Chapter 8
Vanessa sounded frightened enough that Dad put the call on speaker.
Mia hadn’t come home from her counseling appointment. Her phone was off. She had left a note saying she needed to go somewhere nobody knew her.
“How long has she been gone?” Dad asked.
“Three hours.”
“Did she take a bag?”
“A backpack. Some cash.”
Dad asked Vanessa to contact Mia’s friends while he called the counselor’s office. I listened, my new dress still on, and felt a knot form in my stomach.
I was angry with Mia. I also remembered the way she had looked in the hall when she admitted what she’d done. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.
Dad glanced at me. “You don’t have to get involved.”
“She might call me,” I said. “Let me know what you find.”
I changed into jeans. Then I checked my messages.
There was one from Mia, sent forty minutes earlier.
Do you still have Mom’s letters?
I showed Dad. “She means my mom.”
I answered: Yes. Are you safe?
No reply came.
Dad tried calling her. Straight to voicemail.
Vanessa called back to say one of Mia’s friends had seen her at the bus station. She was sitting near the ticket counter, alone.
Dad and I drove there. Vanessa met us outside, looking nothing like the composed woman who used to correct my posture at dinner. Her hair was loose, and she had forgotten her coat.
“I pushed her,” she said as we walked. “I told her she’d humiliated us. I said she needed to fix everything with David before school started.”
Dad stopped. “She can’t fix our marriage.”
“I know.” Vanessa wiped her face. “I know that now.”
We found Mia on a bench at the far end of the station. Her backpack sat at her feet. She hadn’t bought a ticket.
She saw us and stood. “I’m not going back yet.”
Vanessa took one step toward her, then stopped. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
Mia looked at me. “Why did you come?”
“Because you asked about the letters, and then you stopped answering.”
She seemed surprised that I had read her message as a request for help.
Dad kept his voice low. “You don’t have to decide anything here. We just needed to know you were safe.”
Mia sat down again. After a moment, Vanessa sat several feet away. Dad remained standing with me.
“I thought if I left, Mom could tell everyone I was the problem,” Mia said.
Vanessa’s eyes filled. “I told you that you had to take responsibility. I didn’t mean you had to carry mine.”
“You helped me make that email.”
“I did.”
“You told me Aaliyah was getting everything.”
Vanessa looked at me. “I said things about you that I should never have said.”
I wanted to ask how many. I wanted to know whether she had ever seen me as a daughter.
The bus station wasn’t the place to hear the answer.
Mia stared at her hands. “I thought Aaliyah’s mom left her all those letters because she was special.”
“She wrote them because she knew she was dying,” Dad said gently.
“I know.” Mia’s voice shook. “I understood that after I threw one away.”
I thought of Mom’s draft in my room. Its words had helped me. They couldn’t make the original letter come back.
“I don’t want you to think what I did is okay,” Mia said to me.
“I don’t.”
“I wanted to ask how you kept reading them. Knowing she wasn’t coming home.”
The question caught me off guard.
“Some years I couldn’t,” I said. “I’d put a letter away for months. Then I’d want to hear her voice, and it was the only way I could.”
Mia looked down.
Vanessa said, “Mia, we can go home. I’ll listen.”
“You always tell me I’m fine before I get a chance to say I’m not.”
Vanessa’s face crumpled.
Dad moved a little closer. “Would you rather talk to Renee tonight? Or your counselor?”
“My counselor,” Mia said.
Vanessa nodded. “I’ll call her.”
I watched her do it. She gave Mia the phone and let her speak for herself.
We waited until the counselor arranged an appointment for the next morning. Then Mia picked up her backpack and walked to Vanessa’s car.
Before she got in, she turned to me.
“I’m glad you still have the draft.”
“Me too.”
That was all we could say to each other.
On the drive home, Dad kept both hands on the wheel.
“I’m glad we found her,” he said.
“Me too.”
“You don’t owe her anything because you came.”
“I know.”
It mattered that he said it. Months earlier, he might have asked me to make peace before I was ready.
When we got home, I hung my repaired dress in the closet. I took Mom’s draft from its folder and read the last lines again.
She hadn’t told me I had to be endlessly kind. She had hoped I would know my own worth and find people who knew it too.
Two weeks later, I moved into my dorm.
Dad carried the heavy boxes. Aunt Renee made my bed. Tessa helped me put photographs on the wall.
After they left, I stood alone in the little room and waited to feel scared.
I did.
Then my phone buzzed.
Dad had sent a picture of the kitchen fridge. My graduation photo was still there. Beside it, he had pinned a blank sheet of paper.
May you like
For whatever you do next, his message said.
I smiled and went to meet my roommate.
