I blinked at my mother, hearing Mark’s voice.Be more careful.
Part of me wished I could backpedal, scramble out of the room, pretend I’d never gotten the call from Paul. But another part of me longed to be there, to make my mother see that I would do anything for her. To show her that I’d forgiven her for the terrors of my childhood.
I remembered all the times, when she was drunk and angry, that she’d called me a worthless girl. Maybe I was there to prove I wasn’t so worthless.
If she acknowledged I was worthy, would that deep feeling of worthlessness inside me stop sucking everything up like a black hole? It was what any therapist worth their salt might say.
I took a breath. “Paul called me,” I said, keeping things matter-of-fact, as my mother and I did these days. It was strange to always feel like I was making small talk with the woman who’d raised me.
“Yes, obviously. But you didn’tneedto come.”
“Of course I did. You’re sick. And Paul said you were asking for me.”
She smiled at me. “I was scared, you know. That you wouldn’t come.”
Her honesty surprised and unsettled me. I’d never heard my mother admit to being frightened of anything.
I gazed down at her on the bed. She looked both very old and very young. I saw myself in her. I saw my daughters in her. I had my father’s dark hair and eyes, but both my girls and I shared my mother’s body type: tall and slim with narrow shoulders and an oval face with a pointed chin.
My mother’s eyes teared up, and my chest clenched. There it was again, that urge to wrap her in my arms, to protect her.
She picked at the edge of her sheet, worrying the fabric between thin, gnarled fingers. “I know there’s a lot of history between us, Alison.”
My heart beat faster, and I swallowed the bitter lump I felt building in my throat. Why had she called me here?
She reached a hand over the railing of the hospital bed; I took it in my own. Her hand was frail and cold but gripped me back with a strength I wasn’t expecting. With that one touch, I was a little girl again, being led off on an adventure with my mother—the grocery store, a museum, a trip to the playground. No matter where we went, my mother’s hand around mine made me feel safe, like I was where I was meant to be.
We’re connected, you and I.
“I have something to ask you,” she said, gripping my hand even tighter. “Something I have no right to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway. And I don’t want an answer. Not right now. I just want you to promise you’ll think about it. Can you do that, my darling girl?”
My mind spun. Was she going to ask for my forgiveness? For a favor? One last dying wish?
“Of course,” I said, the words tumbling out. “Anything.”
THREE
WHEN I WAS NINEyears old, my mother played the cruelest trick on me. She often did things like this, telling me jarring lies just to get a reaction: that we’d lost the big gray house we lived in, the only home I’d known in my life, and were going to have to start living in her car; that she was sending Ben and me to live with old Aunt Frances, so I needed to go pack my bags; that she’d gotten rid of Lucky the cat—taken him out to the other side of the highway and dropped him off at a farmhouse there.
This time, she told me my brother was dead.
He’d gone to school and hadn’t come home, which wasn’t unusual. He often stayed overnight with friends—he did his best to be out of the house as much as possible. My mother and I had dinner. I went to my room to read until bedtime and she went to her studio.
She woke me up later that night to tell me she’d had a phone call and had terrible news. She sat on the edge of my bed and stroked my hair. She was turned away, her face in shadow. It was just before midnight. I could see the glow-in-the-dark hands of my windup alarm clock, hear it ticking like a mechanical heartbeat.
“There’s been an accident,” she said. “Your brother was riding home on his bike. A car swerved. The police said he was killed instantly.”
I felt all the air go out of me, and I was unable to get any back in. Everything went out of focus.
And then I started to scream.
She turned toward me, watched me for a minute, smiling, then began to laugh. “I’m only fooling,” she said. “Your good-for-nothing brother isalive and well at Ryan’s house. They’re probably eating Devil Dogs and watching porn right now.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, pushing the words out between sobs. “Why would you say something like that?”
She laughed. “I did it for your own good. To teach you a lesson.”
“What lesson?”
