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  “Two more days here.”

  “Right,” he says.

  “Right.”

  “And, after last time, I can’t—”

  “Bennett,” I interrupt him.

  “Yeah?” he asks, looking at me, clearly thinking about what comes next and not what’s happening now.

  “Let’s not think about the future. Or the past.”

  “It’s hard not to,” he says sullenly, and I turn around and face him, placing my hands on his waist.

  “Hey, we walked through the lichgate,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says, confused.

  “So we’re alive. We’re alive and living.”

  “Wasn’t that the other side? Aren’t we supposed to be dead on this side? Or something like that?”

  “You’re killing my motivational talk,” I deadpan. “You’ve been giving them to me all week. It’s my turn.”

  “Oh, sorry, continue.” He grins, sitting up straighter and pulling me onto his lap so I’m somewhat kneeling around his outstretched legs, somewhat straddling them.

  “We’re alive. Let’s just be alive together, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says, kissing me again.

  “Luke Skywalker would not be worried.”

  “Please, I’m clearly more Han Solo.”

  “Does every guy want to be Han Solo?”

  He looks at me and answers, “Obviously. He’s a pirate. And he flies the Millennium Falcon. And he gets the girl.” He’s completely serious, and I smile. Because there’s nothing fake about him. Nothing at all. So I lean onto him and he circles his arms around me. We stay like that for a while, as the wind blows through the leaves and passes over us.

  The tree is all around us, and it still feels so large, so vast. We are two branches rising up, and falling back down, finding and twisting around each other. We look into each other’s eyes, and when he kisses me again, I’m only thinking of the present.

  There may be no future for us; there’s just now. And now is enough.

  TWENTY-THREE

  We walk out from the park and head back to Bennett’s car. “Capitol?” I ask. “Bee seems probably the scariest.”

  “Scarier than your grandmother or Chad?” Bennett asks.

  “Well, okay, maybe not. But I think I want to start there, with her, since we weren’t able to yesterday.”

  “Capitol,” he repeats, authoritatively nodding in agreement. We get into the car and I assume he knows the way, so I just sit back and let him drive. “Excited? Nervous?” he asks.

  “More nervous, really. There’s always a chance she’ll refuse to talk to us.”

  “There is that,” he says, “but who can resist such charming people?”

  “Someone who hates the questions we’re going to ask?”

  “Maude.”

  “Yes, Bennett?”

  “You are far too pessimistic for our super-awesome detective adventures.” I shake my head and laugh. Our ride is quiet, mostly, as I figure out what I want to say, how to even introduce myself without consequences. I let my mind wander until we park on the second floor of a garage.

  When we get outside, I finally see the capitol building.

  “Wow, that is . . . um . . . suggestive,” I say.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what they were thinking. The domed building in the front is where the museum is. It’s the old capitol. The, uh, erection behind it is where all the government stuff happens now. Pun embarrassingly intended. I couldn’t help it.”

  “Gotcha,” I say as we climb the steps to the historic building in front that looks more stately than the rest of Tallahassee, as if it belongs in D.C. and not a college town.

  Bennett stops before we get inside. “Do you want me to come? I can stay here, you know. It’s cool.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I think, with Bee, I need moral support.”

  “Then moral support I will be,” he says, and follows me through the doors.

  Inside, we come face-to-face with a grand staircase. There’s a plaque nearby on the wall, and I read that the building was originally erected in 1845, but more recently restored to look like it did in 1902. We could go upstairs and see the history of Florida’s government, visit the gift shop, or walk to the reception desk. With a nod, we go to the desk.

  “Hi, um,” I say, hoping I sound intelligent to the woman behind the desk. She’s older, probably a volunteer who remembers when this building was the new capitol and not the old one. “We’re here to see Bee Shrayer?”

  “Who?” the woman asks in a shaky voice, and I’m not sure if she didn’t hear me or we’re wrong, and Bee doesn’t work here.

  “Bee. Shrayer,” Bennett says, louder and more slowly, using her married name like I did.

  “Oh! Bee. Yes, she’s upstairs. I’ll call her down.”

  I steal a glance at Bennett while the woman places the call. He crosses his fingers, and I do the same, when she hangs up the phone.

  “She’ll be right down.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and we walk over to an exhibit describing how most governors are sworn in on the very steps we just walked up. I get out my camera and take a picture of the staircase, the plaque, the old documents stored in glass cases.

  “Can I help you two?” a woman—Bee—asks us. “Are you here for the school paper interview?”

  I straighten up and instantly get nervous. This woman is the exact opposite of Jessica. She’s dressed smartly, in a dark suit and matching glasses. But unlike Jessica, this woman ostensibly hates my mother. This is Bee, who refused to talk to me. And I’m here, in front of her. Not taking no for an answer, but also terrified. “Oh, no,” I say, stumbling a bit. She’s even more intimidating than I imagined. If Jessica was a carefree butterfly, Bee is concrete and stone. “Um, we are, I mean, I am . . . I’m Maude,” I finally conclude.

  “Maude,” she muses. Then her eyes go from cloudy to bright as she realizes who I am. “Maude,” she says again, turning my name into a reprimand. “How did you . . . why did you?”

  “I’m sorry, we’re sorry, for visiting you at work like this,” I say quickly, hoping not to lose her while surreptitiously looking for guards. “I know you don’t want to see me, and don’t want to talk to me about my mother, but I had to find you. I’m only in town for another day, and I want to learn everything I can about my mother, and if that meant I had to track you down at work, I did it. I’m really, really sorry, but I have to know. If you don’t want to talk to me, I’ll leave, but I had to . . . try,” I finish, taking a breath and letting the nervous energy out of my body.

  She stares at me hard, crossing her arms in front of her body, and then moves her eyes to Bennett. “And you are?”

  “A friend, ma’am,” he says, looking as nervous as I feel.

  She looks back at me, takes a breath, then says, “Come with me,” motioning for us to follow her past the staircase and out a back door to a concrete courtyard that separates this building from the new one. We keep walking behind her, following the clicking of her heels, down another set of stairs so we’re back to street level. She gestures to a black table with a yellow umbrella over it, and we all sit down. A part of me is relieved, while the other part is still on edge.

  “This is where I oftentimes eat lunch,” she says, breathing deep and not looking up to meet our eyes. “I thought it would be best to speak out here, away from my colleagues.”

  “Thank you,” I say breathlessly.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she says, shaking her head and finally looking up. “I told you that I didn’t want to get into this.”

  “I know, and I’m really sorry, but—”

  “I told you that I wanted to leave it behind, but you came here anyway. You tracked me down at my job.”

  “It’s just—” I start, cheeks heating up.

  “I can have you escorted out, you know that, right?”

  “I really just want to—”

  “Want to what?” she demands.

  �
�Talk,” I finally get out, embarrassed. “I really just want to talk to you. If you don’t want to answer, that’s perfectly fine, I just needed to see you.”

  “But why me?”

  “Because I only found a few people my mother knew, from an old high school photo, and I’d hate myself for not following up on all of them.”

  She assesses me and I stop blinking. “I admire your tenacity. But you still went about it the wrong way.” She hesitates, then asks, “Why me?”

  “I have nothing on her,” I admit. “Just a few old photographs and some old stories from Jessica. I still don’t know who my mother really was. And I don’t want to leave until I get every story I can. So I can have something to hold on to, and inform me about . . .”

  “About you?” she asks warily.

  “Yeah,” I admit.

  “Right. Okay, well,” she says, rubbing her hands together. “I still don’t think I can help you.”

  “You can try?” I push, knowing this is the last time I’ll ask. If she says no, we’ll leave.

  After what feels like an hour, she nods. “What do you know so far?”

  So I tell her everything. Her eyebrows raise when I mention Key Club, and when I mention Jessica again, she lowers her head. All of this means something to her—I just don’t know what.

  “You have done a lot.” She hesitates again, then says, “Claire and I were good friends in high school. Best friends. We met in a history class during our freshman year, and simply clicked. She was more outspoken than me, quite a bit, but she was, I suppose, the yin to my yang. Opposites attract and all that.”

  “What was she like back then?”

  “She was smart and caring, and spirited, that’s for sure. Always speaking her mind. She wasn’t the kind of person who lied to you just to make you feel better. Though painful at times, it was also refreshing. It wasn’t until later, when she became Clarabelle, that things changed.”

  “Her nickname,” I say.

  “Right. That stupid nickname.” She shakes her head. “Have you ever seen a person act one way, and then completely change into another person a second later? To me, she was Claire, this amazing friend—this best friend—I had. But then when she met Jessica and fell into her other crowd, she became Clarabelle. And people loved Clarabelle so much, Claire rarely ever came back out.”

  I feel things clicking together and starting to make sense. How she could be one thing, and how she could be another. My mind flashes to Treena.

  “So is that why you stopped being friends?” I ask.

  Bee shakes her head. Under the table, I feel Bennett’s hand on my knee, palm up. I place my hand in his for comfort. I like that he’s here, but not interrupting, not making it about him. He’s just here. “I was dating this guy Chad senior year. It was the first guy I really liked, and Claire knew that. She actually set us up. I’d liked him for a while, and . . . wow, I haven’t thought of this in years.”

  She looks down at her long, thin fingers, and taps them gently. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, he cheated on me with her.”

  My heart drops. For her, for me.

  “I know it sounds absurd that I’m still upset about it years later, but he was my first love. And she was my best friend. And worse, she knew how much it would affect me—not just being cheated on, but the similarity of it all,” she says, then explains, “The same thing had happened to my mother—my father had an affair with her best friend. I cried to Claire dozens of times about it; she was there for me. At least I thought she was. But then . . . anyway, after that, we didn’t talk. I just . . . I didn’t understand how someone could change so quickly, and so completely.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I look over at Bennett and he, too, is looking down. He’s been there; he understands.

  “Yes, well, it’s okay now, obviously. But at the time, it felt like the end of the world.” She pauses. “And high school is hard enough as it is.”

  “What happened after?” I ask, having to know. This story does have a happy ending, right? She’s here now.

  “Oh, a lot of things, but that’s not important. I graduated school, went to college, and am here now. I never really spoke with her again, and it killed me. It still does, in a way.” We’re quiet for a second, letting her words settle among us. “I’ve only told one other person about all of this, my husband, and even he doesn’t know the whole story.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to go through that,” I say, shaking my head.

  “It’s okay,” Bee says, and she’s strong, stronger than I would be. I probably would have kicked us out if I were her. She had reason to keep us away; I can’t believe I pushed so hard. “I just didn’t want to relive it. It’s not just talking about it; it’s you.”

  “Me?” I ask, confused.

  She shakes her head. “I was scared of what I’d see. And I was right to be. You look just like her. You’re her.”

  “Oh . . .” I say.

  “It reminds me of all the things we said and did and shouldn’t have. It reminds me that I hated her for what happened, but I hate myself, too, because I never got to . . . we never cleared things up before she . . .”

  “Died,” I say, and she puts her head in her hands and nods.

  “She left, and I never said good-bye. We were best friends,” she says again, sniffling. I put my hand on her shoulder and can’t believe how different she is from Jessica, how strong she is. Her biggest regret is not forgiving my mother, for something that didn’t need forgiving.

  “I’m so sorry we brought all of this up.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says, shaking her head. “I just wish I was able to talk to her, just one more time. I’ve forgiven her now; maybe I would have, then.”

  “I’m sure she knew you didn’t hate her.”

  “I just wonder what was going on in her mind that whole time. And I wish I could have been there for her . . . through it all.”

  I look at her carefully, and say, “You’re a good friend. You really are.”

  “Thank you.” She smiles gently, then furrows her brow. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “You came here looking for information about your mother. . . . What about your father?”

  I balk. “I don’t know who my father is,” I admit. “Do you . . . ?”

  “Oh, no. Like I said, we weren’t talking then. I just wonder . . .”

  “If it was Chad?” I answer her thought.

  “Yes . . .”

  “I don’t know.” I shake my head again. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever know.”

  “Are you going to see him while you’re here?”

  “I’m going to try,” I say. “I’m curious.”

  She nods, then says, “Despite all that I’ve said, he’s a good guy. At least he was.”

  Good, I think. “Good.” I look back at her and see her glancing at the building, perhaps needing to leave. So I ask one more question. “Her art—did you know anything about her art?”

  “Yes, I remember. I didn’t get it, really, but I loved it. It was different . . . like her.”

  “I’m a photographer, and I just, you know, it’s something we have in common.”

  She looks at me and nods, saying, “It’s a good thing to have in common.” She looks back at the building again, and I get it.

  “We should leave you alone, let you get back to work.”

  “Yes, right,” she says, almost in a daze. “I’m sorry I was not open to talking prior to today, but as you can tell, this was all a bit hard. But thank you for coming by. I think I needed to revisit Claire.”

  “Thank you for talking to us,” I answer, getting up. Bennett stands next to me, his hand on my lower back.

  Bee looks up at me and adds, “Your mother was wonderful. You should know that. She was crazy, and we didn’t end on good terms, but she really was wonderful. She was my lifeline.”

  “Thank you,” I say, meaning it. Because I needed to hear th
at. More than she knew.

  We leave Bee at the table, after I take her picture, and head back toward the car. We’re walking through an alleyway bordering a restaurant that has beautiful graffiti on both sides—spray-painted images of a woman crying, the sun rising, an abstract stacking of squares. You wouldn’t know this art was down here if you didn’t step inside.

  “So what now?” Bennett asks tentatively.

  “Stopping would be so easy right now,” I say, processing it all. It seemed so petty, but it wasn’t. My mother wasn’t the person I thought she was; she was hardly a person I would have been friends with, and certainly not a mom. Which makes sense—she was nearly my age. But still—it’s hard realizing the mother I once had is someone I can’t see myself in at all. Whenever I felt different, I always felt comforted by the fact that I might be a perfect replica of someone else. But I’m not really. Not at all. It’s unsettling, and part of me wishes I never started this in the first place. “Okay, how about this—we leave it to fate,” I say.

  “Fate? That’s so unlike you. Don’t you like concrete answers?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how many more concrete answers I can put up with,” I admit, pulling my hair back. “There’s Chad and my possible grandmother.”

  “Right, which to find first?”

  “I’m . . . I’m scared of calling my possible grandmother again. I think . . . I don’t want to be let down by her again.”

  “So, Chad?” he asks.

  “Yeah, let’s find Chad. If we do, great, but if we can’t find his shop . . .”

  “We stop,” Bennett says, opening his car door for me.

  “Yes, we stop.”

  In the car I steady myself, then type “Chad Glickman mechanic Tallahassee” on my phone, assuming that Jessica was right, and Chad is a mechanic here. And that his shop has a website, or at least contact information. I scroll through the results and find a few mechanics, but none that have Chad’s name attached to them. Maybe the shops don’t list their mechanics. My heart speeds up as I scroll some more, and I’m still not sure if I’m hoping to find him or hoping I won’t. Because he might bring up a whole other round of questions. I change my search and just look for his name, but nothing appears that’s promising. I change the search again and just look for mechanics in Tallahassee.