as Bell unquestionably did, and did unconditionally—was shameful, ridiculous, unthinkable.

But also necessary. If, that is, Carla wanted to be able to take another breath. If, that is, she wanted to live past this moment and on into the next one, and then the one after that.

“Carla, sweetie—what is it? Is there anything I can—”

“I’m scared, Mom. I’m just really, really scared.”

* * *

And so they talked. Naturally, that’s what they did: They assumed their familiar positions in the living room as if no time at all had passed, as if this were four years ago and Carla was still a junior in high school and Bell still a fledgling prosecutor, both of them feeling their way through new roles in a new place that was also an old place. A known place. Bell automatically went for her favorite spot, the dilapidated armchair with the coffee-stain tattoos on all visible surfaces, and Carla’s straight-line path took her to the green couch, in the middle of which she plopped down and yanked off her boots and settled back against the nubby, pilled, all-but-worn-out fabric.

Carla closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, and only let the air out in staggered stages.

Bell looked at her daughter.

Home, Carla’s expression said, more eloquently than any words. I’m home now. Nothing else matters.

But the truth was, of course, that plenty else mattered. Time had passed. Too much time, really, for the illusion to last that being home could fix everything. Carla was a young adult now, not a teenager. The brief moment at the door—when Carla had dissolved in Bell’s arms, amid a frantic avalanche of tears and babbled, incoherent talk about having ruined everything, everything—was over. It had passed now. They were different people than they had been when Carla moved out, and even Bell’s furious love for her daughter was not enough to win the fight against all those years, all those changes.

So as Bell sat and waited for Carla to tell her the reason for her tears, she realized that no matter what Carla said, most likely it would not be the real story.

It would not be a lie, but it also would not be the real story. Carla would be vague, and she would give her the short summary version. The real story would be a while in coming—days, maybe, or even weeks. Carla, she knew, would understand that she owed her mother some explanation for having kicked over the barn of her current life and winding up in Acker’s Gap on a cold winter afternoon—but the long story, the thorough one, the one with all the loops and turnings, was not going to be forthcoming. Not today, anyway.

Carla opened her eyes. She offered Bell a tiny smile, a sheepish one, one that seemed to say: Can you even believe what a ridiculous baby I was just a few minutes ago? Crying like that? I mean—Jesus. Her cheeks were still shiny-wet with the ghost trails of the tears.

“God, Mom—sorry I lost it there for a minute.”

“It’s okay.” Bell let her eyes rove over Carla’s thin face. Her eyes seemed slightly sunken, ringed by smudges of fatigue. “You’re exhausted.”

“Yeah.”

Bell waited. With Carla, you could not come on too strong. You did not push. Pushing was counterproductive. It irritated Bell sometimes, having to be patient until Carla finally decided to open up, but this was the only way.

“In fact,” Carla said, adopting a breezy tone out of the blue, “that’s the problem. I’m, like, really tired. I could barely