I take it in my hands now. My heart beats wildly. It’s not possible, it couldn’t be…
The baby looks back at me. She wears a bright yellow dress and a bonnet stitched with lace. She’s laughing.
“Everything all right in there?” Carol calls.
But I do not answer. I can’t. Underneath the photograph, the frame is engraved. I run my pointer finger over the words, the ones I know so well, because they are my own.
Katy Silver.
The woman in the kitchen is already my mother. She is already my mother, and she has left me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My hands feel numb, my throat itches like it’s on fire. Vaguely I hear Carol at the door.
“Hey,” she says. “I think it might rain. We can…”
I turn around and shove the photograph forward. Carol’s face changes. Her eyes dart down at my hands and back up again.
“What is this?” I ask her.
She exhales, crosses her arms. “I haven’t told you everything about my life.”
“Like that you have a fucking baby?”
She is taken aback. “Yes,” she says. “I have a baby. She has your name. Katy. She’s six months old.” She smiles, then a warm, familiar tenderness spreads over her face. I think I might be sick.
“You’re here,” I say.
Carol nods. “There are some things I have to figure out. I don’t…”
“You left?” I say. I’m practically screaming. “You left me?”
I feel hysterical now. My mother. My mother who tendedevery scrape and bruise and put cool compresses on my head when I was sick and made tea from lavender root and took photographs of absolutely everything. Who knew the right Band-Aids to buy that would stay on even elbows and ankles, and who always made toast with garlic and butter on it when I had a cold. Who gave me my first haircut in the backyard, and who bought me ballet shoes on my third birthday. Who knew exactly how to touch to make me feel loved and protected. Whose warmth I miss daily, acutely. The same woman who is standing here. The same woman who left me.
“You? Look, Katy, this really isn’t any of your business.”
“How can you say that?” I ask her. “Don’t you see me?”
I run to her. I toss the photo down on the bed and grab her by the shoulders. Her eyes go wide, but I don’t let go. “It’sme. Katy. I’m her. I came here to Italy because we were supposed to come together and then you died, you just died, and I’m so lost without you. I don’t even know who I am anymore. And then miraculously you showed up. You were just here! You always told me about this summer you spent in Italy, but it was supposed to be before I was born. Before you were married. You were supposed to…”
But I’m crying too hard now; my body convulses in sobs.
Carol wriggles out of my touch. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but I think you need to go.”
“How could you leave?” I ask. “She’s just a baby. She needs you. How could you come here and party andRemo?”
“I told you, we’re not together.”
I push past her into the living room. I find my bag on the small sofa.
Carol follows me. “You can’t judge someone’s life until youhave lived it,” Carol says. “I love my baby and I love my husband. I’m not the one who’s cheating.”
I feel her words like a sucker punch to the soul. I turn around to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” Carol says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I look at her. My mother. My friend. I’ve been betrayed by them both.
