Page 70 of The Long Way Home
I don’t know how, only that I do. It tugs at something buried deep, a memory sunk too far down to surface. I freeze while my pulse roars in my ears, and scan the crowded sidewalk. I see nothing out of the ordinary. I am surrounded by only strangers.
I shake it off, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets, and keep walking forward. My head has been a mess lately with Rachel. Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe I’m dehydrated. I know I’m definitely tired.
But then, at the corner where the light is red, I get another whiff. It curls into my chest and tightens there, a slow, aching knot.
“Rhett?”
I turn toward the voice.
A woman stands a few feet away, clutching her purse. She’s maybe in her fifties—no, sixties. I don’t recognize her at all. My eyes scan behind me to see if she is looking at someone else. But no, she is looking straight at me.
“Uh, yeah?” My voice comes out cautious.
Her eyes flicker as she takes a hesitant step closer. “You’re Rhett, right? Rhett Hayes?”
“That’s what I go by,” I say flatly. “And who are you?”
She swallows, and her lips tremble just a little. “Victoria Wright,” she says, then corrects herself. “Well…I guess formally Hayes.”
I swear the air goes thin.
No. No, it can’t be.
She takes another half step forward, her voice small. “I’m your mother.”
My chest constricts so fast it feels like someone is pulling a string straight through my ribs. For a second, I can’t move. The noise of the street dulls to a hum.
Before I can think better of it, everything inside me hardens.
“I don’t have a mother,” I mutter to her. “You must be confusing me with someone else.”
I turn to head in the direction of my house.
“Rhett, wait,” she begs, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
I whirl around. “What the fuck are you doing here? What do you want from me? Now? After all this time.” My voice is cold enough to freeze the air between us. People on the sidewalk slow down to glance at us, and they start to whisper. I don’t care about any of them.
She looks like she is about to cry, but I can’t—God, I won’t—feel bad for her. I can’t even look at her without feeling like the ground is tilting under me.
“I just wanted to see you,” she whispers. “Just once.”
“Congratulations.” I toss my hands up. “You’ve seen me.”
I turn away from her before she can say another word. My legs move fast, on autopilot, and I don’t even know where I’m going. I just know I have to get away. Away from her, from that smell, from the ache tearing through my chest.
I spent four years searching for her. Four years of nothing but the slow humiliation of hope. I learned how to live with the absence. I finally learned how to stop looking. And now, when I’m not searching, when I don’t want to see her, when I finally believe I’m in control, she finds me. I try to take a deep breath, but the air moves in and out, and none of it reaches where it’s supposed to.
The timing only reassures me of one thing. She could have found me at any point. Any year. Any version of me that was still waiting. She didn’t, though. She only found me when she wanted to find me.
The thought splinters. Air stalls in my throat, unfinished. It wasn’t distance that kept her away. It wasn’t by circumstance. It was by choice. She always knew where I was. She always had the power to reach out.
She just didn’t want to.
I jog for another ten minutes in the opposite direction from my house. My lungs burn in a different way now, not sweet, but sharp. My vision blurs at the edges, and the noise of the street turns into static. What is happening to me?
I duck into an alley and slam my back against the brick. My legs give out, and I slide down until I’m crouched on the pavement. I lift my hands to see that they are shaking. Air shreds on the way in, stutters on the way out. I suck it in, trying again, but nothing lands.
Breathe, Rhett. Just breathe.
