By Your Side(60)

“Probably.”

“Crap. Crap, crap, crap.” A saving thought came to me. “I have her address. In my phone. I entered it into my phone.” I rushed back to my room and pulled my shoes back on. “I have to go talk to her.”

“Go talk to who?” my mom asked from my doorway.

“His mom. I have to go talk to her. Maybe she’ll give me the letter back. I’m going to fix this.”

“Autumn, I don’t think you should go anywhere with how you’re feeling right now.”

“Mom, please. If I don’t I’m going to freak out. Like really freak out. Can you just trust me on this? I need to do something.”

“Show me your hands.”

I held them out in front of me. Surprisingly they were as steady as could be.

She nodded. “Call me on your way home.”

“Okay. Thank you!” I kissed her cheek and ran out the door.





CHAPTER 41


The apartment complex was in a scary part of Salt Lake. It was a good thing my mom hadn’t known exactly where I was going because there was no way she’d have let me go there. The other good thing was that it was still early afternoon so it wasn’t as scary as it might’ve been when the sun went down.

I walked through the glass front doors and up a wide set of stairs. The elevator looked functional at best so I continued to take the stairs up to the fourth floor. The hall smelled like mildew and cinnamon, making me gag a little. I stepped over a tipped-over planter box halfway down the hall, dirt spilled across the carpeted floor. When I arrived in front of her door, I wiped my sweating palms on my jeans and knocked.

The woman who opened the door had graying hair and Dax’s eyes. Please let this go well, I thought. “Hi.”

“Can I help you?”

I looked over her shoulder and into the apartment. Maybe I’d see a stack of mail somewhere. I didn’t. All I saw was a tidy studio apartment. A small couch with a knit quilt hanging over the back. A bookcase with neatly stacked books. A kitchen with wiped-down counters and a teakettle on the stove. Everything in its place. I didn’t know what I had been expecting, but not this. Not a clear-eyed, healthy-looking woman with a tidy studio apartment. “Um. Did you get your mail today?”

She let out a small gasp and I knew she had. I knew she knew I was there because of it.

“My mom sent you that letter by accident. He’s not ready for any sort of response right now. Can you respect that?”

She opened the door wider. “Come in.”

I did. We sat on the couch together. Me desperate, her calm. Like Dax.

“You know my son,” she said.

“I do. He left a book at my house with that letter in it. He has no idea you have it.”

She smiled a sad smile. “Too good to be true.”

“You were going to write him back?”

“Of course. I already started to.” She picked up a paper off the coffee table next to us that I hadn’t been able to see from the door. She pulled out Dax’s envelope from beneath it. The edge was jagged from where she had opened it. She ran her finger over the return address. “I had no idea where he was.”

“He’s not there anymore. He lives in a different house.”

She nodded. “How is he?”

“He’s . . .” My heart thudded several hard beats. “Amazing. You have an amazing son.”

She looked back up at me. “You’re his girlfriend. I didn’t realize.”

“No. I’m not. Dax doesn’t . . .” He doesn’t do commitment is what I almost said, but instead finished with, “Doesn’t want that.”

“I’m sorry.”

She obviously knew I did want something with Dax. And I did, I realized, as I was sitting there desperate to get the letter back for him. Desperate to fix this. I finally knew what I wanted, and it felt bittersweet in that moment.

“So what do you need from me . . . ?”

She was waiting for my name. “Autumn,” I provided.

“Autumn. What can I do?”

“Not send whatever it is you’re writing. Not yet, at least. Will you give me a week to tell him what happened?”

“Of course.” She smiled, and I saw Dax inherited that from her as well. “But then I can send this to him, right? I have changed so much, and I’d like him to see that. Plus, he has legitimate questions in here. Questions he needs the answers to even if he wants nothing to do with me.”

“Yes. You should send it in a week.”

She picked up the pen lying on the coffee table. “Will you write down where I should send it to?” She handed the pen to me.

I stared at the pen. Maybe I should just let her send it to the address listed on his envelope. It would possibly get forwarded on to him eventually. But that was just putting off the inevitable. Either way I was going to have to tell him what I’d done when I returned his book without a letter. This way, with a letter from her in hand, he’d see that his mom had changed. This woman wasn’t the same one who’d walked away from Dax. And with that tattoo branded on his arm, he never would’ve sent the letter on his own. Things happen for a reason. Maybe this did. Maybe it would help him with his commitment issues. With me.

I took the pen and envelope. “Why haven’t you reached out to him in all these years?”