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“I don’t understand, Mom.”
“You will.” She smiled and closed her eyes as if she knew she’d won.
At the end, I didn’t argue with her. The absolute last thing I wanted was to say anything that was less than perfect when I didn’t know how long we had. She was so pale. So thin. With her eyes closed, it was hard to tell if she was still in there anymore. Watching her wither away little by little, connected to machines via tubes and wires, broke my heart. My only comfort came from the rhythmic beep of the machine counting her remaining heartbeats like a ticking time bomb.
“Mind some company?” My sister pokes her head out the window, scattering my memory to the wind. With her ice-blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail, and her face scrubbed clean, she could easily pass for a teenager.
“How’d you find me?”
“You always come out here to brood.” Jeanie throws a bare foot over the sill and ducks under the sash to climb out.
So much for my secret spot.
Without another word, I slide over to give her room. Instead of sitting beside me, she brushes a few leaves aside and sits across from me with her back to the street and her eyes on the stars.
“Hell of a day, huh?”
Leave it to Jeanie to understate the obvious.
In her pink yoga pants and matching hoodie, she looks exactly like she did when we were kids. Even now, she’s all pretty in pink, and I’m moody blue with the whole world on my shoulders. For some reason, I find it hard to stay mad at her when she strips away the mask and turns into the little girl who taught me how to crack open an Oreo to eat the cream filling first.
“I talked to G-Lo. If we leave first thing tomorrow, we can hit Cleveland before lunch, get shit done, and make it halfway to Memphis before dark,” she says without taking a breath.
Tomorrow? My empty stomach clenches into a tight fist. Tell her you don’t want to go. “Okay.”
Chickenshit.
“We’ll be gone two weeks. Three at the most. I absolutely have to be back by the last week of July. I start my job August first.”
“I don’t have any plans.” Damian would disagree, but he’ll get over it. There’s always spring semester. “But I still don’t understand why we’re doing this. I call bullshit on G-Lo’s story. I get people were all about the free love back then, and maybe she banged every roadie along that tour—”
“She named Mom Davida.”
“Which is totally weird but doesn’t prove anything. There’s no way in hell she got close enough to Bowie to smell his sweat, let alone swap bodily fluids.” Visions of the Goblin King humping my grandma pop into my head, and I quickly banish them before they take up residence. “Sorry. Not buying it.”
Jeanie wraps her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Mom believed it.”
Mom may have wanted to believe it, but I don’t believe for one minute she actually did.
“Come on, Jeanie. David Bowie? You’re as unhinged as Grandma if you let her suck you into her delusions.”
“I read her diary, Zo.”
“Grandma Lola’s diary?” Graphic visions of drug-fueled orgies dance through my imagination, and I shut them down just as quickly. “I’ll bet that was . . . weird.”
Her laugh echoes in the night air. “No, dumbass. Mom’s.”
“Hold on . . .” My mouth goes dry, and my lungs still. “Mom had a diary? Why am I just now hearing about this?”
Jeanie lifts her head, but her arms tighten around her legs. “I guess she didn’t think you were ready to read it.”
“But you were?” My heart rattles behind my ribs, my stomach twisting painfully as I try to make sense of what I’m hearing.
“You were just a kid.”
“I’m only two years younger than you!”
Jeanie exhales a sharp breath. “She gave it to me for safekeeping. She’d just started chemo. You were studying for finals. She didn’t want to distract you.”
