Willow had become a leaky faucet of sadness. She dripped, dripped, dripped with it. It never gushed out in spurts or sprayed anyone around her. It just dripped, dripped, dripped. All the time. It didn’t happen in the form of tears or red sores or a wet bed. It just dripped, dripped, dripped out her pores.
And as she took her usual seat on Bus #50 right behind the driver, her sadness dripped, dripped, dripped some more when the silver duct tape on the back of the seat caught her eye. She wanted so badly to peel back the tape and discover a new batch of Pixy Stix. She wanted so badly for her mom to be back in her life. For love to be back in her life. And even though she knew it was impossible, Willow couldn’t stop her pointer finger and thumb from pinching the corner of the strip of tape and tugging it back. Willow peered in the hole and thrust her hand into the void as she dripped, dripped, dripped with the expectation of disappointment.
But just like that, the dripping stopped. There was the familiar feeling of those thin tubes of Pixy Stix right there in the seat. And that feeling stopped all the dripping. It dried it all right up.
Two more Pixy Stix.
Two more Pixy Stix!
Mom had left her two purple Pixy Stix.
But how had she left those Pixy Stix?
Was she still alive?
She was still alive.
Mom was still alive!
A rush of the purest happiness and excitement and relief and love jolted through every vein of her body. It jolted through her body and filled her bones and heart. It wrapped around her lungs and her brain so quickly that she was dizzy with it. The whole world did one whole flip and everything was good again.
All of Willow’s memories of her mother went zipping into the future. All of the dancing and singing and movies and candy and lipstick that Willow had crystallized in the past projected straight onto a screen of her future. She could barely contain a shriek at the idea that she would have all of those things again.
But where was she? Where was Mom?
Willow pulled her hand and the Pixy Stix out from the hole in the seat. A tarnished golden heart-shaped locket came with the tubes. It was dangling from a tarnished golden chain wound delicately around the two tubes. Willow pressed the locket into her heart. She could feel Mom in that locket. She could feel the locket pulsing. Giving her love. Giving her life.
She felt the same tingling feelings she felt when she had her head in her mother’s lap in the tree house. The same feelings of comfort. And relief. And pure, unadulterated, heartwarming happiness.
Where are you, Mom? Willow thought to herself. Where are you?
Willow closed her eyes and pressed the locket farther into her heart.
Tell me where you are.
And then Willow opened her eyes and looked down at the locket in her hands. She twisted it around in her fingers and examined every scratch. Every bit of tarnish. Every chipped golden edge. She snaked the chain through her fingers, and then turned it over. She traced her fingers slowly across the engraving on the back. She traced her fingers across it and felt the shallow grooves of each letter.
299 East 82nd Street. Apartment 5.
And Willow’s question was answered.
Of course that’s where Mom was. She was safe and happy in that apartment in Manhattan she loved. And she wanted Willow to be safe and happy with her there too. Just like she said in that willow tree.
For the first time in months, everything was making sense.
Her mother had been so distant because she was planning her escape. She had left her on that curb at Robert Kansas Elementary School so many times because she was back at her apartment. Getting it ready. Painting the walls and setting up the music. Stocking up on her favorite movies and filling up the kitchen with her favorite snacks. Yes, it all made sense. Why Dad didn’t bring her to the funeral. There was no funeral. That phone call with Roy. He had faked it all. He had faked it to get Willow to stay with him in that house in Virginia. But Willow knew better now. And her mother knew better all along.
Willow would find Mom there in Manhattan as soon as she could.
She clutched her Pixy Stix in her fingers, and then tucked them into her backpack. And then she kissed her tarnished locket and tucked it away in her jacket pocket.
And then she pressed her eyebrows together and filled with determination. Determination to get to Mom. Determination to get to love.
And, now, when Willow Thorpe was determined to do something, she made it happen.
It hadn’t always been true, but it was now. It was true for Willow as much as it was for Rex.
They had been missing each other’s love for so long and they had missed again. Ever so slightly this time. But Willow and Rex, daughter and father, were ready for love and they would do anything to find it. Even if in new places or in new ways.
* * *
Willow watched every tick, tick, tick of the clock in the back of Mrs. McAllister’s class until the end-of-school bell rang and she could go home and tell Asher about all of it. And as soon as she and Asher stepped off their buses and through the big thick door of Dad’s house, Willow took her brother by the hand and yanked him into the front closet. Willow’s eyes were wide with something.
“When we play hide-and-seek, we don’t hide togethew, Willow!” Asher explained slowly and instructively in a noisy whisper.
And without saying anything, Willow reached into her jean jacket and pulled out the locket.
“Ooooooo,” Asher said with eyes now wide as Willow’s.
But then he said nothing. And within a few seconds, his extended blue eyes shrank back to normal size.
Willow dangled the chain aggressively in front of his face.
“What?” Asher said, still in his noisy whisper.
“Look at it,” Willow instructed, turning the locket over to show Asher the address engraved on the back.
“Mom left this for me in the seat on the bus.”
Asher’s shoulders dropped and his mouth turned down. He welled up with sadness when he thought of his mom.
“Like befowe she died?”
“No. Like now.”
Willow expected a burst of excitement for the second time but got nothing but a head tilt from her younger brother in the darkness of the front closet.
Willow continued. “Like meaning she’s still alive, Ash. She wants us to find her here. At this address.”
Willow now had the locket in the center of her palm, on display for Asher. And she waited for the third time for Asher to share in her excitement.
“Willow, that doesn’t make any sense,” Asher said as he rubbed his wet eyes.
And then Willow explained everything to Asher. How Rosie had been leaving Pixy Stix in the back of the seat all year. How there wasn’t a funeral. How Mom had been planning their escape this whole time. How Mom never would have left them, even if it was an “accident.” How they would go to Manhattan and find her.
Willow’s belief that her mother was in that apartment gushed out of her. Out of her words and her pores and her bones and her heart.
It gushed out of her so swiftly, so fiercely, that there was no reality anymore.
So Asher did what little brothers have done for all of time. He believed what his big sister told him. And it had nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with loyalty. And love. So Asher let Willow’s words into his heart and tacitly but resolutely joined his sister in her plan to find Rosie.