Never far enough away.
The possibility came to her. Of her own making. Far enough. Pieces of possibility that gathered together in a tight strand.
No matter what had happened, what had brought her to the aqueduct, the wondering was worse. She knows that. Slipping into blackness would leave Kyle with the same wondering that Daddy left her. The wondering that can never be satisfied.
For Kyle. And the wondering that eats. She opened her eyes. She couldn’t leave him with that.
And then on the heels of the chopped-up voices there was a whisper on a moonless night, a whisper as crisp as a cold breeze. Special, Zoe. Stars, Zoe. Whispers Daddy left her that meant something, too.
Zoe.
Full of life.
You can’t flush away life.
Mama didn’t. Mama made a choice.
So could she.
Fate…so much pushing it can’t happen any other way
unless you push back to make it not.
It was then her arms rose for balance and fear held every cautious step. The night was blacker, the beams narrower, the distance as far as forever, but she worked her way to the other side and fell into the dirt with gulping breaths.
She sat there in the dark, afraid to move. Shivering. Shamed. But alive. Never far enough away, but maybe a place far enough for now.
And then, amazingly, Grandma’s chopped-up words last of all as she searched in the dark for shoes she never found.
Be a good girl, Beth. Let’s put all this behind us. Start fresh.
Yes, Zoe thought. Fresh. Maybe not the fresh Grandma had meant. But fresh in her own way. Maybe the kind of fresh Aunt Nadine had to find.
Chopped-up voices. Bits and pieces. All a part of her now. Forever splintered into her for better or worse. But the choosing, the choosing is what Mama gave her. Not a peanut growing all on her own, after all, but something of Mama, too.
Bits. Pieces. Endings. Beginnings. And choosing.
She throws her pillowcase into the trunk and looks up at the room one more time. She sees a hand slip the For Rent sign from the window. A momentary fear skips through her, but then she shakes her head. Opal’s bones always know. She has to believe that. They always know. She gets in her car and drives the quiet Sunday streets of Ruby to Mama’s and parks at the curb just behind Mr. Henderson’s pickup. She gets out and pauses at the gate.
The weeds have grown thicker; the summer blooms are all gone. She stares at the house and imagines it with daisies crowding the porch. She imagines a cool, lazy sprinkler and open, breezy windows and a lawn that is almost green. She imagines a young woman sitting on the steps weaving daisy chains into her hair and a man chasing a little boy with a hose.
It used to be a house, she thinks.
You could almost have called it pretty.
The chain-link gate groans as she passes through.
She stops at the steps and looks down at a faded doormat that once said “welcome.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the last apricot in Ruby, maybe the last one in the universe, and sets it on Mama’s doormat. She takes a step back and looks at it. An apricot out of season. Mama loved apricots. Loves apricots. Zoe hopes she sees it.
Fifty
One hand drapes Kyle’s shoulder, and the other opens the door of the Thunderbird. Kyle’s shoes scrape the gravel like a puppy, digging to find a safe place. He looks at the overloaded car, bags and pillowcases filling the back seat. “Where you going?”
“Brownsville.”
“Where’s that?”
“About as far as you can get from Ruby and still be in Texas. It’s where Aunt Nadine is.”