Page 5 of The Last to Let Go
There’s only one other woman in the waiting area, sitting with her back to us, facing the row of windows that overlook the downtown city buildings, their lights beginning to blink on as the sun finally lies down for the day, the sky darkening slowly, like a long sigh. She’s flipping through a five-month-old copy ofGood Housekeeping, her fingers turning the pages too rapidly to be actually reading. She’s probably our parents’ age. Heavy makeup, hair dyed dark red, a little plump, but strong. Tough. Weathered. Still pretty somehow. A no-nonsense person, I’d imagine. I wonder vaguely, for a second, whom she’s here to see.
She looks up from her magazine and catches me staring. I quickly look down at my lap. When I raise my eyes again, she’s looking at me this time, her mouth held slightly open. I give her my best fake smile and try to act like there are lots of interesting things to be paying attention to in the waiting room.
Just then, interrupting the quiet vigil of the seventh-floor psych ward waiting room, something slams into one of the windows like a bullet, making each one of us jump in our seat.
“Oh my God!” the woman gasps, clutching at her chest and nearly dropping the magazine.
“What the hell was that?” I breathe.
“Bird,” Aaron answers immediately, as if he’s witnessed a million of these.
Carmen’s voice is muffled as she buries her face in Aaron’s shoulder. “Oh no, poor thing.”
The sound—that hollow thud—echoes through my head. It sends a tingle down my spine. I can feel those delicate hollow bird bones crushing somewhere inside of me. I draw my arms around my midsection.
In the wake of silence that follows I hear the woman say, “Hello?” like that one word was the result of long, hard contemplation. I turn to look at her once more. Her eyes are so wide I can see white all around her dark irises. She has these massive black eyelashes that make her expression even more dramatic.
“Brooke?” she asks. “AndAaron? Is that you?” Hesitantly, she sets the magazine down and stands, adjusting her shirt and the waist of her pants as she does so. Her smile reveals two rows of perfectly straight extra-white teeth—the kind that make me feel self-conscious about mine being not so straight, not so white.
Aaron looks at Carmen, then at me. Sitting up straighter, he lets go of her hand. “Who are you?” he says, not particularly nicely, putting on his tough-guy face once again.
“I can’t believe how grown up you are,” she says, more to herself, as she begins walking toward us. Her gaze alternates between me and Aaron, and her eyes glisten like she might start crying. “I’m here to help,” she says, hand over her chest like she’s making some kind of pledge of allegiance to us.
Aaron’s squirming, preparing to get all fiery and worked up. “Who. Are. You?” he repeats, not quite raising his voice yet.
She stops midstep, her face collapsing into a frown as she points a finger at her chest and says, “It’s Aunt Jackie. You—you don’t remember me?”
Aunt Jackie.
In my mind I do that age progression thing, like you see in those flyers for missing people, comparing what they looked like when they were last seen with what they would look like today.
We used to call her Aunt Jackie when we were kids, though she’s not really our aunt at all. We never had any aunts or uncles, no cousins, and all our grandparents are dead—except for our mother’s mother, but they hate each other and we’ve never even met her, so she doesn’t really count either. Jackie was the only “relative” we’d ever known. Our mom’s best friend. Or she used to be, anyway. When we were kids, Mom would walk us up to Jackie’s Coffee and Bakeshop after playtime in the park. Aaron would hold my hand, and then with his other hand he would hold on to the side of the stroller Mom was pushing, with Callie inside. I can remember Jackie reaching across the counter, smiling that toothpaste-commercial smile as she handed me and Aaron little chocolate doughnut holes wrapped in sheets of wax paper.
“Oh,” Aaron finally says, his face softening. He stands up and walks toward her. “No, we do. We remember you,” he says, speaking for us both.
“Your mom wanted me to meet you here.” She starts rubbing her hands together nervously. “To check on Callie. Make sure you were okay,” she says, tears filling her eyes as she reaches out for Aaron’s hand, maybe to stop herself from fidgeting.
Okay, my brain echoes. How can we be okay? How could we possibly be okay?
“Thanks for coming,” Aaron tells her solemnly, taking the hand she offers.
It’s beyond annoying how one moment Aaron can be on the verge of raging out of his mind and in the next he’s like some kind of patron saint of compassion and gentleness. I’ve always felt like he had the potential to be either a ruthless dictator or a sequestered monk, have a life of chaotic tyranny or peaceful contemplation. Nothing in between. The main problem with that is I never know which Aaron is going to show up. Just when I need him to be skeptical and cynical and tough, he goes soft on me.
I roll my eyes. Look around. Am I the only one who’s suspicious of Jackie? Even Carmen—levelheaded, calm, wise-beyond-her-years Carmen—greets this woman, this supposed friend who dropped out of our mom’s life years ago for no apparent reason.
“You’ll stay at my house,” Jackie continues. “Until everything gets sorted out.”
I have to say something. “Wait. Hold on, how did you even know we were here?”
“Allison, your mom, I mean. She had her police officer friend call me. I’m—I’m so sorry, kids. I’m so sorry this happened,” she says, her voice caving into her throat. “I can’t express to you how sorry I am. Really.” She blinks back the tears that are getting caught in her spider-leg eyelashes.
No one knows what to say. Thankfully, we don’t have to, because the doctor comes out right then. “Callie’s family?” she asks softly.
“Yes,” I answer, standing up and pushing my way past the others to meet her in the doorway.
“Let’s sit.” She directs me back to the seating area. “We’re all together here?” she asks as we huddle around her.
I look at Carmen, then Jackie, and reluctantly answer, “Yes.”
