Chapter 3

chapter 3

river

I can smell the stench of burnt food as soon as I open the front door. The sour-black smell cuts through the fog that surrounded me for the entire drive home, and for a second, I’m back in that night. In the billowing flames and black smoke pouring out the windows. I’m back where I can’t breathe, can’t see…

No.

I slam the door on the memory, digging my nails into my palms as I drag myself back to the present.

“Hey!” Tita Anna calls from the kitchen. “In here!”

Once my pulse steadies, I hang my bag on the hook by the front door and peek my head into the kitchen. Tita Anna is stooping in front of the oven, peering through the window.

“It’s almost ready,” she says.

“I think it was ready forty minutes ago,” I say, pasting a smile on my face.

Her face falls flat. “Oh God. Does it smell burnt?”

I purse my lips.

“Ughh, okay, so the sad part is I was actually trying here.” She shakes her fists at the ceiling. “Curse you, Super Mommy’s Kitchen! Maybe if her recipe blog were more recipe and less ranting about her marriage…”

I grab oven mitts and flip on the fan above the stove.

“Stand by.” She winces, pulling the oven door open.

I snatch out the casserole dish, and Tita Anna shuts the door before too much smoke can billow out.

We stare at the black goo in the tray.

“What…was it?” I poke it, and black crust breaks away.

“It was supposed to be chicken potpie casserole.” She pushes up her glasses, shaking her head. “Man. Jay was always the one who could…” She clears her throat. After a moment, she straightens, adjusting her T-shirt. “Wanna go out? My treat?”

The exhaust fan roars on high. But the air is still charred, the smell making my heart race.

“Sure,” I say. Because in this moment, truly anywhere is better than here.

I love Tita Anna. She’s a lot younger than my dad, still in her thirties, and ever since I was a kid, she’s always had me rolling with laughter. She’s technically my dad’s cousin, once removed, but she came from a family of four sisters, moved out of her house the second she could, and always called my dad the brother she never had.

She works remotely as a project manager for a tech company, and she is as irreverent as they come. Right now, as we’re eating at an Italian restaurant, she’s telling me that for her new Zoom background, she recorded a video of herself walking into her home office, acting surprised someone’s on a video call, and backing out of the room.

“What?” I shake my head, twirling my linguine. “Explain that to me again?”

“Okay, okay.” She tosses back her long, black hair and sits forward in her chair. “So, when I set that video as my Zoom background, it looks like I’m just sitting in my bedroom, right? I’m in the video, actually me, and then when that recorded video plays, it shows me walking in, looking surprised at interrupting myself on a Zoom call, apologizing, and leaving.” She snort-laughs, stabbing a ravioli.

“Don’t choke,” I say as she pops it into her mouth, still laughing.

“I won’t,” she assures me. “Anyway. No one’s said anything. Not once. Not the client. Not my boss. I think they’re afraid to. Like they think it’s my sister or just another random Filipino woman in my house, and if they ask if that’s me, they’ll sound racist. Ugh, I’d love that. Except, I worry if I play that card, they’ll expect me to speak Tagalog.”

I shake my head, smiling down at my nearly empty plate. The waiter comes and refills our water, asks if I’m done. Tita Anna asks for a box and the dessert menu.

“So,” she says, peering at me over a picture of a slice of limoncello cake.

“So,” I echo, smiling tentatively.

Tita Anna sets down the dessert menu and scratches her chin, contemplating the ceiling.

“Our apartment sucks, doesn’t it?” she blurts out after a minute.

I laugh, surprised. After The Accident, Tita Anna insisted I move in with her. It’s been wonderful living with her. But the apartment itself? I would never dare say anything because Tita Anna’s been so gracious. But the walls are so thin, I can hear exactly which YouTube videos our neighbors are watching. I can hear the click of their keyboard. There’s a hole in the bathroom that leaks anytime the upstairs neighbor takes a shower. And worst of all?

No pets allowed, so no Tigery.

Even so, it’s a small price to pay to live with Tita Anna.

And the fact that I could easily afford something better for both of us—could buy us a place if I wanted—is something that Tita Anna never, ever makes me feel guilty about. She knows that I don’t want to touch the GoFundMe money, to turn the worst thing that ever happened to me into something that can be fixed with dollars. Especially when I don’t have any idea where the money came from in the first place.

Which is why I say, “Honestly? Any apartment is the best apartment if it’s with you.”

“Oh, Rivvy.” Tita Anna reaches across the table and squeezes my fingers. “I don’t deserve you. And of course I agree.” She leans closer. “But we can go anywhere. Be anywhere. As long as there’s Wi-Fi, I can do my job.” She leans forward, eager. “River, we could live in Rome. Rome. Just think: handmade pasta every night. Real limoncello. Wine from a vineyard that’s only a short train ride away.”

My heart cracks open. When Tita Anna sees my face, her eyes are shiny and sad.

We’re both thinking about my dad.

He was constantly adding things to his bucket list. Most of them were silly. Play a chess game with the Pope. Be a guest star on an episode of Law & Order. Befriend a wild javelina and train it to follow him around like a familiar.

But there was one item that was real: a trip to Italy.

It was how he was going to celebrate twenty-five years of sobriety. We would start in Rome, because he had wanted to toss a coin over his left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, then head to Florence and then Venice. He planned on eating three gelatos a day and feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square. When I told him it was now illegal, he insisted it was worth it to pay the fine.

Needless to say, he never made it there.

Tears spring to my eyes. Quickly, I brush them away.

“I…yeah. Yeah, maybe not. I wasn’t thinking…” Tita Anna shakes her head. “But there are other places. California?” Her smile is small. Hopeful. “New York? The Great Smoky Mountains? Anyplace where if you leave cookie dough in your car in July, it doesn’t bake into a black crisp? Or a place where there’s no such thing as ‘scorpion season’?”

There’s a moment where I imagine it. New York, a place with actual seasons. Midnight runs to the bodega with Tita Anna for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. The countless bars with open mics every day of the week. Tita Anna chiding me for riding the subway late at night. It sounds wonderful.

But it’s not possible. I can’t leave. My life is nothing more than glass shards scattered amongst the saguaros in the Sonoran Desert, each piece a burning question. For me to keep going, I need to gather them all, fit the pieces together, see how it all makes sense. I need answers. And the answers will never be anywhere else but right here.

“I can’t leave.” I sigh. Tita Anna nods as if she knew this would be my answer all along.

“Is this about your mom?”

“Amongst other things,” I say, thinking of Tawny, of the diner, of Tigery. “But, yeah. I mean, what if she comes back, and…and I’m not here?”

Tita Anna’s face twists, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. I know what she’s thinking. It’s the same thing Tawny thinks, the same thing the police thought.

Why hold on to someone who didn’t hold on to you?

My mother was the type of mom who read me stories every night, perfectly voicing every character, from Chester the cricket to Gandalf the wizard to Miss Honey from Matilda. The type of mom who threw her whole head back in laughter at my stories. The type of mom who kissed my dad when she thought I wasn’t looking, who still celebrated not just their wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of their first date.

But my mom was also the type who struggled. I never had a name for the way her moods could swing from one extreme to the next. How she could be so resplendently happy sometimes and barely make it out of bed others. She called them her Blue Days, and the only thing that ever seemed to help was hiking. When she was doing well, she’d pull out all her trail maps and point at the blue veins of rivers and red arteries of roads, showing me all the routes she’d already taken, all the ones she still planned to take. When she wasn’t doing well, she’d grab her backpack and go, often without even saying goodbye.

She was an old-school hiker, my mom. She never brought a phone. All she ever needed was the same pack she’s had since she was a teenager, a compass, and a tune to whistle.

“I didn’t even have a phone when I first started,” she said once. “I used to send letters. I wasn’t beholden to anyone. All I had to do was send a postcard every three weeks.” To who? I used to wonder. Both her parents were dead.

Once I came along, the cards were for me. Whenever she was gone longer than a week, she’d come back with a stack of letters, wanting to watch my face as I read her words. “It makes me feel like you’re there with me,” she always said.

So take me with you, I’d longed to say, but I never could bring myself to, fearing that my presence would change whatever magic healed her on her trips.

Not long after my eighteenth birthday, Mom started getting bad again. Leaving the house without telling us where she was going. Breaking down into sobs if the dryer left her clothes damp after a full cycle. Sleeping in until four p.m.

When we woke up one morning in early October, I wasn’t surprised to find her gone.

“Her hiking gear’s missing.” Dad had stared into the closet before he deflated with a sigh. “I suppose it was just a matter of time.”

“She’ll be better when she gets back,” I said with more certainty than I felt.

When Mom wasn’t back for Halloween, I felt my first flash of fear. Then Mom missed Thanksgiving. But when she missed Christmas, my dad called the police. He’d sat me down afterward and said, “Riv, I think we have to prepare for the fact that your mom might not…” His eyes shone with unshed tears. “That she might have left us for good this time.”

I refused to believe it. Because no matter my mom’s mood, one thing never changed: how much she loved me. I knew, in a way I felt so deeply but couldn’t explain, she’d come back one day.

That maybe she already had.

A week after the funeral, someone left a bouquet of bluebells, my dad’s favorites, at Tita Anna’s doorstep. There was no note, but I knew they could only be from her. I couldn’t bear to watch them wither, so I hung them upside down to dry. They now sit on my dresser in a Ball jar, so fragile that one touch and they’ll crumble to nothing.

Tita Anna reaches out and takes my hand in hers. “In that case,” she says, “maybe we should take a trip. Get out of here and give you a break from…everything, but with a return date.”

I stare down uncertainly at the crumbs on my plate and picture my dad throwing them to a horde of pigeons.

“You know what?” I say softly. “Let’s do it. Let’s go to Italy.”

“Yeah?” Tita Anna lights up.

It’s splitting my chest in two, the idea of doing all the things Dad had wanted to do, all without him. But I also can’t imagine a better way to honor his memory.

And maybe, if I’m lucky enough to win the lottery twice, my mom will be back when I get home.