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I SIPPED ON THE RIDICULOUSLY expensive coffee I had picked up to get me through the flight and scanned the departure boards to try and see exactly where I was going and when I would need to get there.
I was still exhausted from my night out, not to mention the panic of finding out my mother had suffered a fall and needed my help. I still couldn’t believe I had been on the other side of the damn world when she had gotten hurt, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to forgive myself for it.
I just forgot how old she was. In my mind, she was still the single mom who had been able to handle every little thing life threw at her when I was going up. Ever since my dad passed when I was little—a construction accident, my mother had never shared the details and I was happy to keep it that way—she had seemed so capable, so able to take on everything. The thought of her struggling for even a second seemed ridiculous, downright patronizing to consider, but clearly, I had put too much faith in her. Too much faith in her being able to deal with herself in her old age.
Maybe it had just been a way for me to convince myself there was nothing I had to worry about. To convince myself there was nothing wrong with me running off around the world, not returning home for damn near a decade at a time, because she didn’t need me. I had to believe she could cope alone, because if I thought any differently, I’d have to admit I was the problem. And I didn’t know if I could handle it.
I hadn’t cut off contact with her, of course. I still loved her. I still enjoyed talking to her. I called her up every now and then, and we chatted about what I had been doing, and she would fill me in on whatever gossip had been happening in Maple Valley, and I would listen to it all and, thank goodness, I had gotten out of there for good. I had left it all behind and I didn’t have to deal with all the horrible ins and outs of a place like that. People knew you too well, and I didn’t want to be known like that by anyone anymore. I wanted to be able to step into a new place and start over, without any of the baggage I normally had to drag with me. At least, that was what I kept telling myself, that was what I had to believe.
Maybe I was running from something. Leaving something behind I couldn’t bear to face. But I wasn’t about to dignify that with any kind of response; I needed to get back to my mother, and I could take on everything else waiting for me when I did.
I took another sip of my coffee, and grimaced at how nasty it was. In Madrid, you could get these one-Euro coffees on every corner that tasted like heaven, and it was all too tempting to put away three of them in a row to get rid of a hangover before a new meeting. I had texted Angela that morning to let her know I wouldn’t be able to help with her acquisitions for the near future, and I hadn’t heard back from her, though I doubted she would be pleased when she found out I was flaking on her.
The terminal I’d be leaving from flashed up on the board, and I grabbed my bags and started the long trudge across the airport to find it.
It was going to be one hell of a long trip, that was for sure. I hadn’t been able to find a direct flight home, so I was going to need to stop over in New York for a few hours, before I caught another one out to Virginia, after which I’d have to bus it down to North Carolina and make it to Maple Valley. I wished I could get there a little sooner, but this was the best I could do. I had called Mom to let her know I was going to be there with her soon, and I hoped she wouldn’t mind waiting for me just a little longer. She had sounded so excited on the phone, which only increased my guilt, as I tried to remember the last time I had made her that happy.
Okay. I didn’t have time to sit around and feel terrible right now. I needed to think about what I was going to do when I got there. It had been so long since I had been back to the town I’d grown up in, I couldn’t even imagine how I was going to fit into it. What would people say when I came back? What would they think? I truly couldn’t even imagine, my brain aching as I tried to wrap my head around it. All the people I had been to high school with, who likely had families and kids and jobs they could boast about. And what did I have to show for all of it?
I waited in the terminal and tried to get a little sleep, but my mind was already overridden with all the panicky thoughts of what could happen when I got back there.
And what about my job while I was away? One of the things I had most prided myself on was being able to hop to anything at a moment’s notice, and now, I was totally giving up on that. I was basically backing down on everything I had worked so hard to achieve in my life, and it bugged the hell out of me to think what people might make of me now. I wasn’t sure it would be so easy for me to go back to my work again after this. Maybe I was giving up more than I was actually ready to.
I pushed it all down. That was conjecture. What wasn’t conjecture, though, was the state my mother was in—the doctor wouldn’t have called me unless he really thought she needed someone. Did she still have me as her emergency contact? Unlikely. I would have heard about this before if she did. I was probably far down on the list of people she needed to talk to if something happened. I was so far away, what good would it have done, after all?
I felt another twist of guilt in my guts and ignored it. I needed to put my feelings aside right now, there was no point in dealing with this mess until I got home. She needed me, and she didn’t need me making a fuss and sounding crazy because of my own guilt. I was sure she would have told me she had bigger things to worry about right now, and she would have been right. I didn’t want to get in the way of it.
My phone rang loudly, drawing the attention of another few travelers around me who were also making the voyage from Spain to New York. I glanced around with an apologetic expression on my face and lifted the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Ellie,” Diego greeted me. I winced. I knew what this was going to be about, before he had so much said another word.
“Diego, hi,” I replied. “I assume you got my email this morning?”
“About you missing the meeting?” he asked. “Yes, I suppose we all sometimes go too hard on a night out.”
He sounded irritated, but I was more pissed off by the notion I would just drop out of something I had agreed to do because of a hangover. And I needed to make sure he and everyone else understood I was going to be out of the picture for a while. It might not be what any of them wanted to hear, but I wasn’t going to sit around and let them spin my story to pretend I was going to go back to work in no time.
“No, I’m going to be out for a while,” I told him. “Not just this meeting. Like I said in my email.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, sounding impatient. He had likely only skimmed the email vaguely, brushing over it to take out what he thought he needed to, and was now even more annoyed by me trying to correct him.
“I’m talking about going back home,” I told him, as firmly as I could. “I’m not going to be in Spain for a while. And I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can pass up on this. I have to go.”
He sighed heavily. I could practically see how angry he was, but I couldn’t let it get to me. I hated letting people down, but it was either him or my own mother, and the choice was obvious.
“How long are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, truthfully. I had to be straight-up. I had to be in this for the long haul, even if it was going to cause problems with my work. I had a decent amount of money stashed away from all the time I had spent working my ass off, and I hoped it would be enough to cover everything my mother needed as well as keep me in coffees as long as I was there.
“I see,” Diego replied icily. He didn’t like being let down. The two of us had worked together since I had arrived in Spain, and I had always respected his approach to the job, his commitment to getting things done. It didn’t surprise me he was being so cold now he thought I was fucking him over, but honestly, I couldn’t let it get to me. I had to have my own mother at the front of my mind right now, not the feelings of some guy who would likely be able to replace me in ten minutes.
“I’ll speak to you as soon as I know more,” I offered him, but I could already tell I had firmly cut off any chance I had to get back in his good books.
“Safe travels, Ellie,” he told me. And with that, he hung up, leaving me sitting there in the terminal, and feeling like that name might have been more appropriate than ever before.
I finished my coffee and climbed onto the plane, along with the rest of the travelers who were leaving this early in the morning. They all looked as exhausted as I did—were they going back to the same troubles I was? Nobody booked a flight this early unless they had a damn good reason. I wished I could talk to one of them, just to get my mind off things, but as soon as the plane lifted off, tiredness hit me like a tidal wave, and I passed out.
By the time I woke up, the plane was taxiing in to land in New York, and I felt as though I had just been through a time warp that had dumped me from my normal life in Spain back to America with no fair warning. I rubbed my hand over my face—my skin was dry and flaky, and I knew I would be looking at a breakout as soon as I got back home—and yawned. I needed another coffee. Several, actually, if that was an option.
I pulled out my phone and dialed my mom’s number as soon as I got the chance. I wanted to let her know I was really doing this. I was sure she must have had her doubts about me actually coming all the way out there to help her, but I needed her to understand this was real—I needed her to understand how seriously I was taking this. Yes, I hadn’t exactly been the best at being there for her, but I was going to change that for good, from this moment out.
“Hey, Mom,” I greeted her, stifling another yawn as soon as she picked up. I could hear the smile in her voice before she even responded.
“Hello, sweetie!” she called down the line to me, as though she could hardly believe how lucky she was to listen to my voice. I felt another stab of guilt in my chest, and did my very best to ignore it. I couldn’t go through with this just because I felt guilty, that wasn’t going to get me anywhere; I needed to do this because it was the right thing, because I believed in my heart of hearts I should be there. I didn’t want to screw this up by making it her problem as well as mine, that I had been away for so long.
“Hi,” I repeated myself, trying to pull myself together. “I just wanted to let you know I’m in New York. I’m going to catch my next flight out to Richmond, and then I’ll be catching the bus across to Maple Valley, all right?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, her voice flooded with such warmth it made my heart hurt. Just how long had I left her with nobody, again?
“I’ll see you soon,” I promised her. I wanted to stay on the line with her a little longer, ask her if she was okay and how she was feeling, but she would have told me everything was all right no matter what she was handling right now. She didn’t need me to press for an answer she wasn’t willing to give.
“See you!” she chirped, and she hung up the phone, leaving me with nothing but the bustle of the airport around me—and the distant feeling, somewhere at the back of my mind, that Maple Valley was even further away than it had ever been.
