“He was never going to do what you wanted, be what you wanted,” my mom says. “I’mproof of that.”
“You’re only proof that he was afflicted by the same weakness his father was. And just like his father, he would have thrown you over the second he realized what his philandering would cost him.”
We’ve crept close enough that I can peer into the room and see a sliver of the scene inside. My mother’s back is to me, and dark red drops are shining wet on the gleaming wooden floor behind her. The trail leads back to the door Malcolm and I are hiding behind, and beneath our feet. It becomes hard to breathe when I think about the blood. I wanted to believe it came from cutting herself the way I had on the broken window, but she had to have been bleeding long before that. Jumping down from the wall alone would have torn open her already-injured leg, and the trek to the house must have been agony. She was wearing a jacket at the motel, but instead of cinching it around her thigh to help staunch the wound, she’s tied it around her waist, to hide just how badly she’s bleeding.
My grandmother, a trim woman who looks to be in her early seventies, rises to her feet behind a heavy oak desk. She has sleek silvery-blond hair turned under at her shoulders and held back in a headband that matches her blouse. A pair of reading glasses hangs from a delicate chain around her neck, the only visible concession to her age. “Now,” she says with quiet menace, “give me the ring.”
“I don’t have it,” Mom says, and my hand automatically flies to my chest, seeking the ring I no longer had, the one I’d left for my sister.
“That’s a lie.” Soft, smooth-looking cheeks that might even dimple if she smiled, quiver. “You’d never sell it.”
“Because you know I loved him.”
“Because you’re a fool who believed a foolish boy.”
“Is that what you think?” Mom half whispers. “That Derek lied to me? He gave me that ring.”
“It wasn’t his to give! When Mr. Abbott’s mother died after Derek and Laura were already married, it was understood that the ring would be given to their daughter. Only Laura gave birth to”—her lips curl back—“an unsuitable child, so now it belongs to me.”
Between the pain and my grandmother’s nasty words, I have no idea how my mom is still upright. Only when watching closely can I see the faint trembling in her left leg, which she’s forcing to bear all the weight from her right. But she’s not panting that I can hear. She’s standing like the house itself would fall before she would.
“I never wanted it, couldn’t wear it without drawing attention. But he told me that his grandmother was the only kind person to ever come from the Abbott line and that we were going to change that. Our child would change that.”
“Your child.” Mrs. Abbott scoffs. “You never got to…” Her mouth stills, and her eyes, previously narrowed, drift open and distant. “No,” she says. “He can’t have been that foolish.”
“I wanted to name her Grace after her great-grandmother, but Derek…” Mom’s shaking increases in intensity. “I know now why he didn’t.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
“You—you—”
“Her name is Katelyn, and she is magnificent. And you”—my mom leans forward—“will never play a role in her life.”
“Where is she?”
I can’t see her face, but I imagine my mother is smiling.
“Where is she?” my grandmother repeats, so loudly this time that Malcolm and I both start. “You took my son from me. You will not take the only good part of him I have left.”
I think of my sister and the utter disdain this woman has for her, and grind my teeth together.
“I didn’t take him from you.”
“You’re the reason he’s dead. He ran after you, and you pushed him—”
“I was trying to get away!” Mom half stumbles a step forward. “To make him let go. I was at the top of the stairs, and he had ahold of my arms. And when I jerked them free, he—he—” Mom’s voice chokes off, sobs racking her body.
“No, no, you don’t get to cry for him. You took him, ruined him, and you don’t get to cry. Is that what you came here for? Forgiveness? If so, you’re a greater fool than he was.”
It feels like it takes ages for Mom to stop crying, to pull herself back from that night, and I see the effort it’s costing her. I see so much, and I see it in ways I haven’t before. The life she already gave up to save mine. The years of running and hiding that fact from me so I wouldn’t have to grow up scared. I see the way she kept my father near me as best she could, the only way she thought she could. I see the normal life she tried to give me, I see the lengths she has gone to and the ones she’s still going to. For me.
She may not be crying now, but I am.
“I only want the truth,” she says. “Not for the world, I don’t care about them. I’ll tell the police whatever you want, confess to anything. I want the truth for my daughter, for Derek’s daughter. He was a coward who couldn’t stand up to his parents when they forced him into a marriage he never wanted, but he loved Katelyn from the moment he knew she existed, and he loved me too. You know that. Tell her the truth, and I’ll stop running.”
“You’re already done running,” my grandmother says, reaching to open a drawer beside her. “My husband may not have lived long enough to see this day, but we both knew how it would end. Not with confessions, not with police, but with justice.”
The small gun she points at my mother is black, and so matte it seems to suck light. And I’m screaming, barreling into the room, promising the ring and myself and anything else my fear-frozen brain can think of.
