“Are you going to yell at me?” she asked.
I suppressed a sigh. “It’s your last night out with your friends. I’m not actually trying to ruin all your fun.” Whether she believed me or not. Whatever Tim and Reeti said.
“Good.” She pulled her top over her head, exposing the delicate bumps of her spine and the new tattoo on her shoulder blade—three spirals radiating from a center point. A triskelion, she’d informed me a week ago, displaying the fresh ink proudly. A sign of the triple goddess. A souvenir of Ireland.
I felt a surge of protective tenderness. “You don’t know what it was like,” I said. “Before we moved to Kansas.”
“That’s the point.” She peeled her jeans down her thighs, stumbling into the bed. “Youknow.Youremember. But we never talk about it.”
“We’re talking now.”
“It’s not enough. You tell me stuff. But I don’t remember. Even Mom. I look at pictures, but I can’t remember her voice or her laugh or even if she hugged us.”
“She did. She loved us, Toni. She loved you.” The words tumbled out. “She used to dance with you in the living room to Jackson Browne.” I could see them, our mother with her wild hair and flowing clothes, bouncing my baby sister in her arms while I hopped and twirled beside them. I hummed a few bars of “Somebody’s Baby.”
“Don’t sing.”
I was stung. “Sorry.”
“I don’t even know what are real memories and what you’ve made up. Or what I made up from listening to your stories.” Toni’s eyes glistened with tears and rebellion. “That’s why I want to go to New York. All my life, I’ve missed somebody I never knew. This is my chance toknowher.”
I was shaken to the core. I wanted to hug her and never let go. “All I’m asking is for you to take some time to think about it. I’ll be home in the fall. Six months,” I begged. “We can talk about it then.”
Toni tossed her head. “So you can wear me down?”
Yes. No. “I just want you to consider your options.”
“No, you want me to consideryouroptions.”
“Toni...”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” she flung at me. “You’re not my mother.”
Her words struck like stones. I reeled from the impact.
Her face slackened suddenly. “I’m going to puke.”
I leaped from bed, galvanized into action. “Bathroom,” I said. “Now.”
We made it. Barely. I held her hair as she heaved and shuddered over the toilet, purging her body of gin, of too much food and emotion.
She coughed, wiping her mouth on her arm, her wet, raccoon eyes streaked with tears and mascara. “Sorry.”
Love clogged my throat.
“It’s okay, baby.” I wrung out a warm washcloth for her face and a cool one for the back of her neck, the way Aunt Em used to do for us when we had a tummy bug. “Better?”
Her head wobbled.Yes.
“Let’s brush your teeth, okay?”
I helped her into a clean T-shirt, tucking her into bed as if she were five again.
She sighed once and snuggled into her pillow. “Love you.”
I stroked her choppy hair, my chest heavy. “Love you, too.”
I sat there on the side of her bed a long, long time, until her soft snores almost drowned out the bruising memory of her words. “You’re not my mother.”
