Page 48 of Sublimate
“My sister has that in her. Once, a guy OD’d in the apartment building where we lived. The police tried to save him but then the ambulance people had to take him out covered up. I ran off but she had stayed and peeked through the windows to watch them try to revive him, and then she asked her friend with aphone to take pictures of the body. I was really little but I remember because she kept talking about it.”
“That’s very macabre. And horrifying, because if you were little, then she was, too.”
“What did your mom find out?” I was pretty confident that it wasn’t anything, since the police didn’t know anything, either. They had taken my name but since then, I had changed phone numbers and I’d never given them the new one. I had also asked Cadence to stop calling the detective to ask for updates, and being Cadence, she respected my privacy.
Nolan’s mom didn’t. “She got information about the resort where they found you. Apparently, they have conventions there and it’s one of the few places in the area that police regularly patrol for vice crimes. The visitors like to party while they’re away.”
I nodded.
“She asked me if that was why you were in the parking lot that night. I said that your life is none of her business anymore.” He sighed. “But I did invite her into it and I’m sorry about that.”
“You didn’t know what she would find.”
“I don’t care what she finds except I think that she’ll use it against you somehow,” he explained. “I really don’t care about what was happening that night, Vivi. It doesn’t matter and you don’t have to explain, unless you’re going to be hurt by it now. My mother could try to do that.”
“I don’t know what she could do,” I said. “Is she going to call me a hooker or a dealer?” I shrugged. “Ok, well, I’ve been called worse.”
“As long as it won’t hurt your feelings,” he said.
No, it wasn’t just that, though. “Is it going to affect you? Is she going to make it a problem in your life?”
“My mother hasn’t had a part in my life since I was eighteen and legally an adult. When I went to college, I tried to cut off contact for a while but that made her worse. She was having me followed by a private investigator and bribing someone in the registrar’s office to send my grades.” He made the angry smile. “Now we talk but there’s no mother-child relationship between us.”
“If I could talk to my mom again, I would,” I said. “I know that she does a lot of crazy, illegal, and mean stuff, but I still would.”
“Are you worried about her?”
“I try not to be,” I answered. “I used to say that I only stayed in contact because she worried about me, but that’s not true. She didn’t really care but I did. Aren’t families are so weird? I never saw a normal one, not one! But they must exist, right? Because there are a lot of normal people in the world and they must come from somewhere.”
“My cousins are generally happy with the families that they’ve created for themselves. Obviously not Celestine, Beau’s wife, but the guy who was over here today is a different story. Every time Ryan talks about his wife Blake, he smiles. And he made us lookat pictures of their kids. He’s also weird, in his own way,” Nolan added. “I think Blake must be, too.”
“But they’re happy together?”
“Extremely. Their weirdness is complementary.” He explained about angles, which made me think of my next project. It was something I wasn’t looking forward to, but I was also aware that I had to do it.
I was prepared to continue discussing math, but he pivoted back to the topic I didn’t want to discuss at all. “I’m also concerned about what happened to you in the parking lot. I don’t know why I didn’t do something before.”
“Do something?” I echoed. “Like what?”
“It depends. Was it the man who threatened to kill you? The one who forced you to drive across the country to escape? Because you’d need a bodyguard,” he said. “Or if it was Kolter and his family, then we could go to court and—”
“No, it wasn’t any of those people, and you don’t need to do anything. You’ve done enough!” I told him. “You gave me money, you paid for tons of stuff—including your mother’s huge bill. Food, bread-making supplies, the flight to Detroit and back—”
“I should tell you that a new car will be delivered tomorrow. It’s not for you,” he said, “but you’re on my insurance now and you can drive it as long as you need it, wherever you want to go.”
“But it’s not for me.”
“No, because you said you wouldn’t accept it. Let’s return to the assault,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I stated firmly.
We drove the rest of the trip to the restaurant in silence, but before we got out, Nolan put his hand on my arm. “Twice, I’ve woken up alone in the hospital and it scared the hell out of me. I was ashamed so I never talked about it. I told my friends that I had gone off someplace that they would admire, Mauritius, I think, and then Brazil.” He shook his head. “Why did it matter what they thought? You were right when you said that they didn’t care about me.”
“You were hospitalized?” I put my hand over his. “That’s so scary. If you ever have to go again, for any reason, I’ll be there, ok? You won’t be alone.”
“Thank you, but I’m trying to say—”
Beau knocked on the window, looking questioning. We all hurried through the rain into the little restaurant. “This is on me,” I announced as we sat.
