Halfway to You(45)

Wind gusts against the bay windows, the sun slipping behind a mass of chaotic, lavender-gray cumulus clouds. With the dimming light, Ann’s eyes darken into a deep whiskey.

“I have a new agreement in mind,” Ann continues. “I will discuss recording with Grant. I have a few concerns and stipulations to iron out, if we’re going to record this the way I’ve been telling it to you.”

“Wow, I—”

Ann holds up a hand. “In exchange, I need you to talk to Tracey.”

“What does Mom have to do with the podcast?”

“Before I can continue, you need to have an honest conversation with her about the past.”

Maggie’s heart stumbles. Thoughts strobe through her mind: her parents’ warning, that first conversation when Ann inquired about her biological parentage, the details Todd omitted from his letters.

“What do you know?” Maggie whispers.

“This isn’t about what I know. This is about you. I suspect your mother wasn’t pleased about you speaking with me.” Her lips twist. “I won’t continue until she’s said her piece. That’s my deal, take it or leave it.”

Maggie holds Ann’s gaze, willing her to say more, searching for a clue to her motive. But all she sees is Ann, practically innocent in the clearness of her expression.

Maggie touches the recorder still resting on the couch between them. “I thought you’d be angrier.”

“I know what it’s like to feel desperate. And I know what it’s like to beg for forgiveness.” Ann leans forward and clasps her hands over Maggie’s. “Talk to Tracey, and I’ll talk to Grant. Deal?”

Maggie nods and nods, resisting the quiver in her lip, realizing that this is it: her honesty won. “Deal.”

Ann sits straight, smoothing her blouse. “Great. In the meantime, let’s have lunch, and I’ll tell you more about Todd—off the record. How does that sound?”

It sounds like a waste, without the podcast details ironed out, but Maggie isn’t ready to face her parents or even Grant just yet. Her body is loose with the deflation of adrenaline, a small thorn of paranoia still spiking her senses. Talk to Tracey. About what?

While Ann retrieves more letters from the box, Maggie takes a hasty sip of tea.

Maggie had once thought that Ann had no one left to protect, that she could tell her story—the full story—without concern. But maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe Ann is still protecting someone.





ANN


Rome, Italy

August 1990

There’s a delightful discomfort in awaiting a letter, a sweet angst, an achy anticipation. In my opinion, letters supersede all other forms of communication. Everything is instant now, Maggie—and with that privilege comes carelessness. A rapid-fire text, a hasty or drunken email. Pocket dials. When you write a letter, address an envelope, and buy a stamp, the labor lends itself to candor. There’s no point in putting in all that time and effort for flimsy sentiments.

Todd and I applied that care to our letters for the next two years. Sure, we had landlines, but nothing could replace the intimacy in folded pages and licked stamps. We shared preferences, pains, inside jokes. I told him about my pseudochildhood, and he sent me copies of his parents’ children’s books. He challenged my impostor syndrome, and I encouraged him through renovation headaches and business taxes. But mostly, through our friendly confessionals, we made each other feel less alone.

During that time, I dallied with a string of men—free spirited, rowdy, fun—and Todd dated a woman named Ellen. Our platonic correspondence empowered us to pursue romantic companionship with less expectation. I was floating along; each letter was a buoy that kept me bobbing at the surface of a sea whose depth scared the shit out of me.

Meanwhile, despite Keith’s nudging, progress on my sophomore book was slow. My mind was stifled by crushing expectation, made worse by the growing success of Chasing Shadows. When it was optioned for film the first time, Todd and Keith mailed congratulatory notes and arranged for flowers to be delivered to my apartment, and Carmella took me dancing—and while I twirled to the music, all I kept thinking was that someway, somehow, I was destined to let everyone down.

Then, in August 1990, my mother died of liver cancer, and my successes, the letters, the life overseas—all of it paled compared to my grief.

I was thirty-one, and we had long since grown apart. We hadn’t seen each other in the flesh since I left the States—not even for holidays—and I’d stopped calling after she failed to show up to my reading in Denver.

The day before she died, Mom called me from her hospital bed to tell me what was going on. Her fairy godmother voice had become worn and raspy. She didn’t have the energy to explain much beyond the basics, despite there being years piled up between us. I did my best not to keep her on the phone all night.

Not twenty-four hours later, I was slipping my passport into my purse when I received the news that she was gone.

My aunt had been the one to call. “Cancel your ticket,” she said, then hung up.

My bag slipped from my shoulder, and I sank into my desk chair, still clutching the phone.

There was so much my mother hadn’t told me until her final call, so much I had missed. She’d gotten married. She’d gotten sober. She’d started chemo. And she hadn’t bothered to tell her own daughter until it was too late.