His eyes still watch Kylie a little too closely, a little too sharply. Follows her every movement. Checks her out. I mean, she’s gorgeous, so what guy wouldn’t check her out? But I don’t know how to deal with it. It makes me crazy. She’s mine. But can I stop him from looking, from watching? I know he still wants her. He’s still in love with her. You don’t just get over something like that all of a sudden. So what do I do? Let it go and hope he moves on eventually? I don’t know. I don’t have any answers, and I’m hesitant to bring it up to Kylie. He’s her best friend still. They’ve known each other their entire lives. I feel like maybe I need to leave it up to her. Let him look if he wants. Let him hold onto his feelings for her in secret if he wants. She’s with me, and that’s not changing.
I’m not sure what the future holds. Being injured, for both of us, has put an indefinite hold on our musical ambitions, which Andersen says he understands, and the offer will be there when we’re ready. Does that mean I’m staying here in Nashville? Possibly. I mean, for once, I have a reason to stay. A family to hold me in one place. Mom and Becca have been spending time together, which is good. She comes home with red eyes, as if she’s been crying, but for the first time she’s open to my questions, and I have a lot of them. She’s talking to Becca about my father, I think. Remembering who he was, and she tells me stories. Good ones, and bad ones, too. She tells me about his mood swings, his cycles. How he’d get depressed more easily and for longer in the fall and winter, and be more manic in the summer and spring. He’d have mini-cycles, swings within swings. Manic days during winter depressions and vice-versa. She tells me how sweet he could be, how talented he could be, if he wanted. I get my music from him, apparently, which is something not even Aunt Becca knew. My dad—I still have a hard time deciding how to think about him: Dad? My father? Ben? I don’t even know—but I always harbored a desire to be a musician. He taught himself guitar, wrote songs. Never went anywhere with it, never believed in himself enough to try. My capacity for math is from Mom. She’d thought about going to college for physics, but life got in the way. She never went, never had the money, and then she met my dad and had me, and it never happened.
We got a bill in the mail for my two hospital stays. Mom’s never put us on Medicaid, never had health insurance. Mom sat at the kitchen table, hand over her mouth, staring at the paper. I tried talking to her, but she ignored me, just stared at that astronomical six-digit number, shaking.
And then, a week later, I find her with her cell phone in her hand, sobbing, sitting on the kitchen floor.
“Mom? What’s wrong?” I hobble over to her, dragging my now significantly smaller walking cast along behind me.
She lets me help her up, sets her phone on the counter. Kylie is gone for the moment, handing in our assignments to the school. Mom sucks in a deep breath. “The hospital bill. It’s paid. Someone paid it. All of it.”
I felt the world spinning around me. “What? Who?”
Mom shook her head. “They wouldn’t tell me. But…who else could’ve, or would’ve, but Jason and Becca?”
I wobble in a circle, move toward the door. “Come on. We’ve gotta go talk to them.”
Mom drives us to the Dorseys’ house, and I send Kylie a text to meet us there. Becca is on her front porch, sipping iced tea, waiting for us, Kylie sitting next to her, laughing and holding a sweating glass of tea. I make my way slowly up the driveway and up the two shallow steps to the porch, lean back against the wall beside Kylie. Mom stands on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps, staring up at Becca with emotions shining in her eyes.
No one speaks for a long time.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Becca says. “There will be no talk of not accepting charity, or paying us back. You are family. Oz is my nephew, the only one I’ll ever have. So just say ‘thank you’ and be done.”
Mom sniffs, wipes at her eyes, head bowed. “‘Thank you’ can’t even begin to express it, Becca. Not even close.”
“Kate. You’re family. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you.” Becca descends the steps, takes Mom by the shoulders, looks up into her eyes. “You should never have run, Kate. I could’ve…we could’ve been like sisters, all this time. I would’ve helped you with Oz.”
“I was so scared. Of everything. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never had family. I ran away from home at fourteen.” Mom turns away, arms folded across her middle, staring into the blue afternoon sky, her voice distant. “My parents were…well…not parents. I don’t think there’s a living person on this earth who knows any of this. They beat me. My father…did things. Bad things. To me. To my sister. I ran away on my fourteenth birthday. I stole a hundred and fifty dollars from the coffee can on top of the fridge and took the first bus out of there. Ended up in a homeless shelter in Kansas City. I got a job in a Chinese food restaurant, washing dishes. Soap, water, a sponge, and a sink. They let me sleep in the kitchen at night. I used the sink to take sponge baths. I saved my money for two months, and then I took a bus out of Kansas City. I—I never stayed anywhere for more than a couple months after that. At least not until I met Ben. I was always afraid my father would catch me. He was an evil man. I know he looked for me. He told me once, when I was twelve, that if I ever told anyone what he did to me and Kaylee he’d hurt us. He said we’d never get away from him. Kaylee was four years older than me. She ran away when I was eleven.”
Shock, surprise…there are no accurate words for how blown away I am by Mom’s revelations. I didn’t know this. I had no idea. Not a single clue. “What—what happened to your sister?”
Mom shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s probably out there somewhere, if she’s still alive. Teenage runaways…well, they don’t often make it. They end up on drugs, prostitution. Sex slaves. I saw it happen. It almost happened to me. I got…taken, once. In Fisk, Missouri. Just snatched off the street in broad daylight. I waited until they were getting me out of the van, pretended to be unconscious. Then I started kicking, biting, punching. Managed to get away, hid in a dumpster until the next morning. So…Kaylee? I don’t know. I always thought about trying to look for her, but…” Mom shrugs. “I never did. Never could. I’ve Googled her name a few times, but nothing ever came up.” She turns to glance at me. “That’s why we moved so much, Oz. It’s what I knew. I lived in Michigan longer than I ever lived anywhere, and that was because of Ben. I thought I’d found a home, a family. Someone to love me. Someone to care. Four years. That’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in any one place in my life, that and Dallas. It’s just habit now. No reason to stay, so why bother?”