Day Six
I DRIVE TO NORTHERN California on the I-5, the ugly way, which is the fastest way. The way that gets you there in roughly seven hours if you don’t stop. And I don’t.
The drive is straight and flat, except for the twenty-minute stretch of the “Grapevine.” Cows, smog, and faded Larry Elder for Governor signs are the only views during daytime hours, but it’s night.
I focus on the road ahead. Every mile I clock is one mile closer to seeing my mom. My precious mom. The person that loved me the most on the planet, who I’m going to save before this criminal family takes her down. This time, I’ll hug her so tightly that I’ll never let her go.
After seven hours, I finally reach the San Geronimo Valley and continue heading north until I arrive at Lucia Beach. It’s Sunday morning.
I pull over and quickly Google the local senior recreation center. If she taught psychology at the center in the other town where Billy got them to let her go, there’s a good chance she got a job doing the same thing here.
I keep driving until I reach a small one-story building perched on a foggy hill surrounded by large trees. I park in front and step inside. A group of seniors is playing Scrabble in the main hall.
I walk up to the information desk, and a young woman greets me with a warm smile, freckles covering her nose and cheeks, and a name tag on her shirt with Mandi handwritten.
“Are you here to pick up one of your parents?” she asks.
YES! I want to shout.
“Not exactly,” I say. “I’m wondering if you offer any psychology classes here.”
“We did, but funny enough, the teacher just quit. She said she had a family emergency. We’re hoping to find someone to replace her.”
The tears start flowing. I haven’t slept since I returned from New York. I don’t remember the last time I ate since I was discharged from the hospital.
I sit on a beige metal fold-up chair next to the information desk and weep. Weep for every hole left inside of me since Mom was forced to disappear from life when I was fifteen.
“Are you okay?” Mandi asks me.
“No,” I say. “I’m trying to find my mom, and I think she might’ve been teaching a psychology class here, but she’s gone.”
“Oh, you’re her daughter?” she says. “She might still be here. She just left a minute ago through the back.” Mandi points to a door in the back of the center. “A man came to speak with her, and then she packed up quickly—”
I don’t wait for Mandi to finish. I run down the hall and swing open the door to a gravel road. But I don’t see Mom.
I watch from behind as an elderly woman with a short gray bob that probably just finished a round of Scrabble is about to get in her car.
But when the woman opens the driver’s side to step inside, our eyes meet.
It’s her.
She stops and drops all the papers in her arms onto the white rocks below. Her curly brown hair is gone. She has aged in the decades since I last saw her, with wrinkles and sunspots, but then she smiles at me. And I’m transported back to a time when I was a young girl, and I’d come home after school and tell her all about my life.
“Beans?” she says.
I’m unable to speak, frozen, unsure if this is really happening because it doesn’t feel real.
She runs toward me and hugs me, and that’s when I know: This is real. Her love envelops me like a superpower. A superpower that had always made me believe I could do or be anything in this world. Something I thought I’d never experience again in my lifetime. I hug her back tightly and don’t let go.
“My little Beans,” she says, a sudden sob escaping her.
I break down too, and we stand there, in each other’s arms, weeping and speechless. “Mom …” I finally manage, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Billy just came here on his helicopter and told me I need to leave the country,” she says hurriedly.
“What?” I say, pulling out of our embrace.
“He’s turning himself in and telling the authorities the truth about Sally and Quentin’s role in Maria’s death. Quentin and his partners will be angry, and if they find out I’m still alive, they’ll retaliate the same way they did with Maria. Right now, they think I’m dead, because of the false remains. It has to stay that way for everyone’s safety, including yours.”
“Take me with you,” I say, grabbing her hand.
She shakes her head. “If you come, they’ll assume you fled to be with me and that I’m alive. Your safety will always be in jeopardy. I won’t let that happen. That’s why I left in the first place … to protect you.”
I start crying. “But I can’t lose you again.”
“You never did,” she says. “My love for you only deepened through the years. You’re my biggest blessing, what I always hold onto, especially when I feel sad or alone.”
I can’t stop crying.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” she says. “As parents, we want to protect our children from the most dangerous corners of ourselves, but sometimes we fail. I’m sorry my mistakes as a young woman cost you. I didn’t want you to learn about what happened to me in college the way you did. I had always planned to talk with you about it when you were older, but then I was forced to leave.”
“Where have you been all these years?”
“When I first left, I went to Maine—the farthest point from California on the US mainland. I knew I needed to be as far away from you as possible, or I would be too tempted to reenter your life, which would’ve put you at risk. Eventually, I made my way back west again. I wanted to feel closer to you, but I also knew I’d be tempted to reach out if I was in Southern California, so I settled north. Your dad and I kept in touch for as long as we could, meeting yearly. He pretended he was seeing his college buddies until that became too dangerous.”
“Wait, Dad knew you were alive all along?” I gasp.
She nods.
I feel my cheeks flush with anger. “So he lied to me for over a decade?”
“He did it to protect you,” she says.
“No,” I say, my blood boiling. “He betrayed me and let me struggle for all those years, thinking you were dead when he knew you were really alive.”
“He wanted to tell you the truth. He said it to me more times than I can count—he hated lying to you. But I wouldn’t let him. It was too dangerous for you to know. What if you had tried to find me and been killed?”
I quietly take in her words. After everything I’ve been through the last few days, she’s probably right. I would’ve been in danger if I had tried to find her, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. It now hits me—the burden Dad had to carry, lying to me all those years. But he did it to protect me.
“Do you know about what happened to me?” I ask. “Did he tell you?”
She nods. “I always found a way to follow your life from a distance. I know you struggled with anorexia. I know you became a psychologist. I know you were married and had a miscarriage. Dr. Larsen and I were in contact through the years. She, like me, marveled at your bravery.”
“I don’t feel very brave,” I say. “I have, or had, a boyfriend that I love, and he has a daughter, Sarah, who I’m crazy about. But I’ve always been too scared that I won’t measure up as a mom.”
“Sarah would be lucky to have you. You may not believe that yet, but I do,” she says, taking my hands in hers. I notice the charm bracelet on her wrist. She sees me notice it.
“Billy said you dropped my bracelet at his house,” she says. “Do you want to keep it?”
“Take it with you,” I say, blinking away my tears. “Where will you go?”
She shakes her head. I know she won’t tell me.
“I love you, Mom,” I say.
“I love you more,” she says. “Draw strength from this. Let it give you the courage to love others because you were and will always be loved. I need to go now.”
She hugs me tightly one last time, pulls out of the embrace, and swallows hard.
She picks up the papers she dropped on the ground, gets in her car, and turns on the engine, smiling at me through the window with tears raining down her cheeks.
I wave goodbye and watch her drive down the gravel road into the thick fog until she’s gone.