But I knew. I knew before he said anything what was about to come out of his mouth next. My skin started prickling.
“The coroner’s office is going to be calling you soon, but I hoped you’d rather hear it from me first,” he said carefully, calmly, still holding my hands. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed.
I pressed my lips together and nodded, my lips suddenly feeling numb. My chest started to tingle. “Yeah, I would,” I told him slowly, knowing… knowing…
He blew out a breath, that square jaw moved from side to side before he gently said the last words I would have expected and, at the same time, the only thing I could have imagined, “They’re your mom’s, sweetheart.”
He’d said it. He’d really said it.
I repeated his words in my head, then again, and again.
I bit my bottom lip and found myself nodding, fast and for too long. I was blinking quickly too as my eyes started to get watery. And I almost didn’t hear the tiny choking whimper that bubbled out of my throat unexpectedly.
My mom’s.
My mom’s.
Rhodes’s face fell, and the next thing I knew, his arms were around me and he was pulling me in tight, pressing my cheek against the buttons of his shirt as another choke worked its way into my throat. I tried to suck in a breath, but my whole body shook instead. I was trembling. Worse than the day of the Hike from Hell.
They’d found her.
They’d finally found her.
My mom who had loved me with her whole heart, who hadn’t been perfect but had always made it known that being perfect was overrated. The woman who had taught me that joy came in all different shapes and sizes and forms. The same person who had battled a silent illness as best as she could for longer than I would ever know.
They’d found her. After all these years. After everything…
The memory of the moment twenty years ago, when I’d realized she wasn’t picking me up, kicked me right in the very center of my existence. I had cried. Screamed. I’d howled my throat and my soul raw. Mom, Mom, Mom, please, please, please, come back—
“You can put her to rest now,” he whispered right before a big, wailing cry got muffled against his shirt. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”
I cried. From the deepest place in my body, I pulled the tears. Over everything I’d lost, over everything she had lost too, but also, maybe in a way, in relief that she’d didn’t have to be alone anymore. And maybe because I didn’t have to be alone anymore either.
*
Hours later, I woke up on the couch in the living room. My eyes felt puffy and crusty, and they hurt as I squinted. My head was in Rhodes’s lap. He was slouched against the couch, head resting against the back of it. One of his hands was on my ribs, and the other was on the back of my head.
My throat hurt too, I realized as I sniffled. The television was still on, softly, some infomercial playing. But I focused on the recliner, on the boy passed out on it. The same one who hadn’t left my side since Rhodes had broken the news. Since the coroner’s office had called and the woman’s words had gone in one ear and out the other because my brain had been ringing.
And that made me sniffle again.
I had always felt like I’d lost so much. I knew nobody got through life without losing something, sometimes everything. But the knowledge brought me no comfort then.
Because she was still gone.
I was never, ever going to see her again.
But at least I knew, I tried to reason with myself for not the first time. At least I knew now. Not all of it, but more than I ever would have expected. A huge part of me still couldn’t believe it though.
It felt so final now, her loss.
Nearly as fresh and painful as it had been twenty years ago. My body and soul felt cracked open, with all the vulnerable soft bits out for exposure. It was like I’d lost her all over again.
I tucked my cheek against my Rhodes’s leg and grabbed his thigh. And I cried a little more.
*
I would have wanted to believe that I took the news as well as could be expected in the days afterward, but the truth was that I didn’t.
Maybe it was because it had been years since I’d last let myself feel a shred of hope of finding her. Maybe because I’d been so damn happy lately. Or maybe, just maybe, because I’d felt like everything that had led me here had been for this. For these people in my life. For this hope of a family and happiness, and while I’d give anything to have my mom back, I’d been at something close to peace finally.
But I hadn’t been prepared for how hard I handled the days that came.