I WILL COME BACK.
fourteen
Dallas swore up and down he could drive the stick shift with just his left hand, but Zoe said she’d defied death enough for one day. She steered the 4Runner down the rutted roads and out of the wilderness.
The instant they hit Columbia Falls—and civilization—their cell phones finally picked up a signal, as if they’d just splashed down from space. Zoe pulled over to text her mother. Seeing the Buddha and cross her mom had left at the cave had softened her a little. She wasn’t ready to forgive her mother entirely, but she figured she deserved to know that she was okay. So she texted her the same one-word message she’d sent on the night of the blizzard: Safe. As she pressed Send, she felt not just déjà vu, but amazement at everything that had happened since she saw X hurtling toward her and Stan across the ice.
Her mother answered before Zoe even had a chance to put the phone back on Dallas’s dashboard.
Thank god! she wrote. Thank EVERY god! OX!
“OX” was her mom’s version of “XO.” Zoe had begged her to stop using it because every time it popped up on her phone she thought, for a split second, that her mother was calling her an ox.
I’m still pretty pissed at you, Zoe texted back.
Her mother began typing. The “…” bubbled up. As always, it seemed to promise something profound.
I know you are, Zo. I get it & don’t blame you. I’ve been a wreck—so worried about you getting hurt that I haven’t been able to eat/breathe/operate heavy machinery. I’m at the hot springs. Come and let me hug you?
Maybe. Not sure. Let me see if I can get un-pissed.
Please-please-please?
OK, OK, I will—just so you don’t start sending me emojis. OX (as you wd say).
Thank you. And do NOT make fun of the ox! :)
Piping Hot Springs was a run-down old place nestled in a hillside above Flathead Valley. It boasted two pools. (Literally: there was a sagging banner out front that read, We Have Two Pools!) Both were outdoors and fed by rejuvenating, mineral-enriched waters that shot up through the earth. One was an ordinary-looking swimming pool kept at 84 degrees. The other, a giant, kidney-shaped concrete-bottomed lake, was always precisely 104 degrees. Zoe’s mom was a conscientious manager, but the owners lived out of state and were always on the verge of selling the business and didn’t want to sink any more money into it. So every season Piping Hot Springs looked a little grubbier, a little more desperate. The green fiberglass slides were rickety and rusted. The colored pennants decorating the walls were faded. The enormous ’70s-style digital clocks were all malfunctioning so that, rather than telling the time, they seemed to be making announcements in Chinese.
These days, the rich tourists all went to spas where they got microfiber bathrobes and shiny wire baskets with lotions and loofahs. The more adventurous tourists drove up to Canada, where hot, swirling pockets of water appeared, as if by magic, in the middle of freezing rivers. Piping Hot Springs mostly attracted elderly couples who sat against the wall of the big pool with their arms draped sweetly over each other’s shoulders. There were also some European tourists and some drunk twentysomethings who thought the place was hysterical. Zoe would have been embarrassed about Piping Hot Springs except that she’d never seen anyone leave without looking blissed-out and dreamy and pink. The waters worked.
It was early evening by the time Dallas had his wrist wrapped at an urgent-care place on the highway and then dropped Zoe off at the hot springs. Zoe caught her reflection in the door on the way in: she looked like hell. Beneath X’s overcoat, her clothes were wrinkled and torn. Thanks to the caving helmet, her hair looked like roadkill.
Her mom sat perched behind the front desk, folding towels and watching for her. She stood up the minute Zoe stepped inside. They inched toward each other shyly, like a couple that’s forgotten how to dance.
Zoe let herself be hugged but made a point of not hugging back. Her mother ignored the awkwardness.
“Oh my god, that coat,” she said. “Is that X’s?”
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “It heals you. The minute you put it on, it starts, like, erasing your bruises and mending your bones.”
“Seriously?” said her mother, her eyes wide.
“No, it’s just a coat,” said Zoe. “It’s superwarm, though.”
Her mom laughed and swatted her on the shoulder.
“Look, I need to apologize to you,” she said. “Come fold some towels with me, and let me try?”
They sat with a basket from the dryer between them. Zoe remembered folding towels with Bert after he’d become senile. He’d been obsessed with how warm and fluffy they were, how clean they smelled. She had to stop him from shoving his face into them.
“So,” her mother said now, “do you want the short, medium, or long apology?”
“Start with the short one,” said Zoe.
“I love you, and I’m sorry,” said her mother.
“Not feeling it,” said Zoe. She smoothed a towel with her hand. It crackled with electricity. “Try the medium one.”
“I love you, and I’m sorry—and I was wrong to tell the police to leave your dad’s body in the cave,” her mother said.
“Why did you?” said Zoe. “I don’t get it.”
Her mother sighed.
“I’m just going to blurt it out, like you would, okay?” she said. “I think maybe your dad killed himself, Zo.”