I’ll take you tomorrow,I said, confident that I had time for the right tomorrow to arrive.
I fight to stay awake. I don’t want to miss a single syllable she has to say ever again.
Another voice, deep and thick with emotion, asks me,Will she be all right?
Scott sounds so close, so real, that if I could lift my hands, I would reach for him, across the veil that’s separated us since he left. I thought my love could save him. I was wrong.
But it’s not too late for our girl.
Gonna walk on the beach with your feet next to mine
My baby girl at my side
I’ll tell you true, won’t ever lie
Not a Bad Mother
But a good mother,
A good mother,
I’m a good mother.
Finally, I let myself sleep, the sound of my daughter’s voice in my head like a lullaby.
70Lord Edward
The world is sharper this morning. My leg aches, though to my surprise, it’s not actually that much worse than when I was taking every pill I could get my hands on.
It’s other things that feel different. My hands, shaking in my pockets. My eyes, sleep-deprived but clear. My sense of smell somehow more acute. Hunger in my belly, making me realize that for months now I’ve been eating simply because someone put a plate in front of me, not because I wanted food.
I drag my luggage into JFK, another weary traveler on his way. Around me are businesspeople walking determinedly toward their gates. Harried-looking parents clinging to their children’s hands, worried they might lose them in the crowd. No private plane today. On short notice, Anne was unable to arrange it.
Just thinking my sister’s name makes my stomach twist. I imagine Anne and my father, their heads bent close in the drawing room as they discuss their reasons not to tell me I wasn’t the one driving.
It’s for his own good.
Is it? How would they know what’s good for me when they’ve never, not once, asked me what I want?
He’d never have gone to rehab if not for this arrangement.
Do they really care if I’m sober? I think Anne wouldn’t mind if I woke up each day sloshed as long as I woke up on time.
This is the only way he’ll come back home, marry an appropriate girl.
There’s the truth. They wanted to control me.
I feel a rush of anger, but it’s no longer directed at Amelia or Dr. Mackenzie or Dr. Rush.
I should, I suppose, be angry at Harper’s parents, for keeping their endof Anne’s arrangement even after they knew the truth of what happened that night. They would have let me live with terrible guilt for hurting their daughter, the woman I loved. But they thought they were protecting her.
Maybe it wasn’t evenmethey were protecting Harper from—I always thought they liked me fine—or even prosecution for the accident she caused. Instead, maybe once they met Anne and saw what she was willing to do to keep up appearances, they wanted to keep their daughter as far from my family as humanly possible.
I don’t suppose I can blame them for that.
Before Harper, I didn’t think I had the right to be unhappy. Not only because of the privilege I was born into—though certainly that was part of it—but also because of the narratives woven around my family. Dad and Anne acted as though I ought to have been grateful that my mother left, like I had no right to miss a woman they found dreadful. Everyone I met respected my father, and it seemed my entire country adored my elegant, charitable sister. If they were disappointed in me, it was because I was failing to meet the high standards they set. If I didn’t fit in, it was due to shortcomings on my part, not theirs.
I roll my shoulders down my back, sensing eyes on me. Across the terminal, a young woman is holding up her phone, pretending to take a selfie when really she’s sneaking a picture of me. I imagine I can hear the whirring snaps of paparazzi cameras.
