Page 104 of Gone Tonight
“Who was that girl who contacted me on Facebook? I saw her in the restaurant. Did you send her to meet me?”
Of all the things I’ve told James, this is the one he must believe without question. I cannot waver. I must give the performance of my life.
“Oh, she’s just someone I hired on TaskRabbit after I was trying to find you and I saw your profile on Facebook. I wasn’t sure how secure Facebook is, so I had her get in touch with you… I paid her to go to the restaurant to give you a letter from me, but that stupid fire happened before she could deliver it.”
“How did she recognize me?” James asks.
“She didn’t,” I tell him. “She didn’t know anything other than to look for a forty-three-year-old guy who was there alone and put the letter on his table. I kept it vague enough that it wouldn’t alert anybody in case she got the wrong guy or if someone was setting me up.”
The story I’ve spun is a little convoluted. But if I were as obsessed with James as I’m pretending to be, it might be plausible that I’d be so desperate to reach him that I’d try every possible avenue, including social media, which is a great connector for long-lost friends and lovers. I wish I could see James’s face to gauge how my story is landing. But it probably wouldn’t matter even if I could since James’s eyes always lie.
“Okay, Ava,” he says.
I think he bought it.
“I love you.” Nausea fills my throat as I speak the words.
“I love you, too.”
I expect James to hang up, but he doesn’t. Something compels me to stay on the line, too.
The hair on the back of my neck rises as the silence stretches on.
Finally, James says, “See you.”
Then the line goes dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENCATHERINE
Secrets slip out when people are at the end of their lives.
Working in a nursing home means I’m always in close proximity to death. Sometimes I’m by a patient’s side when they take their final breath. Most of the confessions I hear from our more lucid Extended Care residents have been relatively minor:I wish I hadn’t fought with my sister and cut her off… I should have spent more time with my kids when they were growing up… I didn’t say “I love you” enough.
But sometimes, huge deceptions emerge, as if their owner wanted to enter the afterlife with a clean slate:I gave up a baby for adoption and never told anyone… I was in love with another woman for most of my marriage… The man everyone thinks is my younger brother is really my son.
I’ve wondered what it would feel like to carry such an enormous secret for so long. If it would always feel heavy and alien, or if in time it would integrate like just another limb.
I’m walking around the grounds of Sunrise because I’m too restless to sit in the Bonneville and wait for my mother to bring back the Cadillac.
I can’t help wondering what I would do, given the chance. Would I go back to being blissfully unaware of my origins and true family history?
I don’t have the answer, but I do know this: My life was far easier when I believed the lies my mother fed me.
Those thoughts are running through my mind when I see Tin and an aide bringing a few Memory Wing residents outside. I turn my head and quicken my pace, hoping they won’t spot me. Then I hear Tin calling my name.
I wave, hoping that will be the end of it. But Tin motions me over.
My mother should be arriving any moment now. She texted a little while ago to say she’d pulled off the highway at our exit to get a few gallons of gas. As I walk toward Tin, my mind races, trying to recall what I’ve told Tin about my mother. The two have never met, and I don’t think Tin has any idea what my mother looks like. All she knows is that my mother is ill.
“Hey, Catherine. You’re not working today, are you?” Tin frowns.
“I just can’t stay away from the place,” I joke. “No, I forgot something here yesterday and came back to get it.”
Tin begins telling me about a folder she has for me with some forms to fill out and a parking sticker for the permit-only spots, now that I’m going to be a full-time employee.
I smile and nod, but in my mind I’m calculating time and risk. It’s only about 9 a.m. now, so Tin will be gone by late afternoon or early evening. Tin won’t be on the Memory Wing after dark if I need to sneak my mother in again tonight.
I’m perspiring, and not because of the heat. This must be a taste of what life has been like for my mother—constant calculations and conversational parrying.
