Chapter Thirty-Three

Annabel

A day of wallowing turns out to be far too much.

By three o’clock I’ve binged everything possible on the hotel’s cable stations. My decision not to pay for cable in the apartment is reaffirmed a hundred reality shows over. I’m restless, but I don’t want to go down to the lobby. I have zero interest in running into Marilee or, even worse, Bethany, who will feel sorry for me.

There’s nothing to feel sorry about. This is my entire life. Things shook out a bit differently this time, is all.

Does this count as being fired?

I consider the question while I stretch in the living room. My other concession to wallowing was having a pint of ice cream sent up from the shop in the lobby, but I finished that hours ago.

Four hours to seven.

I could do it. I could call Beau and tell him I need him to come now. I could spill the entire story to him, and he’d do it—he’d leave his office and be at the curb within forty minutes.

No. It’s too pathetic.

My phone rings on the end table next to the sofa, and my heart soars. Is telepathy a thing? If Beau is calling me right now, I’ll believe telepathy is a thing.

As if I am a yoga princess, Zen and calm, I turn and pick up the phone, preparing my sigh of happiness.

It’s an unknown number.

I swipe across the screen to answer the call. Why not? I have nothing else to do for the next four hours.

“Hello?”

“Annie, it’s me!”

The connection is a little unclear, like she’s calling from one of those Internet chat programs that makes it free to call internationally. It doesn’t matter. Her voice is unmistakable.

“Mom?”

“I said it was me,” she says with a huge, hearty laugh. “How are you, my girl? Are you still in New Hope?”

“I’ve—” I shake my head, trying to wrap my mind around this absurd question. “I’ve been in New York City for three years, Mom. Are you still in Brazil?”

“Not a chance on this earth!” She laughs again. “Oh, Brazil was fine, it was fine. I loved it, actually. There were some gorgeous sights, but . . .” My mother lets out a sigh. “I had to move on. I got that itch.”

Boy, do I know. “So . . . where are you? Where are you calling from?”

“Morocco,” she purrs, rolling her Rs.

Morocco? What?

“Mom, that is not anywhere near South America.”

“What did you expect, Annie? The whole continental United States wasn’t big enough for me. Neither was South America!”

I look out over Manhattan. We’re about to swing into mid-September, which is my favorite time of the year for moving on. You always get a nice change of weather. But I’m hardly seeing the skyline. A bitter taste is in my mouth. Is it from the ice cream? No. It’s from this phone call.

“So you went to Brazil seven years ago, and now you’re in Morocco, and you’ve never had a reason to pay a visit to the United States?” I try furiously to remember when she last called. Four months? Six? It was from the old workhorse cell phone she bought herself when I was in college. There was no mention of Morocco then.

“Annabel, that’s not fair,” she says. It’s the same as the summer after I graduated. I can hear her now, saying those same words over the kitchen table shoved into the corner of our cramped apartment in Chicago. “It’s not as if you make a great effort to call me.”

“That’s not true.” I thought I was finished wallowing over the seamstress job, but the shock of that has stripped away all the boundaries I put up since my mother left. This hurts, damn it. It hurts. “I called two weeks ago. It went to voice mail.”

“Which number did you call?”

I rattle off the same number she called me from six months ago. That’s when it was—in the spring. March. It was still cold.

“Oh, honey, that’s not my number anymore. I changed it when I stopped over in Patriot in July.”

A sharp disappointment stabs through my gut. On instinct I take a deep breath and try to exhale it, try to take it in stride. “You went back to Patriot?”

“Loose ends to wrap up,” she says. “Do you remember old Mr. Lowell? He died last year and left me a parcel from his farm.” She laughs indulgently. “I don’t want any land in Patriot, but it’s hard to arrange things with those folks from across the planet. I wasn’t there more than two weeks.”

I can hardly speak. I can hardly breathe. “Why are you calling, Mom?”

“Why do you think?” Her voice sparkles over the phone as if it is totally normal to be calling your daughter from Morocco when last she heard you were in Brazil, and you didn’t even bother to tell her you’d visited the country where she lives. “To catch up with my best girl!”

It sets my teeth on edge to hear that from her. Best girl? Best girl? She probably has new friends in Morocco who know more about what she’s doing with her life than I do.

I hiss out a breath between my lips. She has every right to live her life how she wants, like I do. I shouldn’t let this get to me. I shouldn’t let this affect me at all. It’s not worth it. “Everything’s great,” I say. “The city is great. But I’m busy, Mom. Now’s not a good time to talk.”

“It’s not? What time is it there? I didn’t even look before I—”

“Love you, Mom. I’ve got to go. Call me another time.”

I hang up the phone and dive back onto the sofa. I wish I had more ice cream. I wish it was seven already.

A few more hours of wallowing won’t kill me.