IAN
I was twenty-two and had just graduated with a BA in photojournalism when my mom was released from the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. She’d served her term without incident. She was a free woman. She immediately went off the grid.
Hoping to see my mom for the first time in nine years before my parents drove back to Idaho, and before I knew she’d disappeared, I met up with my dad at his hotel room at the Mirage in Vegas, where he told me she was gone.
“I waited for over an hour for her to show up. I’d been hoping to see her in the floral print dress and blue leather flats I’d picked out and shipped to her,” he explained in a rough and raw voice. “They told me to pick her up at two. Two p.m., I swear to God that’s what they told me. But no.” He dragged out the word, his face hardening. “She’d left at one. She was gone when I got there.”
Panicked, he peppered the security officer with questions. Had she taken a cab? Did she walk? Did she leave with someone else, another man? Please don’t tell him she’d fallen for someone else.
She hadn’t, but the officer suggested that my dad go to the bus terminal. It wasn’t uncommon for an officer to drop off a newly released inmate if the inmate requested a means of transportation. He might get lucky and find her there if she hadn’t yet left for wherever she intended to go.
My dad hadn’t been lucky. And, in my opinion, he hadn’t looked thoroughly enough. Call the cab companies. Check the airports. Buzz every hotel reservation line in the city. “Do something!” I had yelled at him. She could have gone anywhere. She could be anywhere.
“Your mother’s message is crystal clear. She doesn’t want to be with us,” my dad said into his glass of watered-down whiskey, the single ice cube long melted. He tipped back his head and swallowed a mouthful.
“That’s it, then?” I argued in utter disbelief. “You’re giving up?” Not just on looking for her. He was giving up on her.
I wasn’t ready to do that.
“I’m giving her what she wants!” My dad slammed his hand down on the tabletop. The glass rattled. Cigarette butts jumped in the dirty ashtray. A ghostly line of smoke rose from the end of his burning cigarette, hovering between us like a wraith in the night. He reached for the cigarette and took a long, deep draw.
“I have done nothing but give her what she wants,” he said on the exhale. Smoke circled his head. It filled the room. “And what she wants is not us.”
“Bullshit.” I swatted his whiskey glass. It bounced off the wall, leaving a dent. Whiskey sprayed the TV and bureau, soiled the carpet. The alcohol’s peaty smell of disinfectant and sharp ink expanded around us.
“If you’re not going to look for her, then I will. I’ll find her.”
My dad held my gaze for several ticks of my watch. He dipped his chin and stared unfocused at the table where he sat. He tapped off the ash. “She doesn’t love you. I wouldn’t waste my time on her.”
I would for the single reason she was my mother. I needed to know she was all right. That she was healthy and mentally stable. Was that even possible?
My dad raked a hand through his hair, greasy from the natural oils on his skin. He tilted up his face to look at me with eyes red-rimmed from weariness and I would imagine his own failure as a husband. Gray stubble peppered his jaw. “You’re setting yourself up to get hurt, Ian.”
“That’s my problem.” I left the room. Other than when I called to let him know I was getting married, it was the last time I spoke with him.
Six months after Vegas, I’d worked enough freelance jobs to hire Harry Sykes, a private investigator I found in the Las Vegas yellow pages. I was moving to France in a month and wanted to find my mom before I left. I hadn’t had any luck on my own. Harry volleyed questions about Sarah’s personal information and background, her known acquaintances, and places of residence. I returned each with a definitive answer. I’d once known her best. We then discussed the events leading up to her arrest and sentencing.
“Court transcripts are public record. Have you read hers?” Harry asked.
“No,” I admitted. I’d only been fourteen at the time of her trial. Other than when I testified, my dad hadn’t allowed me to attend.
“I’ll request to look at them. There might be something in there that pinpoints where she could have gone. You should read them, too.” He pointed his dull no. 2 pencil at me across his 1970s-era metal office desk. “She’s your mother. Something in there might ring a bell.” He tapped the pencil on his head. “It might help me find her for you.”
I followed up on his suggestion, read the transcript, and discovered a whole lot of something. I’d contributed to the cause of her illness. I’d exacerbated her condition. No wonder she didn’t love me.
Harry Sykes left a message several weeks later. He’d located Sarah Collins. I never returned his call, or the others that followed. I figured one day I’d make the effort to go to her. I owe her the apology of my life. I only needed to find the courage to do so and that time is now. I made a promise to my wife. I’d confront my issues about my past so that we could move forward together. I would fix my relationship with my mom.
I land in New York at dawn and scope out a relatively quiet corner away from the morning rush. It has a lounge chair, an outlet, and a USB port. These and a Venti-size coffee are all I need as I settle in for the three-hour layover.
I launch my laptop, charge my dead phone, and guzzle the coffee. Fingers poised over the keyboard, I catch my breath and stop to think. What have I done? The past twenty-four hours sink in like photo paper absorbing printer ink and the picture isn’t pretty. I left Aimee high and dry. She’s consumed with work and parenting our daughter and I packed and left.
Smooth move, Collins.
Granted, I planned to leave next week anyhow. But my spontaneous rush to split town earlier has left her with additional days of adjusting her work schedule and planning Caty’s care since I’m not there to watch her in the afternoons. To make matters worse, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I have five days to cover the assignment before I have to be in Idaho. And once I get there? I could be stuck there for twenty-four hours or a couple of weeks. I can’t help but compare myself to my dad.
He repeatedly left my mom. A last-minute press conference would yank him out of town. A scandal would arise about some multimillion-dollar contract player tampering with equipment. A star rookie safety would be arrested for soliciting a hooker. My dad would leave us at a moment’s notice so he wouldn’t miss any candid photo opportunities he could sell to the news outlets. We needed the money, he’d say as an excuse, leaving me to wonder if that was the only reason he left. He never admitted outright, but I think as much as he loved my mom and wanted to keep her safe, he was also scared of her. He knew how to handle her shifts, by giving her space and letting her be, but I was sure her alters made him uncomfortable. Their personalities and mannerisms were entirely different from the woman he married.
It was during my teen years that my relationship with my dad didn’t become problematic. It became the problem. I didn’t care where he was or when he’d be home. I picked fights, neglected homework, and became a downright belligerent pain in the ass. By the end of sophomore year, I had enough tardy and detention slips to cover my bedroom walls the way bars wallpaper theirs with paper bills. Staying in trouble kept my mind off the very public fact that my mother was in prison and that I was in therapy because of her.
PTSD. That was my psych’s diagnosis. To the outside world, living with a mother diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and an absent father was hell. I always saw it as a warped version of purgatory. I’d pay my dues and one day I’d receive my get-out-of-jail-free card. When that happened, I’d leave Idaho and never look back.
It wasn’t until midway through my junior year and after a couple of suspensions with the threat of expulsion—the black cloud looming over my immediate future—that I got my act together. Mrs. Killion, Marshall’s mom, took me under her wing when my dad asked her to watch over me while he was on contract and traveling with his sports teams. Good thing Mrs. K stepped in when she did, else college would have been out of the picture for one aspiring photographer. She ordered me to sit at her kitchen table until I finished my homework. She then insisted I remain for dinner. It was like this five days a week.
Sure, I could have left at any time. Go home and drink my dad’s beer and play video games. It wasn’t like Mrs. K tied me to the chair and held a gun to my head. I wanted to be there. For the first time since my mom had left, someone cared.
Therapy helped me process the years I lived with Mom. But it was Mrs. K, God rest her soul, who restored my confidence in myself.
My phone vibrates, charged enough to power on. Notifications blow up my screen. I open the last message from Aimee and read through the ones she sent during my flight. She isn’t mad about my leaving. I sag into the deep curve of the chair back, thankful she hasn’t banished me to the old sofa in the garage. Damn, I love that woman.
It’s predawn in California. She’s still asleep and Caty’s most likely with her, sprawled on my side of the bed where I’ve known her to sleep when I’m out of town on extended trips. I text Aimee rather than calling like she asked, else I’ll wake them both. I let her know that I’ve safely landed. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. Next, I e-mail Al Foster asking about the assigned writer and when he’s expected to arrive.
I power through the rest of my e-mails, then launch my browser, ready to rock ’n’ roll with the hunt, my determination to locate my mom renewed. My hands hover over the keyboard, fingers twitch, and I do . . .
Nothing.
Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Once again, I croak.
I slam closed my laptop.
Outside the large window beside me, planes take off and land. Baggage trams loop the tarmac like Disney World’s PeopleMover. Inside, over the speakers, flights are announced and passengers are called to the gates.
During high school, I despised my mom for the embarrassment she caused me. While my friends’ mothers cheered them on at our track meets and football games, my mother sat in prison.
Anger and resentment fueled my hate. But in college, I fell for a woman who reminded me in appearance and temperament of the Sarah side of my mother.
Eventually, my rage reduced to a simmer and resentment moved aside, making room for regret. I should have tried harder to understand her illness. I should have insisted more often and despite my mom’s objections that my dad force her to get the help we all knew she needed. My therapist often reassured me that what happened with my mom was not my fault. Yeah, well, she didn’t read the court transcript from her trial.
Come on, Collins. Man up.
There’s a reason I left early for Spain. I might as well make use of my time while waiting for my next flight.
I scratch at the scruff on the underside of my jaw and transfer the laptop perched on my knees to the low table at my feet. I Google for the search engine Erik told me about, the one programmed to search only for people. Erik’s ex-girlfriend had moved out of state and in with a man she’d met on a business flight to New York. He was about to go into obsessed-ex-boyfriend stalker mode until I knocked some sense into him, a literal thwack on the back of his head. I plug Sarah Collins into the search field and select “entire USA” from the drop-down menu. I hit Enter and wait. A list of more than twenty-five Sarahs displays. Way too many. I edit my search parameters to include Sarah’s middle name: Elizabeth. The engine drops three Sarah Elizabeth Collinses residing in the United States on my screen. One in Virginia, another in Utah. The third? She’s in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Viva Las Vegas.
That’s her. It’s got to be.
And it kills me she never traveled that far.
A knot forms inside my stomach, hard and sour at the base of my sternum. Has she been living in Vegas the entire time? Lower cost of living. No state taxes. Plenty of questionable employment opportunities for a woman to fall into with a record and mental illness. It makes sense, assuming that’s her.
Doubt creeps in, a burglar lurking along the recesses of my mind, thieving what inkling of hope I have left. It could be another Sarah Elizabeth Collins, for all I know. My mother could be anywhere, phone and address unlisted.
I reach for my phone. My hand shakes so badly I almost drop it. I tap out the number and the phone rings once, twice. On the third ring, a recording picks up. The greeting is garbled, a woman’s voice, and I can’t tell if it’s my mother’s. I haven’t heard her voice since I was fourteen and memories aren’t always honest.
I’m about to leave a message—Is this you?—when I remember what I’d committed to before I left for Spain.
I disconnect the call. I’ve waited half a lifetime of days. I can wait five more.
It’s late in the evening when I arrive at the inn, a converted farmhouse made from stonework. A yellow Lab runs over to me as I pop the trunk and remove my bags. He barks a greeting, his tail thumping the rental car’s bumper. He nudges at my legs and sniffs my hand.
“Hey, boy.” I scratch under his chin. He follows me to the entrance until he catches a whiff of a chicken clucking in the grass. He lets out a loud bark. Valet responsibilities forgotten, he chases the hen around the building.
Set among a picturesque countryside in Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain, I notice right away the inn, La casa de campo, is an ideal vacation spot for honeymooners. A young couple lounges on the front patio admiring the dusky sky darkening above forests of pine and eucalyptus. While sampling cheeses and drinking white wine, they wave at me. “Buenas noches,” they greet in unison.
“Evening,” I reply.
The man briefly smiles and turns back to his wife. He leans toward her and nuzzles her neck. She giggles, then moans softly, languidly, tilting her head aside to give him more room. His eyes lift to mine over her shoulder when he notices I’m still standing there, watching them. Shaking my head, I sling a bag over my shoulder and enter the front office, longing for my own wife.
In the dining room off to the side, guests eat dinner. Scents of roasted chicken and warmed bread make me think of home and Aimee. I miss her. We played phone tag during my layover, and other than texting her when I landed in Santiago de Compostela, at a small airport an hour from here, I haven’t spoken with her since I’d left her at the hospital. I owed her a call and an explanation. It wasn’t solely her closure with James that prompted my own need for closure.
A fire blazes in the lobby lounge and a woman seated with her back to the room chats on her cell in French. I make my way to the registration counter and drop my bags at my feet. I’m hungry and exhausted. I want to check in, order in, and crash.
A short man with round wire-rim glasses smiles from behind the counter. He introduces himself as Oliver Perez, the owner. “Buenas noches. Do you have a reservation?”
“Sí. Ian Collins.”
Oliver brings up my information on his computer. “There you are. You’re with us for three nights.” He takes my credit card and dives into a spiel about how he and his wife of thirty years own the inn and that dinner is now being served in the dining room. An oven-baked chicken roasted in Spanish sherry and red wine vinegar. “The chicken was raised here on the property.”
“And butchered by your dog?”
Oliver’s eyes go wide behind his glasses. “Excuse me?”
“The yellow Lab out front I saw chasing the chicken.”
He presses his lips into a flat line and mumbles something in Spanish. “He’s not supposed to be chasing the chickens,” he says, switching back to English.
My mouth twitches. “Sorry. Bad joke.” Awful joke. God, I’m tired. I rake back my hair. “You were saying?”
He slaps my card on the counter. “We don’t have room service. I suggest you eat now if you’re hungry and before we run out of food.” He gestures toward the dining room. “My dog won’t slaughter any more chickens until tomorrow.”
“What?” I look up from where I was slipping my credit card back into my wallet. Oliver holds my gaze, his expression serious. Then he grins, showing me a full set of cigarette-stained teeth.
I wag a finger at him. “Touché, Oliver.”
He gives me a real key—no plastic cards at this place. “I trust you’ll find your room comfortable with all the necessities.”
Except a complimentary fridge. “Gracias.” I pocket the key and bend to pick up my bags.
“Ian. Collins.”
My name comes from behind me, spoken as two distinct sentences.
That voice.
An onslaught of memories from my late teens and early twenties download. Corona-soaked spring breaks in Ensenada. Adrenaline-fueled winter weekends shredding snow-packed Colorado mountainsides. Sleep-deprived finals weeks punctuated with heated interludes among the book stacks at the university library. Long coffee-filled afternoons working side by side at a sidewalk café in the South of France. Her cold bed and chilled shoulder when she left. She’d had her fun. She’d had her fill of me.
Everything in me tenses as I straighten to my full height, bags left on the floor. I don’t have to turn around to know who’s behind me, but turn around I do. The woman yammering on the phone a moment ago stands before me, one arm crossed as she taps her phone against her chin. Her eyes hold mine, looking left and right as if she can’t believe she’s seeing me either. With her long dusty-blonde hair, hollowed-out cheeks, almond eyes, and rail-thin physique, she hasn’t changed in thirteen years yet looks older all the same. A shot of disgust dives straight into my gut. Clear as a high-resolution image, I plainly see what I denied back then, what she’d thrown in my face. She has the look of my mother.
I’m speechless even though I shouldn’t be surprised she’s here. It was bound to happen at some point. We’ve been running in the same circles since my work has taken a more human, journalistic approach.
She cocks her head. “It’s good to see you.”
Too bad I can’t say the same about her.
At least now I don’t have to follow up with Al Foster. One less call to make tonight, as it’s evident National Geographic scrambled with my request for the schedule change and got their writer here on time.
I take a breath and upload my patience. I’ll need it over the next few days because I know how she works. I can already anticipate the angle she’ll take on this story, and it won’t be favorable. I’ve got three days to convince her otherwise if I want to attach my name to this feature.
I force a smile. “Hi, Reese.”