An absent-minded but loving scientist mother who cooked dinner on Bunsen burners?
Hell no.
Meg’s father was a scientist, too, and he’d gone missing. The town believed he’d abandoned his family, but Meg and her little brother, Charles Wallace, came to learn he’d been exploring time travel. She gasped at the concept of a tesseract—folding time to travel to new planets. The battle between good and evil sucked her in, and soon she found herself so consumed with the story that everything around her faded.
Tears ran down her face when Meg worked to pull her brother from the clutches of a giant, soul-sucking brain called IT that sought conformity and mind control at all costs (a.k.a. Evil). Meg’s friend, Calvin, a popular but poor kid came to her rescue repeatedly, and the hint of a love interest tapped into a memory of a Josie who would have adored the storyline at eleven.
Oh, Daddy, she thought. You were so right. I wish I’d read this. I wish I could talk to you about this.
I just wish.
And then…Meg found her father. Saved him and her brother, with some help from Calvin.
If only finding fathers were so easy.
And then they were reunited with her mother, and…Meg, young Meg, had turned out to be stronger and more beautiful than she’d ever imagined.
Everyone around her saw it. Knew it, deep in their bones. Her secret weapon that allowed her to defeat IT was so simple: love.
Love conquered all.
Closing the cover, she heard the first raindrop before she saw it, for her eyes were shut. At first Josie thought it was a tear, for she was crying. Then she heard another, and another, and opened her eyes. The air had taken on a steamy quality, and in this little green sanctuary she felt cared for, loved like the furry creatures of the planet Ixchel in the book, the beings who showered Meg with unconditional love and caring. If only she’d had that.
Willing herself to stop being negative, she visualized all the people who had stepped in and shown love. Her mother (before the accident). Her dad. Aunt Cathy. Uncle Mike. Darla. Mrs. Humboldt. Teachers and professors and bosses and friends. Laura. Mike. Even Dylan.
And, of course—Alex.
So many people, when she thought it through, who had shown some caring for her. Isolated and alone all those years at home, as her mom paraded men through the house, using Josie as a servant, or kicking her out to go to Aunt Cathy’s. Narrow misses; gratitude flooded her for the times she’d been perilously close to danger with some of her mother’s bedmates, but had escaped unscathed. The coke powder on the coffee table, empty beer bottles ringing the house, and $5 cans of crabmeat for their cats—but no food for her.
For the past eight years since she’d escaped she had focused on all the wrongs. Where had it gotten her? Safe. Out of danger.
But alone.
Never before had she thought to focus on the people in her life who helped. Were there for her. Acted as role models or friends or just…gave her acts of kindness that sustained her soul.
Who had, collectively, helped her to reach this place of empowerment and love so that she could face an eighteen-year-old piece of baggage the size of a small paperback book.
She had done it.
Wasn’t this the part where she was supposed to feel changed? Altered? Free and relieved of all the crap she’d been carrying around all these years? Instead, she felt a touch of guilt for how she’d acted with Marlene, a much larger feeling of relief for finally telling her how she felt, and an inner stillness.
Focusing on that, she closed her eyes, letting the occasional raindrop fall on her shoulders and back as she pulled her knees to her chest and just listened. Her own breathing filled her ears. Just her. That was all she needed.
Just her.
That was enough. Had always been enough.
Hot tears filled her eyes and throat, but this time through an enormous smile. For so long she’d felt unfinished. Damaged. The girl whose father died and whose mother…might as well have. The woman who came home to her after the car crash wasn’t her mother. Not her real mother. Josie had fantasized that somehow there had been a mix-up at the hospital and Marlene had really died and this woman, this thing that came home and called itself “Mom” was actually a spy who had plastic surgery and was infiltrating… Peters, Ohio?
That had been the part that even her eleven-year-old mind couldn’t grasp.
She laughed at her memory of it, simultaneously crying for her eleven-year-old self.
And yet…there was that stillness now inside. She could find it and be centered.
It had replaced the hole in her.
Alex remembered that Josie had mentioned a little garden spot behind an area library, and he felt a sense of kismet, a larger sense of pride, as he found her, curled up on a bench under a beautiful pergola, a flowering sanctuary like something from a 19th-century novel. A light, misty rain was beginning, the kind where raindrops seem coy, and flirt with dropping, but don’t quite commit. Josie had pulled her knees to her chest and appeared to be smiling as he approached her from the side and sat down next to her.
His presence seemed not to startle her, nor surprise her. It was as if his appearance were the most natural thing in the world.
“Hi,” he said gently. As she tipped her face up to look at him, he saw red eyes and tears pouring down her cheeks, dotting her blouse. Or perhaps that was rain. It was hard to tell.
“Dr. Perfect,” she whispered. In her hand she held a small paperback. He looked at it, then gasped.
“A Wrinkle in Time! Tesseracts and IT. I remember reading that in—what? Fourth grade?” He chuckled to himself. “I remember wondering if that was where my dad really was. On another planet, desperately trying to find his way back to me.”
Her eyes filled with tears and he regretted his words. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I should have—”
“No. Of course you should share.” Her chin shook and her voice wavered. “We should share. I’ve spent most of my adult life hiding from everyone and everything important, trying to pretend I didn’t have a huge hole inside me, Alex. I’ve turned men away—nice men. Good men. I’ve avoided the respectful and sweet guys because I didn’t think I was worth it. Crafting a life that doesn’t make you vulnerable leaves you with a facsimile of one.” Her voice hitched, a sob catching her. “I didn’t realize that until now.”
The fact that she was being vulnerable with him, opening up and talking about her inner truth made him fall a little more in love. Stretching his arm around her, he pulled her into an embrace, the feel of her body against his like their own little world.