I didn’t stop to think once I read the text from Bauer.
Bauer:
I found the ex-boyfriend she’s been staying with. Planning to go to his place tonight. Feel like this is it.
Adrenaline spiked through my bloodstream making my hand jumpy as I texted him back.
Me:
I can be there in six hours. Where do I meet you?
I know the place he tells me to go to, a restaurant off Fay Avenue that we could never afford to eat at. And then I just drive. All I can think to do is get there, find her, and make sure she’s okay.
Images of the way I found her on the floor and the taste of vomit on my lips as the 9-1-1 operator talked me through giving her CPR pound through my head, weighing my foot down heavier and heavier on the gas pedal.
When my phone rings, I answer without even registering the name.
“Bauer?”
“Ethan,” my grandfather says. “What is going on? Neel showed up and said you took off?” His voice is tight, bracing himself for the news he’s been dreading for decades.
I swerve around a car that’s going too slow and don’t answer fast enough.
“Ethan—”
“It’s okay. She’s not—I found her. I’m heading to meet somebody who knows where she is. I can be there in—” I pull my phone from my ear long enough to glance at the time “—six and a half hours.” I speed up. “Less maybe.” Then I notice the low battery icon and the nearly nonexistent sliver of red that’s left.
“Just come home and we’ll figure out a plan.”
Multiple blaring horns yank my eyes back to the road and the red light I’m blazing through as cars on either side of me slam their brakes.
Shit. I inch my foot off the gas and tighten the one hand I have on the wheel, barely hearing the increasingly agitated words coming through the phone.
“—not a good idea.”
I didn’t even see that light. I could have been hit or slammed right into—
Rebecca.
My foot eases all the way off the gas just as my phone dies and my grandfather’s words cut off.
Cars blur around me, some honking, others staring.
I didn’t call Rebecca; I didn’t even think about anything else when I got Bauer’s text except getting to my mom.
My car rolls to a stop, right in the middle of the lane.
I chuck my worthless phone on the floor and yell.
And then I accelerate because I’ve never been able to do anything else.
I rewatch my mom’s overdose in my mind for 372 miles until I reach Bauer’s restaurant and practically throw myself from the car to escape the memory the second I see him. He’s scanning the parking lot for the skinny little twelve-year-old kid I was the last time he saw me so his gaze travels right past me before jerking back.
“Holy shit, kid, look at you.” He laughs. “You’re as tall as I am.”
Taller from my vantage point. “Where are we meeting the ex-boyfriend? Does he know we’re coming?”
Bauer holds up two meaty hands. “Whoa, whoa. Gimme a sec. I haven’t laid eyes on you in over five years.”
I want to protest, but I’m noticing things about him too. I may have gotten taller, but he got wider. Not much, but considering he used to be whip lean, it’s noticeable. So’s the hairline that’s slightly receding at the temples. Gone are the twitchy movements too. Now he’s got his feet planted staring at me steadily.
He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and taps one out. “You know I didn’t think you’d drive right out here like this.” The cigarette bobs between his lips while he talks. “I could have gotten off work, put on something that isn’t smeared with steak sauce.” He gestures at the white apron he’s wearing, and then, as an afterthought, snatches the hairnet from his head.
His brown hair is a few shades darker than my own and once it falls free, you can’t really see that it’s receding anymore. He fusses with it for a moment. “Better?”
I nod. I don’t remember him being vain before. “My mom?”
“You’re like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?” He shakes his head. “No how are you or it’s good but weird to see you. ’Cause it’s feeling all kinds of weird to me. Kylan—that’s my sponsor—said to keep it simple when I saw you so I’ll try.” He takes a deep drag drawing my gaze to the glowing red tip of his cigarette illuminating his pale skin before offering me one.
“I thought you were a dad now.” I eye the pack of cigarettes he’s holding out to me.
“Oh, right. Shit.” He repockets the pack. “Okay, so Jensen, the ex, all I knew about him is that he lived in a van and always had a hard on for his camera. But then I remembered he had this sister who used to hook us all up with the sweetest—”
“Bauer,” I grind out.
“Right, right.” He taps his forehead with the hand holding the lit cigarette, sending little sparks of ash dangerously close to his hair. “Twenty years of frying your brain and it can be a little hard to stay on point. Where was I?”
I inhale through my nose before answering. “Jensen’s sister.”
“Exactly, so she was a lot easier to find and it turns out she still talks to her brother on the regular. Wanna guess what he told her last time they talked?”
“He’s with my mom.” I’m suddenly so lightheaded I nearly bend over to brace my hands on my knees. She’s okay. She’s with Jensen. He wasn’t ever that bad of a guy. He never let her do any of the really bad stuff when she was with him. Couldn’t have cared less about me, but the feeling had been mutual. Still of all the people she could have taken up with, Jensen was one of the better options.
“So let’s go. Where are they?”
“You didn’t get my messages? I’ve been calling you for hours.”
“My phone died and I didn’t bring a charger or...anything.”
“Like anything anything?” He squints past me to look through the window of my car. “Your grandmother let you come out here without at least a toothbrush and clean underwear?”
When I don’t answer, his gaze settles back on me. “You didn’t tell them, did you?” He takes a drag on his cigarette, holding it until he hits the filter. “Ah, kid, you can’t be doing that.” He starts patting down his pockets. “Call them on my phone and let them know you’re okay.” Then he stops and turns to glance back at the restaurant. “I left it in my locker. Wait here.”
I catch him by the arm when he starts to leave. “Who cares about my grandparents right now?” But even as I say it, I remember my grandfather’s voice earlier. After he stopped yelling, he’d just sounded worried.
“Don’t be like that. I didn’t raise you to be any better, but you have to be anyway.”
“You didn’t raise me at all.”
He sighs, hands on his hips. “You think I don’t know that? Before I got clean I didn’t have relationships, I took prisoners and held hostages. So, yeah, that’s what I’ve earned, but did they?” He shakes his head. “Can’t say that, can you?”
I flex my jaw staring at him.
“So I’m gonna go get my phone for you.”
This time I stop him with just my words. “I don’t know the number, okay? So unless you’ve got a charger in there, I’m not calling anybody.”
He mutters something about kids and technology, but then he’s moving again, not toward the restaurant, but toward the passenger side of my car. “Then I guess you’re coming home with me.”
I’ve got my hands in my hair, pulling it back from my face and trying not to jump out of my skin from impatience. “The only place I’m going is to find my mom. So just give me the address.”
Bauer’s gaze immediately darts away and a sinking feeling pulls at my limbs.
“What?”
“I drove by the place earlier just to check it out, you know, make sure there wasn’t anything you, uh, wouldn’t want to see.” He drops his cigarette and puts it out with his shoe, not looking up at me even when it’s just a smear on the asphalt. “They weren’t there. But,” he adds quickly, “I paid one of the neighbors to call when they come back. Might be a day or two...less than a week, for sure.”
I try telling myself I can wait that long. What’s a few days after all the time I’ve already waited? But my hands only tighten in my hair. And then his hand is patting me on the shoulder. I look from it to Bauer.
“Well, I don’t know.” He snatches his hand away. “Am I supposed to hug you or something?”
No, I don’t want anything else from him except finding my mom. And if I can’t do that tonight and one of his amends is offering me a bed and a phone charger, then what other choice do I have?
“Just get in the car, Bauer.”