“What now?” I said out loud, dreading whatever else the morning might hold.
“Where’s my stone?” my mother hollered, her voice tinny through the old monitor. “What have you done with my stone?”
EIGHTEEN
IHURRIED DOWNSTAIRS TO MYmother, feedback from the baby monitor screeching as I carried it into her room, making my mother scream with it. She covered her ears and howled along with the monitor’s staticky squawk.
“Sorry!” I said as I shut the machine off, stopping the noise. “Everything’s all right.” To prove it, I held up the stone to show her. “Look. See, I’ve got it. It’s okay.”
“What have you done?” she asked, eyes icy, accusing.
She stretched out her hands for the stone, scrabbling at the air desperately as I passed it to her. She snatched it away from me, scratching my finger, then held it close, studying it, as if searching for cracks or damage. Or maybe she thought I was trying to pass off a fake. Like I’d sold off the real one and was giving her a chunk of striated glass in its place.
“I just found it in Olivia’s room,” I explained. “She must have taken it. I’m sorry.”
I expected her to ask if Olivia was okay. She’d heard the screaming coming from upstairs, watched as I’d gone tearing out of her room to see what had happened to my daughter. To the little girl she claimed to love. To the little girl she said was so special that she’d shared her secret name with her.
She says I’m her special girl. Her trouper.
My mother frowned, her eyes darkening. “Shestolefrom me?”
My body stiffened as I bit back the words:She’s fine, by the way, thanks for asking.
I forced a smile. “She didn’t mean any harm. I’m sure she just wanted to look at it. She’s so drawn to it, and I—”
“This is not acceptable, Alison. I don’t want anyone touching my things.”
“I know. I’ll talk to her. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“No oneis to touch this stone,” my mother warned, and as she spoke, I was transported back to my childhood, to a time when she caughtmein her room, looking at the stone, studying it.
“Out!” she’d screamed then. “Out, before you ruin everything.”
Eight-year-old me had scrambled backward out of the room, apologizing, saying, “Sorry,” over and over.
“You don’t know what sorry is,” she’d said. “I’ll make you sorry.”
As if reading my thoughts, my mother now said, “If she does it again, she’ll be sorry.”
Enough was enough. I squared my shoulders, let out an angry hiss of air through flared nostrils. I couldn’t step back in time and protect my younger self, but I sure as hell could protect my daughter. “She’s a six-year-old child, Mother. A child who happens to adore you. She’s drawn to the rock because it’s yours, because it means so much to you. If I were you, I’d behonoredthat she borrowed it. See it for what it was: her looking for a way to be closer to you.” My words flew out, fueled by a simmering rage.
My mother only stared.
“And if you ever,everthreaten either of my children again, I’m sending you to a nursing home.”
My mother cackled. “It seems someone has grown a pair of balls.”
I clenched my jaw, trying to restrain my building fury. “And I won’t put up with crudeness either. Not in my house.”
“You don’t know what crude is, little girl.”
“Shall I go get my phone and call Paul now? Ask him to start making arrangements to have you moved into a facility? Tell him I need you out of here by the beginning of next week?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” my mother said.
“Try me,” I said.
“So this is what it’s come to,” Mother said, trying out a pitiful tone. “You threatening a dying old woman.” She pouted cartoonishly.
