When we got home, I let her “experiment” with my hair. She pleated it in a long braid and then dusted my eyes with a dark turquoise shadow. I looked in the mirror. My eyes looked bruised. I wiped away at my face with Kleenex.
“Where do you even find colors like this?” I scrunched up the white tissue bleeding in bluish powder.
She bit her lip, scrutinizing her work. “Maybe I put too much on.”
“You think?” I turned my face toward her, the eye shadow faded and streaky.
We both burst into a fit of laughter, the kind that made us shake and clutch our midsections. When it stopped she put her chin on my shoulder.
“You see.”
“See what?”
“Your face.”
“My face?” I wrinkled my brow.
“It comforts me.”
I must have looked confused or even a little annoyed. She didn’t say anything else. Instead, she flapped her mouth like a fish a few times, jabbing her chin into my shoulder.
“Quit, that feels so weird.” I dusted her away with my hand.
She laughed and started to undo my braid.
“Let me fix this. I didn’t do it right.” Her fingers fell through some of the knots in my hair. It hurt but I said nothing.
Later that evening, I went across the street and knocked on the front door. I was surprised to find Ada alone.
“Sawyer is at Topher’s house. Video games . . . I can’t remember the name of it. Something that involves violence, I’m sure,” she said in the doorway.
I must have looked disappointed, despite trying to keep what I had thought was a very straight face, because she then told me to come inside.
I followed her, the house smelling of onions and spice. She had taken down most of the dream catchers. There were only a handful by the kitchen window.
“I made some slow cooker chili. Want some?”
“No thank you. I already ate.”
“Suit yourself.”
She scooped some into a small bowl and motioned with her spoon for me to sit down. I sat across from her and looked up as she took a quick bite. A piece of red bean slipped out of her mouth. The light hanging over the kitchen table shone on her thick white roots, the rest of her hair still a deep, dyed red. The lines on her face had deepened, but she had always looked old to me. In that way, she had changed very little.
“You know, Sawyer doesn’t really talk much. About what he went through back in Wyoming,” she said, peering at me.
“I know.”
“Not even with me.”
She paused, letting another bite of chili sink into her mouth.
“He saw too much. Too much sickness with his mother. Boy is trying to figure some of his shit out right now. At this age . . . you know it can be especially hard. Know what I mean?”
I slowly nodded.
“He doesn’t have a father. I mean—he does. But not one who will ever be there for him.”
“I know what you’re trying to say, Ada. Don’t worry.”
She put her spoon down, and a few drops of chili sauce plopped on the table.
“I just don’t want you thinking he’s left you behind or nothing, darling. I’m real glad, you know . . .”
Her face scrunched up and went back to normal so quickly that I nearly missed it. She stiffened her mouth and broke into a grin that was a little too wide.
“I’m real glad he has you, Isla.”
CHAPTER 26
ISLA
2002
“See? I told you that color would work.”
Oliver hung on my bedpost and then popped a cheese cracker into his mouth.
“Hey. Watch the crumbs.”
