A woman flew out to California, not knowing if she was looking for a sign her son was still there or a reason to move on. It was quieter than she’d expected, standing on the edge, where the land falls into the sea. She’d pictured the Pacific as violent—angry and white and choppy. But in its calmness, she felt peace. And as she got back in the car to drive off, she felt that peace fill her. She saw signs for San Diego and chose, for no other reason than having heard the name before, to go there, where she rented a one-bedroom apartment with nothing but bright sky and blue ocean outside her windows.
My grandma smiles at the thought.
And her son? I ask. Barton “the Lone Wolf” Pierce? The son thought his mother would find him someday, she tells me. He didn’t know why; he just had this feeling. Now and then he thought he saw her. He rang up orders for women who looked like her. The more he thought of his mother, the more he regretted not saying goodbye. He owed her that, he figured. So he wrote those words on a lunch receipt—Goodbye, Mom—and held it up to those California winds, so they could take his goodbye to wherever it was meant to go. And he allowed himself to move on. {read}