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“The nurse was the one who told me Nevvie was dead—and that Jenna was missing,” I say to Serenity, who is sitting on the swiveling desk chair while I perch on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t know what to do. I had seen my daughter’s body, but I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d seen it, because then they would have known I had killed Nevvie, and they would have arrested me. I thought maybe Gideon had found Jenna and moved her, but then he also would have seen that I’d killed Nevvie—and I didn’t know if he’d already called the police.”
“But you didn’t kill her,” Serenity tells me. “The body was trampled.”
“After.”
“She could have fallen, like you did, and struck her head. And even if you’d been the one to make that happen, the police would have understood.”
“Until they found out that I was sleeping with Gideon. And if I lied about that, I could be lying about everything.” I look down at my lap. “I panicked. It was stupid to run, but I did. I just wanted to clear my head, to think through what I should do. All I could see was how selfish I’d been, and what it had cost me: the baby. Gideon. Thomas. The sanctuary. Jenna.”
Mom?
I am staring past the face of Serenity Jones into the mirror behind the motel desk. But instead of seeing her pink updo, the hazy reflection is a messy auburn French braid.
It’s me, she says.
I draw in my breath. “Jenna?”
Her voice leaps, triumphant. I knew it. I knew you were alive.
That’s all it takes to make me admit what I ran from a decade ago, what made it possible to run in the first place. “I knew you weren’t,” I whisper.
Why did you leave?
Tears fill my eyes. “That night, on the ground, I saw your … I knew you were gone. I would never have left otherwise. I would have spent forever trying to find you. But it was too late. I couldn’t save you, so I tried to save myself.”
I thought you didn’t love me.
“I loved you.” I gasp. “So, so much. But not very well.”
In the mirror behind the motel desk, behind the chair where Serenity is sitting, the image crystallizes. I see a tank top. The tiny gold hoops in her ears.
I swivel the desk chair so that Serenity is facing the mirror.
Her forehead is broad and her chin is pointed, like Thomas’s. She has the freckles that were the bane of my existence at Vassar. Her eyes are exactly the same shape as mine.
She has grown up beautiful.
Mom, she says. You loved me perfectly. You kept me here long enough to find you.
Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?
It wasn’t your fault.
That is when I break down. I don’t think, until she speaks the words, that I knew how badly I needed to hear them.
I can wait for you, my girl says.
I meet her gaze in the mirror. “No,” I say. “You waited long enough. I love you, Jenna. I always have and I always will. Just because you leave someone doesn’t mean you ever let them go. Even when you couldn’t see me, you knew deep down I was still there. And even when I can’t see you,” I say, my voice breaking, “I’ll know that, too.”
The minute I say this, I no longer see her face—just Serenity’s reflection, next to mine. She seems shocked, empty.
But Serenity isn’t looking at me. She’s gazing at a vanishing point in the mirror, where Jenna is now walking, lanky and angular, all elbows and knees that she will never grow into. As she gets smaller and smaller, I realize that she’s not heading away from me but moving toward someone.
I don’t recognize the man who is waiting for her. He has close-cropped hair and wears a blue flannel shirt. It’s not Gideon; I’ve never met this person before. But when he holds up a hand in greeting, Jenna waves back, excited.
I do recognize the elephant standing beside him, however. Jenna stops in front of Maura, who wraps her trunk around my baby, giving her the embrace I can’t, before they all turn and walk away.
I watch. I keep my eyes wide open, until I cannot see her anymore.
JENNA
Sometimes, I go back and visit her.
I go during the in-between time, when it’s not night and it’s not morning. She always wakes up when I come. She tells me about the orphans who have arrived at the nursery. She talks about the speech she gave to the wildlife service last week. She tells me about a calf that has adopted a little dog as a friend, just like Syrah did with Gertie.
I think of these as the bedtime stories I missed.
My favorite is a true tale about a man from South Africa who was called the Elephant Whisperer. His real name was Lawrence Anthony, and, like my mother, he did not believe in giving up on elephants. When two particularly wild herds were going to be shot for the destruction they’d caused, he saved them and brought them to his game reserve to be rehabilitated.
When Lawrence Anthony died, the two herds traveled through the Zululand bush for more than half a day and stood outside the wall that bordered his property. They had not been near the house in over a year. The elephants stayed for two days, silent, bearing witness.
No one can explain how the elephants knew that Anthony had died.
I know the answer.
If you think about someone you’ve loved and lost, you are already with them.
The rest is just details.