Filed to story: Sedona Preston and Logan Hayes Book PDF Free
“She’s dying somewhere without us. Without Nick. She left her child behind because she believed he hated her, and she believed it because we taught him to see it as a normal thing, where his mum is treated unfairly, like a housemaid, while all attention and care goes to Catherine, a woman who had never known how scary it was, to think Nick wouldn’t survive his infancy.” I heard my own voice break on the last word, and I didn’t try to repair it. This was all my fault, my wife was fdying and I had no idea where to find her.
“You did that. I did that. And I’m not going to sit here and let you tell me the gracious thing is to move on.”
The room was very quiet. My mum looked at her, her mouth opening and closing like she wanted to say something but she had no defence yet, her hands gripping her gown tight, making wrinkles show on it.
From somewhere in the house, I could hear the faint sound of the television-Nick, watching his afternoon programs, unaware that his family was falling apart in the next room.
A figure appeared in the doorway. I glanced at the door expecting to see the nanny, but I saw someone else standing there.
Grandma Brooke stood there, smaller than usual somehow in her cashmere coat, her expression showed that she had been here for a long time and had heard everything and decided to intervene because they’ve heard enough. I hadn’t known she’d come with my mother, hadn’t heard her arrive.
“Sherry,” she said, in the tone she used that required no volume to command attention. “Go check on your grandson.”
My mother opened her mouth, probably to protest or insist that this was between mother and child.
“Now, please.”
Sherry looked between us, seeing that I wasn’t saying anything to help, then shook her head like she thought we were the ones being immature and then gathered her handbag and left the room with the dignity she applied to everything, even backing down from confrontations that were not in her favour.
Brooke came in slowly and lowered herself into the chair across from my desk. I stayed standing, feeling raw and stripped-down and not entirely sure my legs were reliable. So I did not bother to move, just stayed where I was, waiting to hear what Grandma had to say, probably to rub it in my face, because I had been stubborn all along.
“She did mention one thing,” Brooke said, without preamble. “When she came to say goodbye. I’ve been trying to remember if she said anything that might help you find her.”
I moved around the desk immediately. “What did she say?”
“She mentioned going home. Back to her family. And then she said something-I almost didn’t register it at the time, she said it the way people mention something they think is irrelevant. She said the rain in Seattle was different from Chicago.” Brooke met my eyes steadily. “I don’t know if that means anything.”
Seattle.
The word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples outward as I felt the desperate feeling of hope growing again in my chest despite my pessimism.
Seattle. She’d mentioned Seattle. A city big enough to disappear in, small enough to search if you knew where to look
“She told me she was an orphan,” I said, half to myself.
“She told you what she needed to tell you at the time.” Brooke’s voice was gentle but not apologetic. “People run from things, Logan. They don’t always explain why. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to run back to.” She paused. “Go find her. While there’s still time to find her.”
Sedona’s POV
I’d forgotten what Seattle smelled like. It has been so long that I stepped in Sedona that everything now felt like nostalgia, bringing tears to my ears that I blinked back hard, to avoid it spilling down my face. I never thought I was going to see the place again before I died.
It was still the same familiar scent that I had grown up used to; Salt air and cedar and the cool summer breeze that came accompanied by the smell of something being fried in the streets, this was the same particular combination that you only got in the Pacific Northwest, that you couldn’t replicate anywhere else. It hit me the moment the car door opened, even before I could see anything past the morning fog that saturated the whole town.
Cameron had hired a car from the airport, instead of calling the family driver. This car was a rental, that helped passengers go to their destinations.
This was a quiet, dark SUV with tinted windows and a driver who didn’t ask questions. He’d helped me into the backseat at O’Hare with the careful way someone did, when handling precious cargo, I do not know if Cameron informed him, before hand or my appearance was more than enough for him to know that I was very sick.
I didn’t dwell much on it, as I closed my eyes allowing the soothing movement of the car to lull me to sleep and and I’d fallen asleep somewhere over Montana and woken up with my cheek against the window and the Seattle skyline in the distance.
“We’re almost there,” Cameron said from beside me, his voice the same steady and comforting tone, that it had been for days, one of the familiar constant in this scary journey that I was navigating all blindly.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like myself,” I said. “Which is either a good sign or a terrible one.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face as he shook his head at my dry witty humor..
“For what it’s worth, you look slightly more like yourself than you did this morning.”
I didn’t ask what I’d looked like this morning. I had an idea of what he meant because I’d caught my reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror before we left and had stopped looking after approximately two seconds.
The neighborhood came first, as I could see the familiar wide streets with their mature trees, fruits already ready for their plucking, some, fallen on the grounds where they stayed, the houses set back from the road behind generous lawns. All my life I’d lived here before I ran, and every corner was saturated with a childhood I’d been too young to appreciate and too proud to miss. Because missing it would need for me to accept and confess even to just myself that I had made a terrible mistake in the first place.
And then the house itself, at the end of the familiar cul-de-sac. Three stories, white with navy trim, the Japanese maple my father had planted the year I was born now enormous in the front garden, its autumn leaves red as rubies.
Two figures stood on the front step.
My parents.
I don’t know what expected Anger, maybe, or the neutrality of people who had been hurt too many times to risk openness. I’d spent five years imagining this moment and in most versions, it was strained. Cautious. A reunion that required slow spacing, a lot of halted apologies cut short, awkward dinners and conversation made, shouting, arguing before you reached warmth.
My mother saw me step out of the car, and her face simply collapsed.
Not with anger. Not with the justified look of someone who had been proved right and was smug about it. But instead it had collapsed with relief so profound that I felt tears gathering in my eyes. She had missed me just as badly as I had missed her.
“Sedona.” My name in her voice, the way she’d said it when I was small and had hurt myself and she was running toward me to scoop me up and shower me with kisses to make the boo boo go away.
And then she was running toward me, and I was moving toward her, and we met in the middle of the front path, and she took my face in both hands the way she had when I was a child-tilting it up, looking at me, making sure all of me was there.
“My girl.” Her voice was breaking. “My girl, look at you. You’re here. You’re actually here.”
“Mom.” The word came out of somewhere deep and fundamental, a word I’d been holding in my chest for five years without knowing it. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, I wasted so much time, I should have-“
“Shh.” She pulled me against her, and I was six years old again, and twelve, and seventeen, all the versions of myself that had needed my mother and been too proud or too frightened or too certain of my own rightness to ask. I held on tight to her, familiarizing myself with her warmth and love as I swallowed hard, while she gently patted my head, her other hand gently rubbing my back.
“None of that. None of that now. You’re here. That’s all that matters.”
My father reached us, and for a moment he just stood there, this tall, self-contained man who I’d always been slightly afraid of in the way of daughters who respect their fathers too much to disappoint them easily.
Parker Preston was someone who always wore a composed serious face- strong jaw, measured eyes, the face of someone who had learned long ago that showing vulnerability was a luxury executives couldn’t afford.
His face wasn’t composed now.
“Dad,” I managed.
