I was losing. I could feel it. And the reality snuffed out my resolve so completely that I shivered in the warm night air. I was little more than ashes and she was an inferno.
“I hope you never know what it feels like to pay for a single—” she swallowed “—mistake every day of your life, to see it in his eyes and feel it in his touch. He said he forgave me, but he lied. Every day he punished me. Every day. He couldn’t love me anymore, but that wasn’t enough, so he took your love too. I’d bring you home dolls and he’d replace them with cars. He coached your soccer team, but I couldn’t put you in ballet. I never had a chance with you. And I felt so guilty all the time that I couldn’t object—he made sure of that. So now I’m making sure of this.”
She swept her eyes over me then around the park. “I know you’re upset with me for leaving, and I can see now that I handled that situation badly, but I’ve been so alone for so long.”
I sucked in a breath when she tried to take my hand, and she froze midair.
“Jill, he took you from me. You weren’t his, so he made sure you weren’t mine either. But it was another lie.” She lifted a hand to stroke my head. “If you could only see the way he looked at you at first. He wouldn’t touch you as a baby, did you know that? I loved you, and he couldn’t stand to—”
Ripping away, I shot to my feet with a cry that made my knees want to buckle. “No.” My voice was so low that I felt it rumble in my chest. I brushed away the tear that slipped down my cheek and clenched my teeth to keep any others back. I met her eyes, hating that my chin quivered. “No,” I said again, and my insides, my bones, everything that held me together, failed. Inside something forever broke. “Why aren’t you better?” It wasn’t even a question, it was an accusation. “I wanted you to be better, even tonight I wanted it.” I clamped my teeth down on the side of my tongue, harder and harder until the throbbing that filled my head dulled the one in my heart. “Why can’t you love me? And not this—Don’t,” I broke off when she stood and reached for me. “This isn’t love. I don’t know how you could think it was. You’re hurting me. And you’re doing it to help you. That’s wrong. Mom, that’s wrong.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you, I love you. If you just listen—”
“But you are!” I shook my head, mouth opening and closing, with tears slipping down my face. She couldn’t hear it, but I did. There was an accent when Mom talked about love, like it was a language she hadn’t fully learned and I knew now she never would.
“I don’t know what more you want from me, I really don’t.”
I started forcing my teeth together, wondering if it was possible to bite down hard enough to crack them. She didn’t know? She didn’tknow? “I tried to hate you when you left. I couldn’t understand how you could do that to Dad, to me. Everything. It was horrible walking in on you with Sean. And not just because I love him, but because you would do that to Dad.” I pressed a hand flat against my stomach and half hunched over. I was going to be sick. “And then you tell me he’s not mine and he hated me and—” I had to bite down harder, biting until it reached my heart. And it didn’t help. I couldn’t replace or distract from the hurt.
Because it wasn’t a hurt. That word was inadequate, it was deficient. Hurt was when you scraped your knee, when you got your finger slammed in a car door. Hurt was pain. It wasn’t a searing, freezing silent scream, an endless falling.
I stepped away, needing to put distance between us, with her crying like she was the one who’d been sliced up and stitched back together. Tears and snot and great heaving breaths. Wave after wave of agony crashed over me until I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe when she reached for my hands and squeezed.
I took strength from that gesture, but not in the way she wanted. I slipped my hands free and rubbed both my eyes dry, needing them clear when I looked at her. “But I can’t hate you, and the only reason is because of Dad.”
Her crying stopped, instantly, and it was only how ugly it had been that made me believe it had been real to begin with.
“He wouldn’t let me. And not because of him, because of me. It would have been so easy for him to trash you to me. I wanted him to, but he never did, not once, not when you deserve it so much more than he knows. Even now he keeps trying to get me to give you another chance. Because he would rather suffer than see me hurt. That’s love. And it’s the exact opposite of what you’ve done.”
Lips trembling, she lifted her chin. “I do love you. I’m trying to show you that I love you and I always have.”
My voice shook like this was the last thing I’d ever say to her. “I don’t know what kind of legal rights you think you have over Dad, but I’m asking you not to pursue them. I am begging you.” And then I had to look at her. I had to. I looked at the diamond on her left hand, the way she kept rearranging the grip on her purse. She plucked at the strap, turning it first one way then the next. It was exactly the kind of thing I did when I was uncomfortable. And then I finally said it, the only thing I had to stop her, and I had no idea if it would be enough.
“If you love me at all, prove it. Mom, stop hurting me.”
Her whole body lifted up on a sob that she caught in her hand. A second later she hugged me tight, clutching me like she’d never ever let me go.
And then she did.
CHAPTER 39
When it was just me and an empty park, when Mom left with an “I’m sorry” so insubstantial, hearing it might have been a trick I played on myself, I wandered over to the swing set she used to push me on.
I barely fit. The thick chain links dug into my hips as I swung back and forth. When it started to hurt, I got off and sat down on the merry-go-round. I was still sitting there when he showed up.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
When I glanced up at his approach, when our eyes met, something like relief, only warmer, filled me.
My feet were trailing lazy patterns through the shredded tire mulch that covered the playground. “They didn’t have this when we were little. Kind of takes the fun out of it if you can’t get hurt when you fall.”
“I don’t know.” Sean reached down and plucked a domino-sized piece of tire from the ground. “It’s not exactly soft. Want me to shove you off the slide and see if it hurts?”
When I didn’t give him so much as a pity laugh, Sean let the piece fall back to the ground.
“Claire?” Not that I needed to ask. Of course she’d called him.
“Yeah.”
