“It’s already done. You go on. And come over later if you feel better or you want to feel better.” Then she kissed my cheek. It hurt. It was also the best thing I’d felt in way too long.
Before Mrs. Addison could change her mind and insist that some member of her family drive me home, I bolted for the parking lot.
The truck felt even hotter driving home. By the time I pulled in to my garage, I was so miserable that I missed seeing the new car parked out front.
I gingerly climbed out of the truck, choked in a lungful of sweltering air, and was about to close the garage when someone called my name.
“Jill?”
It was a testimony to how completely awful I felt that I didn’t immediately recognize her voice. I turned around and saw her close her car door and walk toward me, lovely as ever in a dark red wrap dress with her rich brown hair falling in waves down her back.
“Mom?”
CHAPTER 25
Itook two steps toward her before I realized what I was doing and forced my legs to stop. Either Mom didn’t notice or she chose to ignore the fact that I wasn’t going to meet her halfway.
She crossed into the shade of the garage and stopped a few feet from me. Her big brown eyes filled with tears as she looked at me. “Jill…”
She was going to hug me. Pull me close to her and wrap her arms around me. I made a noise and stepped back.
I hadn’t seen Mom in months. Hadn’t heard a single word from her all summer. Nothing. It was like she had died. Or I had.
Despite everything, it was harder than I’d expected not to go to her. I wanted her to hold me. I wanted it bad enough that I could already see myself swaying toward her.
I started to shove all the hurt out of my head. I wanted it to be like it was, before the fighting, before she did what she did, before she left. But it could never be like that.
“No, don’t,” I said. “I…I got sunburned yesterday.”
She lowered her arms in jerky movements, like it hurt her not to hug me as much as it would have hurt me to let her. I saw her take note of my red skin, and she nodded. “Oh, honey.” Her words were the same as Sean’s mom. The concern in her voice almost sounded the same too. “With your skin, you have to be really careful in the sun.”
I nodded like she hadn’t told me that a million times. It was so easy to slip back into the way things were, to pretend like the last months hadn’t happened. Much longer than that, really.
“Did you put aloe vera on?”
I nodded again.
“What about vitamin E?”
“I just used aloe.”
“I think I left a bottle under the sink in my bathroom.” She took my hand and we started to go inside.
I followed along for a step or two before reality sank in again. “M-Mom…why are you here?”
“Didn’t you know I called?”
I did the nodding thing again. Standing that close to her, I was finding it difficult to string more than a few words together. “But why?”
She led me back so that we were both leaning against the truck, then realized she was still holding my hand and let it go. “I’ve missed you. I hear you’ve been running?”
Cue the nodding from me.
She smiled. She was so beautiful. A lot of people think their moms are beautiful, but mine really was.
We went to the grocery store one time after she’d been sick with the flu. Even with unwashed hair, no makeup and a sickly cast to her skin, the bag boys fairly fought over themselves to see who would help carry our half-full bag of groceries to the car.
I’d kind of gotten used to it, in the way people got used to seeing the Grand Canyon. Even when you saw it every day, it was still the Grand Canyon.
