“You’re on speaker,” Annika says. “His name is Chance. And he…it’s…”
“Ah,” Kelly says, understanding her voice. “Is he good for you?”
“We’re still figuring things out,” Annika answers, her eyes on mine, “but yeah. He’s good for me. Really, really good.”
“Don’t make me regret giving you this opportunity, Ann. Please. I’m begging you. If you’re lying to me, just…don’t show up.” Her voice drops, trembling. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“God, Kel. You won’t regret it.”
“Sending you a pin. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She clicks off, then.
Annika hands me the phone back. She sniffles, rubbing her face with both hands. “God, that was hard. But good. She didn’t say no.”
“She calls you Annie?”
A nod. “Yeah. Everyone else calls me Nik or Nikki. But Kelly likes to be different, so she always called me Ann or Annie.” She gives me a droll side-eye. “Kelly’s the only one who gets to call me that, so don’t get any ideas.”
“Noted.”
Her phone pings with an incoming message—a pin to Kelly’s house. “She’s thirteen minutes from here.”
“You want to go alone?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “God, no. I don’t know if I could do it alone, if I could face her on my own.”
“You can, though.”
“I don’t want to.”
I brush my thumb across her cheek. “All right, then, mama. I got you.” I hand her the aux cord. “Plug that shit in and let’s go see your girl.”
The head unit is a brand new aftermarket touch screen with all the newest CarPlay software, and when she plugs her phone in, the directions from her nav app pop up on-screen. I follow them across town to a cute, tidy little subdivision not far from Camp Pendleton. The houses are modest, one-story ranches and the occasional two-story Colonial or Craftsman. The pinned location is a nice little ranch with pale yellow siding, white shutters, a big picture window in front beside a lavender-painted front door. Neat flowerbeds on either side of the walk and front porch are filled with daisies and hydrangeas in front of small, square-trimmed box shrubs. The lawn is freshly mowed, and a newer, silver, four-door Audi sedan sits in the driveway outside the detached garage.
We park on the curb, and Annika waits a moment, eying the house. “She’s doing well for herself, it looks like.”
“Yup.”
She looks at me, gnawing on her lower lip. “I’m scared.”
“You already did the hard part. Breaking the silence and reaching out first—that’s the hard part.” I squeeze her knee. “It’s gonna be okay, mama.”
She nods. Lets out a breath. “Promise?”
I shrug. “I mean, she agreed to see you. If she wasn’t ready to forgive you, I don’t think she’d let you come to her house.”
“True.”
While we’re talking, the front door opens, and a woman steps out to stand on the front porch. She’s as tall as Annika, or very nearly—over six feet. She’s blond, her hair cut straight at her chin in a sharp bob. She’s beautiful, with clear blue eyes and fine features. She’s more svelte than Annika, dressed in skin-tight athletic leggings and a sleeveless tunic coming down to mid-thigh, belted at her waist, barefoot.
Annika lets out another breath. “I can do this. I did the hard part.” This is to herself, not to me.
She reaches into the back seat and grabs her cane, shoves open the door, plants her good foot on the ground and then her cane, and forces herself to her feet. We’ve been in the car for a long time, so I imagine she’s got to be stiff—she bends and extends her bad knee a few times, then shakes it out.
A fraught, awkward moment, then—Annika is frozen in place, leaning on her cane; I can see her free hand trembling, and her chest is rising and falling swiftly as she fights an onslaught of powerful emotions.
Kelly is frozen as well, hands over her mouth, eyes wide and tearful. Kelly is the first to move, trotting down the two steps to the walkway and then jogging across the small lawn, slamming into Annika so hard Annika stumbles back a step, catching herself with her cane. I can hear them both talking over each other, both crying and laughing at once.
Kelly pulls back first, grabs Annika’s wrists and examines her forearms, then touches her face, like her mom did. “You look good, Ann,” Kelly says. “You look healthy. You’re really, actually clean.”
