This Is How I Find Her Read Online Free Page A

yesterday, so I couldn’t see her.” I say it as matter-of-factly as I can. Then I think of Aunt Cynthia, who might be on the way to some kind of record for how long she can go without mentioning my mother. I wonder how she would react if I said it to her, just like that. Your sister got her stomach pumped yesterday .
    â€œOh,” is all Leila says. We slide to a stop at a light behind a long line of cars, and I wait for her to say more. Maybe a question about what the doctors will do for my mother next or about when she’ll be allowed to have visitors.
    But she doesn’t say anything. That one oh just hangs there. I open my mouth, but all that comes out is air. I can’t think of anything to say other than what’s your problem? so I hold myself back. Do Leila and Aunt Cynthia really not have a million questions about my mother, about what happened and how she’s doing? I feel the questions hovering in the air around me.
    After a minute, Leila reaches forward and flicks the radio on. The music balloons into the space and Leila starts humming again, shoving everything else—my mother, that lingering oh —out of the way.
    It feels like the music is pushing me out of the way too.
    I scrunch myself down, closer to the door, and try to remember a time when car rides with Leila were fun.
    â€”
    â€œHow fast do you think we can go?”
    My mother’s question floated back to us from the front seat. She always had something like that, some kind of unanswerable question or game for us. She shouted over the radio, and her words blurred together as if she had hit the fast-forward button on her own voice. Howfastdoyouthinkwecango? Our car was headed down an empty stretch of road outside of town, windows down so the air could breeze across the seats. We always kept the car windows cracked open in the summer, because even the thin stream of August heat from outside was better than the way the air conditioner rattled and clanked. My mother had a country music station on—the car was the only place she listened to music that wasn’t classical—and we caught snatches of her singing along, hitting words like love and dog and cry . She was singing loudly, sometimes making up her own lyrics and always out of tune with the voice on the radio. Whenever she hit a note particularly wrong, Leila and I would snort and shush each other, trying not to laugh too loudly.
    We looked up when my mother turned to us. We’d stretched the skirts of our new sundresses across our knees to make flat surfaces for our dolls to play, and we were focused on their adventure, a trip to New York City. I tugged at my skirt, knowing Aunt Cynthia, who had given us the dresses on the last day of school in June, wouldn’t be happy about how we were stretching them out.
    â€œIt’s a new school present,” Aunt Cynthia had said when she handed us the bags. “You’re officially middle schoolers now.” Coming up behind us, Uncle John had groaned and chimed in, “And about to become ten times more obnoxious because of it.” But he ruffled Leila’s hair and grinned at me, and we were pretty sure he was joking.
    In the front seat, my mother turned away from the road to face us. “What do you think?” she asked again. Her long hair fluttered in the breeze from the windows, as if an invisible hand was lifting up strands and laying them back down against her shoulders. “How fast?”
    I giggled. Leila set down the doll she was holding on the seat between us and leaned forward, focusing totally on my mother. We liked the summers because my mother watched us, and she was always okay with breaking the rules. We liked it when she talked fast but we could understand her anyway, as if her words were a code meant just for us.
    My mother was still looking at us and us at her, the road whizzing by outside the windows without any of us watching it. Somehow, my mother still kept