“They wouldn’t be the same,” Marcella says, and she sees that same sentiment settle back on her mother’s face.
“No,” Sylvia says. “They wouldn’t.”
Sylvia sits. She gestures to the seat next to her, and Marcella surprises herself by following. She tucks her legs up so the edge of her knee is just grazing her mother’s thigh. Her toes are cold. It’s cold outside.
“I didn’t save your father because I wasn’t sure that if I did I’d ever have you. I couldn’t guarantee it.”
Marcella’s breath catches in her chest, and she places her hand there, as if checking her heart. She doesn’t know this. Sylvia has never told her.
“I thought he left.”
“He did,” Sylvia says. “He died.”
Her mother looks at her, and the smallest smile curls up her lips at the edges. And then they both begin to laugh. Timid, staccato hiccups of nervous energy.
“I could see even then the way of things. And I could see that I didn’t want to interfere. That’s the generous telling, of course.” Sylvia pauses, rubs a knee. “But it’s no less true.”
Marcella thinks about her grandmother in her village, saving her father. She thinks about her own mother—pregnant and alone, and then she thinks about Lauren. She thinks about the stories the women of her family have told about their roles without even speaking the narratives out loud. She thinks about everything sheinherited, and everything she passed on. All the ways they got it wrong. The way they protected each other from the truth. No, from their stories about the truth.
This ticket is not a gift or a burden; it is a fact, a thing. Only in the using do we get to see right or wrong. Only in the telling, actually. She says this to her mother, now.
“It was the same ticket,” Sylvia says. “For you it was a gift and a burden, and for me something to look away from. Who was right?”
“And for Lauren?” Marcella asks.
“Maybe for Lauren it doesn’t have to be either.”
Marcella inhales. And then she hands it to her mother. She presses it into her palm, feels the cool, soft skin there, the balm of Sylvia’s touch. Familiar, if not frequent. “I don’t trust myself,” she says simply.
Sylvia closes both their hands around it, and for a moment Marcella is worried—worried that the power of this moment, the love so evident between them, will transport them. Worried that they will inadvertently use this ticket. They could. They could go back to childhood. They could do it all again. They could see each other, really see each other. They could heal it all.
They are both feeling it, Marcella can tell. If they act now, if they agreetogether—and then the wind rattles outside, banging against the frame of a window. It startles them both slightly, but enough.
“OK,” her mother says. As if that is all that needs to be said. “OK.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It’s not until I’m in the car, until I hear the ringing of the phone, until his voice picks up, that I realize what I’m doing.
“Lauren,” he says, his voice groggy. “Hi.”
“Where are you?”
“Home,” he says. “Why? How’s your dad?”
“Could you meet me somewhere?”
There is a pause on the other end of the line, but I know I haven’t lost him.
“Of course,” he says. “Where?”
I pull into the Trancas Country Mart a little past 10:00 p.m. Stone is already parked when I get there.
I step out of the car, and he does, too. He’s wearing jeans and a zip-up hoodie. His face looks tired, but he smiles, anyway.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s good to see you.”
We take a few steps toward each other, and then he’s pulling me into a hug. I melt into him. I feel the pull of our bodies together—all our history. How much has taken place, right here, between us.
