Tilt by Emma Pattee

Author:Emma Pattee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2025-02-24T11:00:00+00:00

THE HOTTEST PART OF THE DAY

48th & Sandy, NE Portland

The girl in the yellow shirt pushes to her feet, using the tree to brace herself. I close my eyes and then open them to make sure she’s not a dream. Up close, her hair is thick with dust and her face is sunburned. One of her eyebrows is smeared.

When we hug, I can smell her: sweat and coconut. I’m crying harder now, little wet gasps as I try to catch my breath.

“It’s you,” she says again. She cups my cheeks. A tear comes out of the edge of her eye, snakes through the dust on her face. Bean, it’s hard to explain what happens next; we both lean forward until our foreheads are resting against each other. And it feels so natural, as if we have done it a hundred times before. The sweat on our skin seals us together, and the space between our faces is dark and soft and I can feel her breath on my cheek.

I could stay like this forever.

After a moment, she pulls back and looks me in the face. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I was on a truck,” I say. “I saw you.” I’m talking too fast, breathless. “Well, I didn’t know if it was you. I saw a yellow shirt …” I want to tell her everything that’s happened to me, Becky on the road, and the weed man with the gun, and your father’s rehearsal, and the man by the truck with the grandson named Rusty, and the radio at the convenience store saying the bridges are down.

“I looked for you,” I say. “I couldn’t find you. I didn’t know …”

“Me too.” She nods. “I was trying to call your name, but I don’t even know your name.”

“Annie,” I say.

“Annie,” she repeats. “Taylor.”

“Hi, Taylor.”

She starts to laugh, and I laugh too.

“What?” I say, still laughing.

“Nothing.” She covers her mouth.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe you made it this far.”

“Neither can I,” I say, and we both stand there, two idiots in the sun. Smiling and crying. Crying and smiling.

She tries to take a step back, and I can see that she can’t put any weight on her right foot.

“What happened?”

“I tripped. A couple blocks back.”

“How much farther do you have to go?”

“Not too far, a couple miles. I’m going to Columbus. The elementary school. My daughter is there.”

She takes her wallet out of her pocket and shows me a picture of a little girl with a frizzy pouf of blonde hair and two missing teeth. “That’s Gabby.” She rubs a dusty thumb over the girl’s smile.

“She looks just like you,” I say. Does she? I have no idea. I just say that to anyone who shows me a picture of their kid.

Taylor nods. The kind of nod that says, I cannot speak or I will come apart.

If I were a proper mother, I would have a photo of you in my pocket, or saved on my phone. Now I don’t even have a phone.

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