When I get back to Nona’s, she and Trudy decide to relieve the stress of the past hour by sipping wine on the patio. They invite me to join, but I grab my laptop and carry it into the living room, where I post up on the couch with Doritos and a determination to catch up on my work emails. Returning to an Ape House without Zuri in it might be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, and my stomach drops at the thought, but I can’t grieve at home forever. Keeva still needs me, and besides, it might help me to be around Jack and Lottie and other people who loved Zuri.
I’m skimming through a summary of the orangutans’ biannual dental exam when I’m interrupted.
“Luce?”
I glance up from my laptop to see Karina entering the living room. She glances at the two bags of Doritos, one on either side of me, but if she has thoughts about them, she keeps them to herself. “Hi. Do you . . . do you mind if I sit with you for a moment?”
My immediate inclination is to say no, but I pause before I can reject her with a polite excuse. If I can learn to be in the same room as my mother without feeling uncomfortable, it’ll make my life at Nona’s easier. And it might add some joy to Mia’s, which makes me think it could be worth a shot.
For Mia, then, I shove one of the Doritos bags aside. “Okay.”
Karina settles next to me onto the couch and crosses one leg over the other. She has the stiff, nervous posture of someone who’s about to get a root canal, and I realize she’s as uncomfortable as I am.
“What are you working on?” she asks.
“Oh. Work stuff.”
She nods, and I wait for her to make an innocuous comment about the weather.
Instead, she takes a deep breath and rests her hands in her lap. “Thank you for finding Mia today. It meant so much to her, and to Alfie and me, that you went looking for her. She told me what you two talked about.”
I nod. “It’s a conversation that was a long time in the making.”
“When she came home, she had some hard questions for me. About the kind of mother I was to you—am to you—versus the kind of mother I am to her.”
The thought of Mia holding Karina’s feet to the fire fills me with satisfaction, because Mia’s not one to let anybody off the hook, but it also fills me with a new brand of sadness. It sucks for Mia to learn that the mom who she thinks hung the moon is actually a flawed, complicated person, and I wish it was a lesson she didn’t have to learn.
“I’m sure she wasn’t easy on you,” I say, recalling the time Mia interrogated Trudy for an hour over her failure to properly recycle a soda can.
“Mia’s not easy on anybody who wrongs someone she loves. And she loves you more than you know.”
I think of her doodles of imaginary sisterly activities. “I think I’m starting to understand.”
“She asked me what happened when you were her age,” Karina continues, her voice raw with emotion. “Why I left you with Nona. How I could stand to leave you. Why I never told her, and if I’d do the same to her.”
I picture my indignant sister in her Girl Scout vest yelling questions at Karina, and the thought of her standing up for me almost brings me to tears. “What did you tell her?”
Karina looks up from her hands to study me, her blue eyes glistening. “I told her the truth: that I had a lot of problems when you were little. I was so young, and I thought my career was the most important thing in the world. I didn’t know how to be a mom, and I didn’t care to learn. I was selfish and immature, and the only thing I cared about was making sure that people knew my name. And in doing that, I ruined my relationship with the one person who should have mattered.”
She’s full-on crying now, but she doesn’t stop to wipe her tears. “I told her that I won’t do the same to her, not because my love for her is different, but because I’m different. I’ve learned and changed, but that does nothing to repair the damage I’ve done, and I will forever regret the awful choices I made.”
She’s only been sitting next to me for a minute, but this is already the longest, most intense conversation we’ve had since I was a kid, and a ball of emotion swells in my throat. The woman pouring her heart out next to me isn’t the mom who glared at me on the way home from my botched recital, or the Karina who tiptoes around me when she sees me at Nona’s, like she’s scared I might lunge at her if she says the wrong thing. She’s earnest, open, a woman I’ve never been able to let myself know.
Karina tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her hand shaking. “I know you don’t want anything to do with me, Lucy. And I don’t blame you. But I want you to know that I’m deeply, deeply sorry for how I treated you when you were younger, and in all the years since. I’ve been a terrible mother to you, and I tried to do the opposite for Mia, but I can see how that might have hurt you even more.”
I listen, not saying anything, and my hands are shaking, too. Because I know she’s decades too late to fix the damage she caused, but maybe hearing her acknowledge that damage in the first place is a start. I wonder what Kai would give to hear Dr. Kimber admit her wrongs and apologize for them, and I realize that at least in this small way—and granted, the bar is incredibly low—Karina has a big head start on her.
“Anyway,” she continues, clearing her throat and sniffling. “I know I’ve asked you to coffee and brunch and dinner a thousand times since we moved here, and I understand that you don’t want to spend time with me. And I don’t blame you one bit. But I want you to know that you are twice the woman I could ever hope to be. You are. And I know you’re too old to need a mom, but if you ever want a friend, or even an acquaintance, or somebody to scream at when you’re mad or sad or heartbroken, I’d like to try to be there for you. When you’re ready, if that time ever comes.”
Karina runs a hand across her cheek, smearing a trail of ruined mascara. Despite my distrust of her, I find myself believing that the emotion on her face and in her wavering voice is genuine. She might have been a well-known actress, but she wasn’t a particularly talented one, and she looks a lot like Mia when she cries. She probably looks a lot like me, too, even if I can’t quite see it.
“Anyway,” she says. “I just wanted you to know that.”
I’m silent as I look at Karina, with her perfect bob and gleaming white teeth and enough baggage to fill a flight from Columbus to San Diego. Nona’s been more of a mother to me than she ever has, and I’ve got the two best friends I could ask for in Elle and Sam. I don’t need another, but I suppose I could use a break from the decades of resentment I’ve carried. I suppose I could give things the chance to be different.
“I like pastries,” I say finally. “Cinnamon rolls. Maybe one weekend you and I can go get some together. With Mia.”
Karina sniffles again. “I would love that. I like cinnamon rolls, too.”
I nod back at her, and we just sit quietly next to each other for a moment. The silence is peaceful but awkward, and that’s okay. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“Mind if I just chill here for a bit?” Karina asks. “Mia asked for space and that I respect her boundaries, which means she doesn’t want me home for at least half an hour.”
I can’t help but laugh at Mia’s forthrightness. “Sure, I guess, if you don’t mind being bored to tears watching me read emails. Feel free to turn on the TV if you want.”
Karina nods and switches on the TV, sorting through streaming options until she settles on Married at First Sight. I’m not sure if she actually enjoys the show or just knows I do, but she gives me a small smile as she wipes her eyes again.
I don’t reach over to pat her hand or wrap an arm around her, because we’re not there yet. We might never be, and that’s okay. But I do pass her a bag of Doritos, and she reaches in and pulls out a handful, crunching loudly through her tears.
A few hours after Karina goes home to make peace with Mia, my laptop blinks a low battery warning. When I grab the charger, I notice Kai’s flash drive resting where he left it on the entry cabinet, and I can’t stop myself from picking it up. Watching it means subjecting myself to total emotional devastation, but I miss Zuri so desperately that I’ll do anything to see her face again. She was always my comfort when I was feeling down, and after the emotional roller coaster of my fight with Kai and conversations with Mia and Karina, I need her more than ever.
I take my computer to my bedroom, where I can sob in private. Tears well in my eyes before I even insert the flash drive, and my mouth goes dry as I click on the file that pops up. I expect a tragic clip of Zuri’s final moments to play immediately, but it doesn’t. The first thing I see is a reel of me hanging out with Zuri while she paints, laughing as she drops her brush on the paper and accidentally splashes me with paint. Next is footage of me conducting one of her daily wellness checks, pressing my fist against the mesh as she meets it with her enormous hand. Kai didn’t give me some devastating gorilla snuff video; it’s a twenty-minute montage of the moments I shared with her, big and small: Zuri grunting with excitement as I carry a bucket of watermelon toward her; me cheering like a crazy person as she slides Keeva onto her back; Lottie, Jack, and me laughing as Zuri fashions a piece of cardboard into a very stylish hat.
My tears fall fast and furious as I reminisce on each special memory, but I find myself laughing, too, at the more comedic scenes. It feels good to laugh, even if it’s against a backdrop of heartache, and I wish the reel could go on forever.
But then Kai’s video moves on to the clip I dread: footage of me bent over Zuri in the health center, whispering to her about how much I love her and that she will always be my smart, strong girl. It’s devastating and beautiful all at once, and I don’t even bother to wipe my tears as I sob into my hoodie. I watch my on-screen self say good-bye to the best gorilla of all time, and it takes ten minutes of counting to ten over and over until I feel like I can breathe again. But when I can, I feel for the first time since Zuri’s passing that, somehow, I’m going to be okay.
Because everything I’ve been through this summer—navigating life with the cameras, falling in love with Kai, learning the truth about Dr. Kimber, losing Zuri—has cracked my heart open and transformed it. I’m a new Lucy, and as I watch myself touch the streak of copper fur on Zuri’s head, I realize Kai was right.
Because when I look at that video, at that woman and the beloved gorilla, I don’t see only pain. I see something brighter, something deeper, something that will last until the end of time and long after that.
I see love.