The Long Way Back, page 31
“There are chairs on the lawn,” Charlie offers. “The media can’t see us there.”
There were news vans at the end of the driveway when they arrived at the Morrows’ lake house. CNN and Fox and MSNBC along with local reporters and people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of Eva. Whether she liked the distinction or not, she was being lauded as a hero because her careful notes allowed law enforcement to capture many of the members of the Family who were poised to take part in the Uprising. Most were apprehended before they could get off a single shot because the unexpected failure of the car bomb threw their plans into total chaos. The would-be soldiers didn’t know what to do, so they watched and waited and were eventually identified when Detective James shared Eva’s list with the Duluth PD, the FBI, and Minnesota state law enforcement. They brought out the cavalry. And now everyone wants an exclusive with Eva.
There are thick clusters of cottony clouds in the sky and a cool breeze coming off the water. But the sun is warm on their backs, and as Eva sinks into one of the Adirondack chairs around their fire pit, she closes her eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. She wasn’t sure she would ever sit in these chairs again. Or see this view. Or smell the white musk and vanilla of her mother as she sank into the chair beside her.
“We’re in your debt,” Agent James says, repeating a familiar refrain. “I want you to know that because of everything you told us, we were able to derail most of the Family’s plans for what they called ‘the Uprising.’ ” He puts air quotes around the words, and the action feels dismissive to Eva. He continues, “The FBI has been following their activity for years—and we knew something was going to happen—but they mostly coordinated offline. They went old-school on us.”
Eva doesn’t respond to his little shrug and self-deprecating laugh. Instead, she says quietly, “But we didn’t derail everything.”
She doesn’t feel brave. There were a handful of shootings across the country, including a standoff in Duluth when one of the squads in the convoy resisted arrest. An officer was injured. And there was a mass shooting at a grocery store in Idaho; another at a mall in Tennessee. A backpack bomb was detonated at a bus stop in California, and there was a hostage situation in Detroit. Each incident was tied to Abner Brennan and his Family, and though Eva knows the math doesn’t add up—that she can’t blame herself for something that she didn’t even know about a week ago—she feels responsible.
Survivor’s guilt, the FBI victim specialist says. But Eva doesn’t need a fancy term to wonder if she could have, should have done more. Not just in the days since her abduction, but all the days and weeks and months before. Did she ever do enough to stop hate in its tracks?
Agent James leans forward to catch her eye. “That’s not your fault. The casualties our country sustained were nothing compared to what they would have been if you hadn’t done what you did. You were incredibly brave, Eva. I hope you know that. For what it’s worth, you’ve helped put Abner Brennan—and a significant number of his associates—behind bars for the rest of his life. We have him on charges of domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and conspiracy to commit murder, along with kidnapping, unlawful detainment, and tax evasion. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Eva knows all that already. It’s exciting, to be sure, but it’s not a happy ending. Not by a long shot. “Zechariah Brennan is the real hero,” she says. She knows her mom is still—and might forever be—nursing a grudge against her ex-boyfriend and abductor. Charlie doesn’t yet fully understand what happened between them or how complicated the entire situation was. But in the end, Zach gave his life for her. For every single person at Bayfront Festival Park that day. And Eva is still coming to grips with it all.
“He is,” Agent Turner agrees. “What he did was incredibly selfless. He was a courageous young man, even if it took him a while to see the light.”
Charlie manages a single nod, and Eva’s grateful for that small concession. It’s a step.
“Our bomb techs have completed their investigation of the blast site, and I’m sorry to report it was frustratingly inconclusive.” Agent Turner temples his fingers as he explains. “Most IEDs have some sort of a homemade countdown device—a kitchen timer or alarm clock or something—but they depend on a moment of connection to ignite. The water should have prevented that trigger from firing.”
Eva’s chest seizes with a moment of what-might-have-been. From the window of the cargo van, she can picture Zach swimming, the IED—improvised explosive device, she knows from more than her fair share of interviews with the FBI—sinking to the bottom of the harbor, stripped of all its awful power. What would her life look like now if Zach was still in it?
They are considering Eva’s disappearance a kidnapping because she was not old enough to consent to what happened to her—even if she chose to go with Zach in the beginning. And then, when she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t let her go. Of course she told them everything. About the drugs that Zach urged her to give Charlie, the note she left (and that he took), and being locked in the house at Little Moose. When Eva heard about the missing life raft from the Summer Moon, she realized that Zach must have inflated it and tossed it overboard during their nighttime trek across the lake. To frame Charlie? To make it look like Eva was the victim of an unfortunate accident? None of it looked good for Zach, but didn’t his final act erase everything that came before? Couldn’t there be forgiveness if he knew what he had done, and then quite literally did everything in his power to right it?
“I’m tired, Mr. James,” Eva says, rubbing her aching eyes with her knuckles. “Do you need something else from me or can I go lie down now?”
“Sorry,” the agent says, catching Charlie’s gaze over Eva’s head and giving her an unreadable look. “I don’t mean to keep you. You’ve been so helpful in all our conversations, and I just wanted to keep you updated on what we’re learning.”
Eva doesn’t tell him that they keep sharing the wrong news. She knows she probably shouldn’t be curious, but a part of her is still back at that compound in the woods. They won’t tell her what’s happening there, what they’ve done to the Gates of Zion and the people who live behind the fence. The women and children, those who didn’t have a choice about what happened to them, even if it felt right. Like home. Eva thinks about them often. For better or for worse.
“I want you to know that Zach wasn’t your only friend at the Gates.” Agent James leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “In our interviews, we’ve learned that not only did Rachel free Zach the night before the Uprising, she was the one who called your mom and tipped us off about what was going to happen.”
A hint of a smile crosses Eva’s lips. Spunky, sassy Rachel Brennan stood up to her force-of-nature father. And won.
“I know she was your captor, Eva, but somehow you got through to her. She cared about you.” Agent James pauses, tries again. “She cares about you.”
Charlie catches Eva’s hand and squeezes it tight. “Of course she does.”
Eva can tell that there are more things her mom would like to say, but she blessedly keeps her mouth shut and pretends to be interested in the little waves that lick the shore.
Following her gaze, Eva is suddenly gripped with the need to be in the water. It doesn’t matter that the air is cool and the water freezing. She wants to feel it between her toes and lapping up her ankles. Her wound is clean, properly stitched, and carefully bandaged—she can’t get it wet, but she can stand on the shore.
Neither Agent James nor her mother stop her when she stands and walks to the low wall at the edge of the property. Her leg is stiff, and it stings a bit when she lifts it over, but by the time she’s sitting on the stacked rocks to take off her shoes, she’s forgotten entirely about her wound.
The first bite of Lake Superior water is icy and clarifying, a shot of pure, crisp solace that feels like a new beginning. Zach is in the mist of each wave as it bubbles up the shoreline and tumbles over the rocks, but so is she. Eva as a toddler with her toes in the foamy surf. As a preteen draped over a blow-up mattress with her mom on the other side. As a grown woman slicing through the water with a wicked freestyle stroke.
But the water that gives life can take it. The love that feels forever can fade. People are messy and broken and achingly beautiful, and life is never quite what it seems. And in this moment Eva has room for it all, for the new scars that she bears and the way that they will inevitably, inexorably heal. For the soft understanding that hope is a haven for every bruised and battered soul.
For now, it’s all she needs.
EPILOGUE
THREE MONTHS LATER
Charlie and Eva wake to the trill of a redwing blackbird. It’s a happy sound, quick and bright like water dancing over stones. The window by Charlie’s head is cracked open, and the cool night air is quickly being replaced by a sticky, late summer heat. The moment the sun rises, the earth begins to bake. She had forgotten that, the way the cornfields trap the humidity and the dark soil seems to exhale in the light of a new morning. They’ll have to shut the windows and turn on the air-conditioning or Sebastian will be a sauna by midmorning.
“Rise and shine, honey.” Charlie props herself up on one elbow and reaches to tousle Eva’s hair. She’s cut it, and it barely grazes her shoulders, a glossy, riotous halo the color of a raven’s wing. Charlie curls a strand around her finger and gives a gentle tug. “Wakey-wakey.”
“Not yet,” Eva murmurs, rolling over and burrowing deeper into her pillow. “Five more minutes…” But then she must remember, because she sits up, puddling the soft, floral sheet around her waist. “What day is it?”
“I think you already know.” Charlie smiles, spinning out of bed and stretching as her feet touch the trailer floor. A short shuffle and she’s in the galley kitchen, flipping on the coffeepot that she prepped the night before. In seconds, Sebastian fills with the aroma of hot coffee. They grabbed muffins from a local grocery store last night, but Charlie feels like making pancakes, so she gathers the milk, flour, and eggs, and begins to whisk.
“I’ve got breakfast covered,” Charlie calls over her shoulder. “Take your time. I’ll throw batter in the pan when you’re ready for it.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Eva sticks her head out of the small bathroom and asks, “What about a little walk this morning? Wye Cave isn’t far, and I wouldn’t mind exploring a few of those tight squeezes a bit further.”
But Charlie is already shaking her head. “It’s over an hour to Iowa City and we need to get you moved in by three. Then we’re supposed to have dinner with Trinity’s parents and—”
“Okay.” Eva lifts one shoulder, a smile tugging at the side of her mouth. “I’ll shower.”
Charlie leaves the pancake batter on the counter and grabs a cup of coffee. She steps out into the misty Iowa morning in nothing but a pair of boxers and a University of Iowa sweatshirt and sits in one of their faded lawn chairs with her knees pulled up to her chest. It’s hard to believe that she’s bringing her daughter to college today, and then driving away to leave her in the hands of total strangers. But her hesitation is much more than typical, new-college-parent nerves.
It’s been a hard summer. Lots of counseling and healing and backsliding. From the day she came home, Eva slept with Charlie in the queen-sized bed on the main floor of the lake house and didn’t move back into her own bedroom until mid-July. She moaned sometimes in her sleep, and cried, and there was nothing Charlie could do about it. “Don’t wake her,” her counselor told Charlie. “Let her subconscious do its job.”
So she did. And when Eva woke, they talked and fought and worked themselves to the bone undoing the knots that had been lashed tight around their hearts. They both felt misunderstood. They both found ways to walk a mile in the other’s shoes.
Eva’s acceptance letter from the University of Iowa came the day she was supposed to graduate. Her applications had been delayed because of her late arrival in the public school system, but even though she had been waiting on tenterhooks for news, Eva left the letter unopened on the kitchen table for a week. Charlie wondered which application essay she had used, or if those fifty reflections were just her own personal therapy sessions. An ongoing exercise in self-discovery. There was clearly more work to be done, as Eva was a hollow shell of herself in those early days, twitchy and quiet and scared. But one morning Charlie found the letter opened and spread out on the table with a single honeycrisp apple holding down a corner. It was the first step up from rock bottom.
“Pancakes?” Eva asks, poking her head out of Sebastian. “Do we have chocolate chips?”
They do, and Charlie makes a steaming stack and carries them out to the picnic table. Eva has set out the maple syrup and orange juice, two plates beside each other, and two slender glasses. They eat in silence for a few moments, quieted by melting chocolate and butter-crisp edges and the zest of cold juice, and then Eva asks, “Is Jude coming in the morning?”
Charlie nods. “He’ll get in late tonight, then we’ll pop over before breakfast to say goodbye.” Warmth spreads through her limbs like water pouring across a flood plain. Jude is the best, most unexpected surprise from the worst thing that has ever happened to her. He was nothing but poised and professional while the FBI wrapped up all the loose ends, but around the same time that Eva moved out of her bed, Charlie’s cell phone began to ding with incoming texts from Jude.
They were innocuous at first, bland and forgettable. Then they started really talking, and before Charlie knew it, they were FaceTiming nearly every night.
“And then…” Eva prompts. “Remind me where you’re heading.”
“Colorado.” It’s a simple answer, because for the first time in years, Charlie doesn’t want a crammed itinerary. There’s a valley of red stone and rugged canyons tucked away between Colorado Springs and Breckenridge, and she wants nothing more than to stay there for as long as they possibly can. She feels herself blush at the thought of waking up with Jude in the bed at the back of the trailer. She wonders what it says about her that it’s not something she’s ever imagined before.
Charlie and Eva clean up quickly after breakfast, a sense of unanticipated urgency hurrying them along. They’ve waited eighteen years for this day, and though they could have never predicted the path it had taken them to get here, there’s joy in each movement as they tear down camp and get Sebastian ready for the road.
The sun is streaming through the trees of Maquoketa Caves State Park, and the dappled light makes the Airstream glow like a postcard photo. Normally, Charlie would grab her camera and snap a few pictures, maybe have Eva push back a curtain from inside the trailer so that her graceful hand would be seen at the edge of the frame. But Eva Explores is no more.
Surprisingly, letting it go was a bit like unclenching her fists and taking a deep, purifying breath that rolled through every muscle of her aching body. Charlie’s lungs expanded, her shoulders relaxed, her pulse slowed. Maybe they would tell their story someday, and maybe Instagram would be the medium they chose. Maybe not. Charlie still had her camera, and Eva still had her words, and maybe there were better ways to share and connect, to remind people to open their eyes and their hearts. To explore the world around them and smile at the people they met. To always take the long way back.
“Ready?” Eva says, and for the first time in months she’s grinning, ear to ear, nose scrunched like she’s a little girl again.
Charlie pulls her close, breathes in the scent of her still-damp hair, and tries to memorize the moment. Then she drops a kiss on her daughter’s sweet forehead and takes her by the hand. “Let’s go.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’VE NEVER WRITTEN AN author’s note before because I’ve never had a reason to. But it feels wrong to send The Long Way Back out into the world without at least a fumbling attempt to share where this all came from and why.
When my children were young, we had a pop-up tent trailer that we dragged all across the country. Twice it went from our home in the Midwest all the way to British Columbia, where half of our family lives. Many more times than that it stayed closer to home, allowing us to enjoy the Midwest from campgrounds where we made lifelong memories. There is something truly unique about experiencing a place in this neighborly, outdoorsy way. Our kids made friends with strangers, and we spent long, lazy days exploring the exquisite world around us.
For most of my life I’ve believed two things: one, that we are (and always will be) better together; and two, that we are all (whether we realize it or not) worthy of love. I still believe those things, but my heart has broken over and over again as I’ve witnessed (and, sadly, participated in) the ways that we have been quick to divide into “Us” vs. “Them.” To condemn those we disagree with and justify bald hatred of our neighbors (near and far) for no reason other than that they believe something different from us.
Much of these ugly confrontations happen on social media, and as I was conceptualizing this book, the intersection of our changing world and these opposing ideologies seemed to go hand in hand with our digital interconnectedness. While the Family is brooding and plotting, Charlie and Eva are exploring and adventuring—and loving it. Of course, their experiences are far from perfect, but they meet kind, generous people along the way and encounter the best the world has to offer. While the Family is rallying people to their cause online and stirring up dissension and dissatisfaction, Charlie and Eva are making connections and inviting people to embrace life and the beautiful country they call home. Eva Explores and the Family represent two sides of the same coin, living in a place that is beautiful and broken—they just choose to see different sides of it.
It was my goal in this book to show the humanity of all my characters, to be real and honest in my representation of them and why they believe the things they do. The why of it matters much to me, and I hope that as you read you may have felt a stirring of empathy for characters you may have wholeheartedly disagreed with. Everything comes from something, and though our past hurts will never justify or excuse hateful actions, knowing may help us understand, at least a little.
There were news vans at the end of the driveway when they arrived at the Morrows’ lake house. CNN and Fox and MSNBC along with local reporters and people who just wanted to catch a glimpse of Eva. Whether she liked the distinction or not, she was being lauded as a hero because her careful notes allowed law enforcement to capture many of the members of the Family who were poised to take part in the Uprising. Most were apprehended before they could get off a single shot because the unexpected failure of the car bomb threw their plans into total chaos. The would-be soldiers didn’t know what to do, so they watched and waited and were eventually identified when Detective James shared Eva’s list with the Duluth PD, the FBI, and Minnesota state law enforcement. They brought out the cavalry. And now everyone wants an exclusive with Eva.
There are thick clusters of cottony clouds in the sky and a cool breeze coming off the water. But the sun is warm on their backs, and as Eva sinks into one of the Adirondack chairs around their fire pit, she closes her eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. She wasn’t sure she would ever sit in these chairs again. Or see this view. Or smell the white musk and vanilla of her mother as she sank into the chair beside her.
“We’re in your debt,” Agent James says, repeating a familiar refrain. “I want you to know that because of everything you told us, we were able to derail most of the Family’s plans for what they called ‘the Uprising.’ ” He puts air quotes around the words, and the action feels dismissive to Eva. He continues, “The FBI has been following their activity for years—and we knew something was going to happen—but they mostly coordinated offline. They went old-school on us.”
Eva doesn’t respond to his little shrug and self-deprecating laugh. Instead, she says quietly, “But we didn’t derail everything.”
She doesn’t feel brave. There were a handful of shootings across the country, including a standoff in Duluth when one of the squads in the convoy resisted arrest. An officer was injured. And there was a mass shooting at a grocery store in Idaho; another at a mall in Tennessee. A backpack bomb was detonated at a bus stop in California, and there was a hostage situation in Detroit. Each incident was tied to Abner Brennan and his Family, and though Eva knows the math doesn’t add up—that she can’t blame herself for something that she didn’t even know about a week ago—she feels responsible.
Survivor’s guilt, the FBI victim specialist says. But Eva doesn’t need a fancy term to wonder if she could have, should have done more. Not just in the days since her abduction, but all the days and weeks and months before. Did she ever do enough to stop hate in its tracks?
Agent James leans forward to catch her eye. “That’s not your fault. The casualties our country sustained were nothing compared to what they would have been if you hadn’t done what you did. You were incredibly brave, Eva. I hope you know that. For what it’s worth, you’ve helped put Abner Brennan—and a significant number of his associates—behind bars for the rest of his life. We have him on charges of domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and conspiracy to commit murder, along with kidnapping, unlawful detainment, and tax evasion. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Eva knows all that already. It’s exciting, to be sure, but it’s not a happy ending. Not by a long shot. “Zechariah Brennan is the real hero,” she says. She knows her mom is still—and might forever be—nursing a grudge against her ex-boyfriend and abductor. Charlie doesn’t yet fully understand what happened between them or how complicated the entire situation was. But in the end, Zach gave his life for her. For every single person at Bayfront Festival Park that day. And Eva is still coming to grips with it all.
“He is,” Agent Turner agrees. “What he did was incredibly selfless. He was a courageous young man, even if it took him a while to see the light.”
Charlie manages a single nod, and Eva’s grateful for that small concession. It’s a step.
“Our bomb techs have completed their investigation of the blast site, and I’m sorry to report it was frustratingly inconclusive.” Agent Turner temples his fingers as he explains. “Most IEDs have some sort of a homemade countdown device—a kitchen timer or alarm clock or something—but they depend on a moment of connection to ignite. The water should have prevented that trigger from firing.”
Eva’s chest seizes with a moment of what-might-have-been. From the window of the cargo van, she can picture Zach swimming, the IED—improvised explosive device, she knows from more than her fair share of interviews with the FBI—sinking to the bottom of the harbor, stripped of all its awful power. What would her life look like now if Zach was still in it?
They are considering Eva’s disappearance a kidnapping because she was not old enough to consent to what happened to her—even if she chose to go with Zach in the beginning. And then, when she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t let her go. Of course she told them everything. About the drugs that Zach urged her to give Charlie, the note she left (and that he took), and being locked in the house at Little Moose. When Eva heard about the missing life raft from the Summer Moon, she realized that Zach must have inflated it and tossed it overboard during their nighttime trek across the lake. To frame Charlie? To make it look like Eva was the victim of an unfortunate accident? None of it looked good for Zach, but didn’t his final act erase everything that came before? Couldn’t there be forgiveness if he knew what he had done, and then quite literally did everything in his power to right it?
“I’m tired, Mr. James,” Eva says, rubbing her aching eyes with her knuckles. “Do you need something else from me or can I go lie down now?”
“Sorry,” the agent says, catching Charlie’s gaze over Eva’s head and giving her an unreadable look. “I don’t mean to keep you. You’ve been so helpful in all our conversations, and I just wanted to keep you updated on what we’re learning.”
Eva doesn’t tell him that they keep sharing the wrong news. She knows she probably shouldn’t be curious, but a part of her is still back at that compound in the woods. They won’t tell her what’s happening there, what they’ve done to the Gates of Zion and the people who live behind the fence. The women and children, those who didn’t have a choice about what happened to them, even if it felt right. Like home. Eva thinks about them often. For better or for worse.
“I want you to know that Zach wasn’t your only friend at the Gates.” Agent James leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “In our interviews, we’ve learned that not only did Rachel free Zach the night before the Uprising, she was the one who called your mom and tipped us off about what was going to happen.”
A hint of a smile crosses Eva’s lips. Spunky, sassy Rachel Brennan stood up to her force-of-nature father. And won.
“I know she was your captor, Eva, but somehow you got through to her. She cared about you.” Agent James pauses, tries again. “She cares about you.”
Charlie catches Eva’s hand and squeezes it tight. “Of course she does.”
Eva can tell that there are more things her mom would like to say, but she blessedly keeps her mouth shut and pretends to be interested in the little waves that lick the shore.
Following her gaze, Eva is suddenly gripped with the need to be in the water. It doesn’t matter that the air is cool and the water freezing. She wants to feel it between her toes and lapping up her ankles. Her wound is clean, properly stitched, and carefully bandaged—she can’t get it wet, but she can stand on the shore.
Neither Agent James nor her mother stop her when she stands and walks to the low wall at the edge of the property. Her leg is stiff, and it stings a bit when she lifts it over, but by the time she’s sitting on the stacked rocks to take off her shoes, she’s forgotten entirely about her wound.
The first bite of Lake Superior water is icy and clarifying, a shot of pure, crisp solace that feels like a new beginning. Zach is in the mist of each wave as it bubbles up the shoreline and tumbles over the rocks, but so is she. Eva as a toddler with her toes in the foamy surf. As a preteen draped over a blow-up mattress with her mom on the other side. As a grown woman slicing through the water with a wicked freestyle stroke.
But the water that gives life can take it. The love that feels forever can fade. People are messy and broken and achingly beautiful, and life is never quite what it seems. And in this moment Eva has room for it all, for the new scars that she bears and the way that they will inevitably, inexorably heal. For the soft understanding that hope is a haven for every bruised and battered soul.
For now, it’s all she needs.
EPILOGUE
THREE MONTHS LATER
Charlie and Eva wake to the trill of a redwing blackbird. It’s a happy sound, quick and bright like water dancing over stones. The window by Charlie’s head is cracked open, and the cool night air is quickly being replaced by a sticky, late summer heat. The moment the sun rises, the earth begins to bake. She had forgotten that, the way the cornfields trap the humidity and the dark soil seems to exhale in the light of a new morning. They’ll have to shut the windows and turn on the air-conditioning or Sebastian will be a sauna by midmorning.
“Rise and shine, honey.” Charlie props herself up on one elbow and reaches to tousle Eva’s hair. She’s cut it, and it barely grazes her shoulders, a glossy, riotous halo the color of a raven’s wing. Charlie curls a strand around her finger and gives a gentle tug. “Wakey-wakey.”
“Not yet,” Eva murmurs, rolling over and burrowing deeper into her pillow. “Five more minutes…” But then she must remember, because she sits up, puddling the soft, floral sheet around her waist. “What day is it?”
“I think you already know.” Charlie smiles, spinning out of bed and stretching as her feet touch the trailer floor. A short shuffle and she’s in the galley kitchen, flipping on the coffeepot that she prepped the night before. In seconds, Sebastian fills with the aroma of hot coffee. They grabbed muffins from a local grocery store last night, but Charlie feels like making pancakes, so she gathers the milk, flour, and eggs, and begins to whisk.
“I’ve got breakfast covered,” Charlie calls over her shoulder. “Take your time. I’ll throw batter in the pan when you’re ready for it.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Eva sticks her head out of the small bathroom and asks, “What about a little walk this morning? Wye Cave isn’t far, and I wouldn’t mind exploring a few of those tight squeezes a bit further.”
But Charlie is already shaking her head. “It’s over an hour to Iowa City and we need to get you moved in by three. Then we’re supposed to have dinner with Trinity’s parents and—”
“Okay.” Eva lifts one shoulder, a smile tugging at the side of her mouth. “I’ll shower.”
Charlie leaves the pancake batter on the counter and grabs a cup of coffee. She steps out into the misty Iowa morning in nothing but a pair of boxers and a University of Iowa sweatshirt and sits in one of their faded lawn chairs with her knees pulled up to her chest. It’s hard to believe that she’s bringing her daughter to college today, and then driving away to leave her in the hands of total strangers. But her hesitation is much more than typical, new-college-parent nerves.
It’s been a hard summer. Lots of counseling and healing and backsliding. From the day she came home, Eva slept with Charlie in the queen-sized bed on the main floor of the lake house and didn’t move back into her own bedroom until mid-July. She moaned sometimes in her sleep, and cried, and there was nothing Charlie could do about it. “Don’t wake her,” her counselor told Charlie. “Let her subconscious do its job.”
So she did. And when Eva woke, they talked and fought and worked themselves to the bone undoing the knots that had been lashed tight around their hearts. They both felt misunderstood. They both found ways to walk a mile in the other’s shoes.
Eva’s acceptance letter from the University of Iowa came the day she was supposed to graduate. Her applications had been delayed because of her late arrival in the public school system, but even though she had been waiting on tenterhooks for news, Eva left the letter unopened on the kitchen table for a week. Charlie wondered which application essay she had used, or if those fifty reflections were just her own personal therapy sessions. An ongoing exercise in self-discovery. There was clearly more work to be done, as Eva was a hollow shell of herself in those early days, twitchy and quiet and scared. But one morning Charlie found the letter opened and spread out on the table with a single honeycrisp apple holding down a corner. It was the first step up from rock bottom.
“Pancakes?” Eva asks, poking her head out of Sebastian. “Do we have chocolate chips?”
They do, and Charlie makes a steaming stack and carries them out to the picnic table. Eva has set out the maple syrup and orange juice, two plates beside each other, and two slender glasses. They eat in silence for a few moments, quieted by melting chocolate and butter-crisp edges and the zest of cold juice, and then Eva asks, “Is Jude coming in the morning?”
Charlie nods. “He’ll get in late tonight, then we’ll pop over before breakfast to say goodbye.” Warmth spreads through her limbs like water pouring across a flood plain. Jude is the best, most unexpected surprise from the worst thing that has ever happened to her. He was nothing but poised and professional while the FBI wrapped up all the loose ends, but around the same time that Eva moved out of her bed, Charlie’s cell phone began to ding with incoming texts from Jude.
They were innocuous at first, bland and forgettable. Then they started really talking, and before Charlie knew it, they were FaceTiming nearly every night.
“And then…” Eva prompts. “Remind me where you’re heading.”
“Colorado.” It’s a simple answer, because for the first time in years, Charlie doesn’t want a crammed itinerary. There’s a valley of red stone and rugged canyons tucked away between Colorado Springs and Breckenridge, and she wants nothing more than to stay there for as long as they possibly can. She feels herself blush at the thought of waking up with Jude in the bed at the back of the trailer. She wonders what it says about her that it’s not something she’s ever imagined before.
Charlie and Eva clean up quickly after breakfast, a sense of unanticipated urgency hurrying them along. They’ve waited eighteen years for this day, and though they could have never predicted the path it had taken them to get here, there’s joy in each movement as they tear down camp and get Sebastian ready for the road.
The sun is streaming through the trees of Maquoketa Caves State Park, and the dappled light makes the Airstream glow like a postcard photo. Normally, Charlie would grab her camera and snap a few pictures, maybe have Eva push back a curtain from inside the trailer so that her graceful hand would be seen at the edge of the frame. But Eva Explores is no more.
Surprisingly, letting it go was a bit like unclenching her fists and taking a deep, purifying breath that rolled through every muscle of her aching body. Charlie’s lungs expanded, her shoulders relaxed, her pulse slowed. Maybe they would tell their story someday, and maybe Instagram would be the medium they chose. Maybe not. Charlie still had her camera, and Eva still had her words, and maybe there were better ways to share and connect, to remind people to open their eyes and their hearts. To explore the world around them and smile at the people they met. To always take the long way back.
“Ready?” Eva says, and for the first time in months she’s grinning, ear to ear, nose scrunched like she’s a little girl again.
Charlie pulls her close, breathes in the scent of her still-damp hair, and tries to memorize the moment. Then she drops a kiss on her daughter’s sweet forehead and takes her by the hand. “Let’s go.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’VE NEVER WRITTEN AN author’s note before because I’ve never had a reason to. But it feels wrong to send The Long Way Back out into the world without at least a fumbling attempt to share where this all came from and why.
When my children were young, we had a pop-up tent trailer that we dragged all across the country. Twice it went from our home in the Midwest all the way to British Columbia, where half of our family lives. Many more times than that it stayed closer to home, allowing us to enjoy the Midwest from campgrounds where we made lifelong memories. There is something truly unique about experiencing a place in this neighborly, outdoorsy way. Our kids made friends with strangers, and we spent long, lazy days exploring the exquisite world around us.
For most of my life I’ve believed two things: one, that we are (and always will be) better together; and two, that we are all (whether we realize it or not) worthy of love. I still believe those things, but my heart has broken over and over again as I’ve witnessed (and, sadly, participated in) the ways that we have been quick to divide into “Us” vs. “Them.” To condemn those we disagree with and justify bald hatred of our neighbors (near and far) for no reason other than that they believe something different from us.
Much of these ugly confrontations happen on social media, and as I was conceptualizing this book, the intersection of our changing world and these opposing ideologies seemed to go hand in hand with our digital interconnectedness. While the Family is brooding and plotting, Charlie and Eva are exploring and adventuring—and loving it. Of course, their experiences are far from perfect, but they meet kind, generous people along the way and encounter the best the world has to offer. While the Family is rallying people to their cause online and stirring up dissension and dissatisfaction, Charlie and Eva are making connections and inviting people to embrace life and the beautiful country they call home. Eva Explores and the Family represent two sides of the same coin, living in a place that is beautiful and broken—they just choose to see different sides of it.
It was my goal in this book to show the humanity of all my characters, to be real and honest in my representation of them and why they believe the things they do. The why of it matters much to me, and I hope that as you read you may have felt a stirring of empathy for characters you may have wholeheartedly disagreed with. Everything comes from something, and though our past hurts will never justify or excuse hateful actions, knowing may help us understand, at least a little.
