Page 128 of Cut Off
“Why are you calling Priya?”
“Because this is big, and she knows everything.”
This is true. Priya does know everything.
Word, in Dickens, Idaho, moves faster than information has any right to move. By the time I’ve managed to reapply lip gloss in the bathroom mirror—shaking, like a woman who’s had eight espressos—I can hear the parking lot.
The parking lot is loud.
I peek out the side window. The parking lot has, as best I can count from a slit of window I’m pretending not to be hiding behind, half of the town of Dickens in it. Jane is out there with a tray of to-go cups, because Jane responds to every life event by feeding people. My mother is out there. Maddie’s out there, and both of my brothers are out there, even the one who doesn’t live here, which means he got in a car in Boise the second the broadcast cut to commercial and broke at least one law on the highway. The mayor’s out there. The mailman’s out there. Linda from accounting is out there.
Tom and Claire’s car is pulling in.
“Zoe.” Jerry steps up beside me. “The station has, uh. Decided to cover this. I think the only call I haven’t gotten in the last ten minutes was from the governor, and that’s because the governor is in Boise and Boise hasn’t caught up yet.”
“Jerry.”
“Take a breath.”
“I’m going to throw up on a beaver.”
“Take two breaths.”
He hands me a glass of water, and I drink half the glass in three gulps. I look at myself in the dark glass of the conference room door, and decide that the woman there is going to be okay.
I push out the front doors.
The roar that goes up is not, technically, for me. It is for the moment. It is the kind of crowd noise that belongsto a town that’s been quietly rooting for a happy ending to something and now gets to root out loud.
There are, conservatively, four cameras pointed at me. There is a boom mic. The cartoon beaver is, in the lighting from the streetlamps, watching me with what I can only describe as enthusiastic interest.
Jonah’s SUV pulls into the lot.
He gets out. He’s clearly showered—his hair’s wet at the ends, dark from it—and he’s in jeans and a Henley, no jacket, in May, because the day doesn’t call for it. Eli comes around the passenger side in a Trout jersey, and his hair’s wild. His eyes find me, and his whole face lights up.
He runs at me first.
He hits me at full speed. I catch him, and the crowd cheers.
“Hi,” I say into the top of his head. “Hi, hi, hi.”
“We came here for you,” he says into my collarbone.
“I heard.”
“We have a surprise.”
“I can’t wait.”
Jonah’s walking up the asphalt like a man on a mission. He stops three feet from us. He looks at me, then he looks at his kid wrapped around my middle. Then at me again.
The whole parking lot goes quiet.
“Zoe,” he says.
“Jonah.”
“You showed up when I was falling apart. Over and over again. You stood by me until I pushed you away.”
