Chapter 213
Chapter 212: Sedonats Coming Back To Chicago
SEDONA
We stayed on the line for another few minutes after that. The conversation found its way to ordinary things-the texture of ordinary, the small daily details that are the substance of a child’s life. He told me about a project at school involving maps, which apparently he had opinions about. He told me that Mrs. Peterson had made the soup I’d written the recipe for-the one for when Nick had a sore throat, the ginger one-because he’d come home with a scratchy voice earlier in the week, and that it had been the right
soup.
“She followed the recipe,” he said.
“I know. I gave it to her p>
“She did it right.” He said it with the seriousness of someone assessing craftsmanship. “It tasted like yours p>
That pressed against me again.
“Good,” I said.
Before he handed the phone back to Mrs. Peterson, he said: “Mum p>
“Yes p>
“I didn’t-” He stopped. I heard him working through something. “What I said. Before. The things I said.” A pause. “You know I didn’t p>
“I know,” I said. “I got your card p>
A silence.
“I meant it,” he said. “What I wrote p>
“I know you did.” I kept my voice steady. “And I love you too. Just exactly the same p>
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Okay p>
“Okay,” I said.
Mrs. Peterson came back on briefly-quietly confirming logistics, telling me the call had gone well from her end, that Logan wouldn’t be back until seven. I thanked her again, and she said *of course*, and the line went quiet.
I sat on my bed with the phone in my lap and the maple tree outside the window and Nick’s card on the nightstand and the feeling of the last forty minutes settling into me like something solid.
He knew I was coming.
He knew about the tennis.
Sedona Is Coming Back To Chicago
Claim
And somewhere in Chicago, a six-year-old was sitting on a window seat with Gerald the Boot on his ceiling, holding a piece of information that was too large for the ordinary Tuesday afternoon it had landed in-and doing what Nick always did, which was hold it carefully until he knew what shape it was and what
to do with it next.
I picked up my notebook and finally wrote something in it.
Not strategy. Not logistics. Just two words, in the middle of an otherwise blank page:
*He knows p>
I told my mother first, when I came downstairs.
She read my face the way she always did-three seconds, no words required-and then she said: “Come eat something,” and I sat at the kitchen table while she put a plate in front of me and stood at the counter with her own tea and waited.
“He took it well,” I said. “Better than I expected. He was-” I tried to find the word. “He was Nick about it. Careful and then suddenly very open and then careful again. He asked good questions p>
“He always asks good questions,” my mother said. “He gets that from someone p>
I smiled at the plate.
“He wants to make a new constellation,” I said. “When I come. A new one for the ceiling. Together p>
My mother was quiet for a moment. I looked up and she was looking at the window with an expression I recognized-the one she had when something had arrived that was bigger than she had space for but she was managing it because there was food to be prepared and a table to be at and a daughter who needed
to eat.
“We’re going to see him,” she said. Not a question.
“Cameron is arranging it. Adaeze is managing the legal side of the access.” I picked up my fork. “But yes. We’re going to see him p>
She turned back to the counter. Picked up her tea. I could see her shoulders do the thing they did when she was organizing a feeling into something productive-something that would eventually become food, or a plan, or both.
“I’ll need to know what he likes,” she said. “Food-wise. What he can have, with the allergies p>
“I’ll send you the full list,” I said. “Mrs. Peterson gave me the current one a few weeks ago.” A pause. “He can have the jollof if you skip the p>
“I know how to manage allergies,” my mother said, with the gentle authority of someone who had been managing them since Nick was born and simply hadn’t been allowed to do it directly. “I’ll make things he
can eat p>
“Of course you will,” I said.
She looked at me. A small look-not long, not elaborate. Just the look that said: *we’re going to be alright.
All of us p> twent back to my food. Claim Upstairs, the competition schedule was still on my nightstand. The list that would go public in two days, with photographs and names, Sedona Preston in the field among women who had been competing continuously through the eleven years I’d been building a life that looked like other things. The announcement that Logan would see. That the entire circuit would see. But Nick had heard it from me first. And he was sitting somewhere in Chicago right now, turning over everything I’d said-the coming back, the competition, the new constellation we were going to name and somewhere inside whatever he was working through, he knew. His mother played tennis. His mother was coming home. Comments LUCK DRAW p> M Vote 545 Florence A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.