Uncovering You 7: Resurrection (9 page)

The door.
Shit!
I left mine open. And all my stuff is inside…

I rush back, hoping and praying I haven’t been duped—and come to the door to see my worst fears realized.

The inside of my motel room has been wiped clean. My bags, my purse, my belongings, my cellphone—all gone.

“Motherfucking dammit!” I scream. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. I should have known better. I’ve stayed in dumps like this before. But my instincts have dulled in my time at Yale and with Jeremy.

This was a two-man job. The first, the driver, saw a young girl checking into a crappy motel, alone but clearly affluent, and identified her as vulnerable. He probably even had the room set up beforehand for exactly this type of thing. Then, while he served as the distraction, his friend staked out my room for the moment I left.

And I made it all-too-easy for them.

Idiot
! I scold myself. I reach into my pocket. At least I still have the car keys—

I’m distracted into looking up by the squeal of wet tires on the asphalt. And there, as if to add insult to injury, I find my red rented Corolla careening out of the parking lot, two figures clearly visible inside.

“No,” I say. “No, no, no, no…!”

My fingers wrap around the car keys. Obviously, they weren’t the only pair. That means the guy at the rental place was in on it, too. I’ve just been completely, utterly conned.

Despair wells up inside me as I watch the car shrink in the distance.

Way to go, Lilly,
I think.
The very first time you’re on your own, this happens.

I almost feel like breaking down on the spot.

But I don’t. I’ve faced adversity before. This is just a blip on the radar compared to what I’ve overcome with Jeremy. I’ve lost some stuff. So what? It’s not like it can’t be replaced.

The biggest fear I have—the one that is making me most uncomfortable—is what happens when Jeremy finds out? How much lower will his already-low perception of me become? He’ll think me completely incompetent.

That
is the impression I have to do everything to avoid. But what can I do? Who else could I call?

The cops? Hah! Like they’ll put any real effort into a small-time robbery like this? And if I call Jeremy now, I’d be doing little better than crawling back to him on my hands and knees.

That is not something I can allow myself to do.

So, I cast one look at the empty motel room…wrap my winter coat tight around myself…and start my journey toward the only person in the world on whom I swore I would never rely on again.

***

The wind picks up as I trudge along the side of the long, empty freeway.

I huddle into my jacket and pull the hood up. The entire way, I’ve had less than a dozen cars pass me. I really am in the middle of nowhere.

Two hours ago, I stopped at a city center and asked for directions to the diner. I was told that I’d gone the wrong way, that it lay back the way I came from.

I didn’t despair. Still determined to make it on my own, I cut my losses and turned around.

The day was bright, then. Now, the sun is blocked by heavy clouds. A wind that cuts through all the layers I have on makes me feel that chill to the bone. Any minute now, I expect it to start to snow, or sleet, or hail.

Just something to cap off an already craptastic day.

It doesn’t help much that I have nothing and no one but my own thoughts for company as I make the long walk down the abandoned stretch of road. They keep circling back to everything that has gone wrong since that phone call from Fey.

I don’t blame her. Nor do I blame Robin for bringing it to her attention. However, it seems that that bit of information started an enormous avalanche of shit. Nothing has felt right since. Jeremy took care of me on the weekend. But he’d gone cold after. There was the horrible Monday at work. The unexpected day off, on Tuesday, that eventually led me here. And now? Now what? I’ve been robbed, become the victim of something I should have known enough to avoid, and my damn stubborn pride, or whatever you want to call it, prevents me from calling the one person who actually has the resources to help.

I have no doubt that, if Jeremy knew what happened to me, he’d go ballistic. Or maybe that reaction would only come after he found out the way I was dealing with it, with that stark refusal to acknowledge a need for help.

So here I am, trekking through dirty, muddy slush, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

If it hasn’t already.

I hear a car approaching. Looking back, I see headlights. I edge toward the side of the road, on the shoulder, not wanting to slip into the tangle of bushes that waits farther away, but not wanting to get hit, either. In this gloom, I’m all but invisible in my dark jacket.

I wait for the car to pass. It seems to be taking an extraordinary amount of time to get here. My breath catches. My heart starts to beat faster. I wonder:
Could that be Jeremy?

That stupid hope is completely dashed as the vehicle blasts by me, showering me in a spray of dirt and snow. I think I hear laughing as it speeds away.

I curse my own stupidity. Of course it wouldn’t be Jeremy. He’s not Superman, for crying out loud. He can’t just appear across the country in the blink of an eye.

So, I keep going, cold, wet, alone and miserable, wondering just how it’s possible that I’ve sunk so low in a few short days.

***

When I enter the solitary gas station, I’ve experienced enough of the elements to want to give in and call Jeremy for help…almost.

But when the attendant informs me that the diner I’m looking for is less than half a mile away, my determination returns. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I came this far only to give up now.

I go back into the sleet. Half a mile is nothing compared to the distance I’ve already crossed. Besides, wouldn’t I have given almost anything just to be able to walk, anywhere I want, a few months ago? When I was held prisoner in the sunroom, I would never have objected to a little elemental discomfort. And now I can simply walk, anywhere I please, for as long as I want. Hell, if I turn north, I could even reach Canada, in time.

Nobody can take that away from me.

So, half a mile? Half a mile is nothing.

At least, that’s the mantra I keep repeating in my head as my wet jacket clings to my body and my fingers are so cold they feel like they’re going to fall off. I stick my hands deep into my pockets. But the heavy downpour makes water run down the length of my sleeves and pool on the inside. I shiver.

When I enter the lot of the diner, I see it’s pretty much abandoned. A lone car sits in the parking lot. It’s one of those ancient trucks that weigh probably four times more than any modern car. It would make mincemeat of anything in a crash…as long as it could be persuaded to start.

I pick up my pace, a little. As much as my frozen limbs will allow. My boots slip and slide over the mix of ice and dirt.

I reach the front doors. Take a deep breath. And step inside.

A bell rings to announce my arrival. There’s nobody behind the counter. After a second, a hoarse, female voice calls out from the back. “I’ll be with you in a second!”

I wade up to the bar, my boots making squishing sounds over the linoleum. Anticipation builds in me like spring.

I reach the counter. A woman comes out. I push my hood back, and reveal my face.

“Hi, mom,” I say.

Chapter Twelve

The crash of glassware against the floor shatters the silence.

“Shit!” my mom curses. She drops down and begins picking up the shattered pieces. She avoids eye contact.

I wait. Then, some of my resentment bubbles up. “Well?” I demand. “Aren’t you going to greet your own daughter?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” she says under her breath, concentrating on collecting the fragmented remains, “I have no daughter.” Her eyes flash up to meet mine. “Or isn’t that what I was told, by my own child, the last time we spoke?”

She shifts her attention back down. After she’s gathered all the shards in a neat pile, she turns her back to me and goes to retrieve a broom.

I wonder, in an absent sort of way, whether Renee is even capable of compassion. Our relationship is bad, and it ended on one of the worst notes possible, but shouldn’t the simple existence of human decency be enough to compel her to at least offer me a hot drink, or maybe inquire about why I showed up here, in the middle of nowhere, in the condition I’m in?

“If you expect me to apologize,” I yell after her, “it isn’t happening!”

“Expect?” She sniffs, and begins sweeping up the bits of glass. “I don’t expect anything. Why would I expect anything? Five years since we last spoke, since I saw your face, and now you show up here, looking like
that
, and you want me to do what? To worry? Do you want me to ask how you are, where you’ve been, what the hell has happened to you?”

I can hear her voice begin to quiver. “It’s not happening, honey. Sorry. No way. No how. You might have learned a thing or two from me, if you were smart. Expect? Expect nothing, and you’ll never be disappointed. Expectations are a curse. They’re like the wind. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

She looks up at me, then, for just a second.

That brief flash is enough for me to tell that she’s putting on an act. Renee always wore her emotions on her sleeve. It is what made her so vulnerable to the type of men that she attracted.

I see, in that brief moment, that the façade of strength she’s trying to convince me of is just a cover for the emotions she’s desperately trying to hide.

She looks back down and continues sweeping, the bristles of her broom going over and over the same clean spot.

“No,” she continues. “No, I’m done worrying. Raise a child for eighteen years. Give her love, food, shelter. Give her affection. Give her a warm place to sleep at night. Protect her from all the badness in the world. And then what? One, day, the child gets up and leaves. Poof! Gone! Just like that! Vanished without a trace.”

The motions of her broom become harsher. Sharper. They morph from sweeps into angry jabs.

“What’s a mother supposed to do? Is she supposed to go after her? No. No, not after the things that have been said. Is she supposed to call the cops? No, because cops are the scumbags of the earth, and why would they give two shits about her problems? But is she supposed to simply
forget
, to pretend the child she carried for nine months had simply never been born?”

She stops, rips her attention away from the floor. Her eyes pulse at me.

“No. She can never do that. No mother can do that.”

I feel the torment, the pain behind her words. And from that, a surge of guilt tries to rise within me. I struggle to shove it back down, but I cannot. Not when I know the things I do now: about her, about Paul. Not when I can see the strain the last five
years have added to her face.

She looks…weary. Exhausted. Stretched thin, as Tolkien once said: like too little butter on too much toast. The makeup she’s wearing to make herself presentable, and hide the true state of her skin, is caked on twice as thick as I ever remember.

So a part of me—a small, hesitant, cautious part—begins to feel pity for her. I find myself breaking the promise I made never, ever to feel even a semblance of that emotion towards Renee.

She turns her back on me and keeps talking. “So you wander in here, looking like a stray dog, and you want me to worry about you now? I’m past that. I worried the first week you were gone. The first month. The first year.

“Do you know what it’s like to feel abandoned? No.” She scoffs a laugh. “Of course you don’t.
You’ve
never been abandoned. I was always there for you, despite what you thought. I always cared.
Always
. And how did you repay me? By saying all those vile things and then leaving without a trace!” She stares at me for a minute. Then shrugs.

“So I’m through worrying. As far as I’m concerned, you’re no more than a stranger. A stranger who happened to stop in at the diner on a lousy night. So what? We get tons of those here. Drifters. Hitchhikers. Highwaymen. You name them, I’ve seen them. Dealt with ‘em, too. Don’t you be mistaking. So tell me what you want, and I’ll see it cooked up in the back. Otherwise, if you have no business here, I expect to see you soon on your way. We don’t take well to loiterers, no matter what you might have heard. No matter what—”

She’s rambling. I can tell. So I cut her off with a soft, and simple, “Mom?”

She glares over her shoulder. “
What
?”

“I love you.”

She stops, shock-still. Slowly, she turns to face me. She blinks, in disbelief.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

“I love you, mom,” I repeat. I stand up. “I never got to tell you that before I left. I don’t want to make that mistake twice.”

I look at the floor. “That’s all. That’s why I came.” I start back toward the door, into the dark, heavy sleet outside.

Where do I go next?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for me to swallow my pride and call Jeremy. I could head back the way I came. There was another roadside motel I passed on the way, and if I check in tonight I could get him to wire me some money by the morning…

I’m two feet from the door when I hear a sob. “Wait, Lilly!”

I turn around. My mom is running toward me. She collides with me and wraps her arms around my neck. She holds me tight, tighter than I’ve ever been held by her before. Her body shakes. Even through the layers of wet clothes I have on I can feel her fragility.

She starts to cry. I feel emotions welling up inside, too. Ones mixed with warmth and compassion, yet tainted by those permanent staples of resent and distance. I refuse to cry. I won’t.

But then she pulls back, cups my face, and strokes my cheeks the way she did when I was a child. My walls come crashing down. I start to cry, too.

“Shh, shh. It’s okay. It’s okay,” she coos. “I just… I can’t believe it’s really you. You’re here, Lilly. You’re not a dream. You came back!”