“That’s not fair,” complained Liam.
“Life isn’t,” my mother told him just as my phone dinged.
My heart pounded when I glanced at the screen. I held it up for Edward to see.Are you watching TV?Shanahan wrote.I warned you.
There it was, the other shoe. Talk about life not being fair? I had finally reconnected with the three people who mattered most to me, and, four months shy of the end of my probation, I would be nailed for having befriended a woman with a past. I hadn’t known who Grace was; I didn’t intentionally help her hide. But the facts would say that I did aid and abet an accused felon, just as they would say that Grace did kidnap her son.
Heartsick, I rose from the sofa. My face must have shown the extent of my distress, because Edward was quickly beside me. His large hand was warm at the back of my neck. “Where are you going?”
With my throat tight from holding back tears, a hoarse whisper was the best I could do. “Home. My pets.”
“They’re fine,” Liam called. “All fed and walked.”
If I’d been able to speak, I might have thanked him. But I was crushed. I needed my own world, at least until the last of it fell away. Wasn’t alone my default?
But my mother was sitting up in alarm. “Stay.”
It was just one word, but I heard the rest.Hiding won’t help. Don’t shut us out.And there it was, a return to the time when she and I understood each other without having to speak aloud, which was exactly what I’dwished for not so long ago. And then came her “please,” along with a look so vulnerable that my heart would never have let me leave.
But I did need a minute alone. So I gave the quickest little nod and simply went to my room. The door was barely shut before I began to cry. Swallowing the sobs as they came, I stumbled to the bed, climbed on, and curled up on the pillow with the scent of pine and my tears. Overwhelmed was one word for what I felt, but it didn’t capture the extremes. I didn’t think a person could feel so full and so empty at the same time.
The door opened, then closed. Had it not been for the click of her cane, my mother’s faltering gait would have been lost in the carpet. She eased herself down on the edge of the bed. I tried to stop crying, but her nearness only made it worse.
“I’m not good at this,” she said in a shaky voice. “You were always so strong.”
That got me crying again, all the more when I felt her hand on my shoulder. She didn’t tell me to stop, just sat with me until I finally quieted, sniffed, and brushed at my tears with the back of my hands. She left the bed then. I heard three pulls from the tissue box on the dresser—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—then she returned and pressed them into my hand. I put them to my eyes, knowing they would come away mascara black, but what could I do?
I held my breath. No, she wasn’t good at this. Would she leave?
The pillow-top shifted lightly as she sat again.
I exhaled a shuddering breath. “For months and months I couldn’t cry. Now I can’t stop. I’m not strong. I’m weak.”
“You’re wrong about that, Margaret Mackenzie. People don’t cry because they’re weak. They cry because they’ve been strong for too long.” She touched my hair lightly, then caressed my whole head before pulling out a hairpin that must have been dislodged from the knot at the nape. “I’m sorry you had to be so strong.”
I shifted the tissues to my running nose and said a nasal, “Not your fault.”
“But it is. I wish I’d been a better mother. Softer,” she said as her handagain moved in my hair. “I wish I were softer.” She removed another pin and set it aside.
“You couldn’t be.” My father…expected.“I understand that now.”
“But I want to be softer,” she said with such paradoxical harshness that I almost laughed. Instead, absurdly, I cried. Again. She opened her whole hand on my head, then carefully, soothingly removed a few more pins before finger-combing my hair out of its knot.
“Is it too late to change?” she asked so quietly I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or herself. When I didn’t answer, she said, “There are two reasons people change. One is if they’ve opened their minds, the other if their hearts have been broken.”
“Heart,” I said.
“Mind,” she said, then added, “So we have that covered. Tell me about your broken heart.”
With a shaky sigh, I rolled to my back. “Oh God. Where to start? Lily. Always Lily.”
“Yes,” she said. Her silence urged me on.
“Lily, Dad, you, Liam, and Edward.”
“Not five years ago. Now.”
“You, Liam, and Edward. I like having you in my life.”
