Just for the Summer(25)

I just stared at her. “Where was she?” I asked.

She shrugged, petting the kitten. “I don’t know. She’d gotten a job as a flight attendant, and I’d spent lots of nights alone. But this time she just didn’t come home. I think something happened. Not really sure what. The hospital. Jail.”

“Jail??”

“I think she struggles with some mental health issues sometimes. It gets her in trouble. Anyway, she’d forgotten to pay the phone bill so the phone got shut off a few days after she left and I think she didn’t know how to get in touch with me without telling someone she’d left me alone. She was always really afraid I’d get taken from her.”

“You should have been taken from her,” I said, incredulous.

“She was a single mom, Justin, doing the best she could. She couldn’t afford overnight daycare and I was really independent. Honestly, it was fine 99 percent of the time.”

I shook my head. “Emma… That’s fucked up.”

“I genuinely don’t believe she meant to hurt me. She was doing what she had to do. It was what it was. I’m fine. I turned out okay. I’m happy and I have a good life.”

I blinked at her. “I don’t know how you could forgive someone like that.”

She shrugged again and looked up at me. “Why not forgive? In a world where you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin. I don’t know what it was like to be her. A single mom at eighteen, no money, no family. She struggled. She still struggles. But she loves me and I never doubted that for a second no matter what she did.”

She went back to playing with the kitten in her arms and I just sat there studying her.

Always choose empathy…

I wish I could do that. I wish I could go on with my life and not hold a grudge against Mom. But I couldn’t forgive her. At least not right now.

After an hour with the kittens, we wrapped things up to eat.

I’d wanted to bring her somewhere special, so I carefully selected where to go. It had to be somewhere uniquely Minnesota, the food had to be amazing, and it had to be memorable. I picked a small family-run place called Hot Plate. When she walked in and smiled around the little cafe, I knew I’d chosen correctly.

The walls were covered in hundreds of completed paint by numbers. Figurines sat on every surface, and eclectic lamps and chandeliers hung over the booths, and there was a whole shelf of games to play at your table while you ate.

“Wow,” she said, looking around. I was rewarded with a grin.

There was a fifteen-minute wait, so we stood outside talking. I was more than happy to draw the date out, it was already going way too fast. I was taking her to Minnehaha Falls after we ate, but I wanted to ask her if she’d like to check out the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden or go get ice cream after that, just to make it last, but she said she started work tomorrow and she needed to get back. I was hoping the table would take longer than they said, to give us more time, but after ten minutes they called my name. I was holding the door open for her when she put a hand on my arm.

“Let’s just hang here for a bit,” she said.

I looked at her confused. “Why, what’s up?”

She was peering past me at a middle-aged woman sitting on a Toilet King bus bench across the street, rummaging through a purse on her lap.

I looked back and forth between them. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer me. She studied the lady for another moment, then crossed the street. I let go of the door and followed her.

Emma sat on the bench next to the woman. “Hi.”

The woman looked at Emma and then back inside her purse.

“Do you know what time the bus comes?” Emma asked her.

The woman didn’t answer.

“I’m going to see my mom,” Emma said. “Who are you going to see?”

“Samantha,” the lady said, not looking up. “I’m waiting for my Uber. We’re going to Santa Monica.”

“Oh. What time’s your flight?”

The woman stayed busy digging in her purse. “No flight, it’s a half-an-hour drive.”

Emma made split-second eye contact with me.

“So it looks like the Uber app is down,” Emma said. “I talked to Samantha, and she told me to take you to get some coffee in the restaurant over there until she can pick you up. Are you ready?”

The woman’s eyes moved back and forth over the mouth of her open Coach bag. Emma took her gently by the elbow. “I’m Emma. What’s your name?”

The woman looked up at her. “Lisa.”

“Nice to meet you,” Emma said, helping her to her feet. “Can I see your phone for a second? Unlock it for me? I want to see if Samantha is almost here.” When Lisa gave it over, Emma slipped it into my hand. “Justin, can you make a call for me?” she whispered. “Let Samantha know Lisa is having coffee with us?”

I found Samantha in her contacts and called.

Ten minutes later a tearful twentysomething woman ran through the restaurant to our booth to get her mother. Emma had sat with Lisa the whole time talking about an imaginary day at the beach she was going to have in a city two thousand miles from here.

“How did you know?” I asked, once we were alone again. The woman seemed perfectly normal to me. At first glance anyway.