“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s nothing.”
“Show me.” I reach for it but Mom pulls it away. “Mom, what the hell?”
“Listen, sweets. You gotta understand I love you. Everything I’ve ever done has been to protect you, okay?”
My face grows hot and I pull away from her touch. “You’re being so weird.”
Mom’s face changes then. It’s hard and sad and full of restraint. “I know, Goldie. Iknow.”
“You knowwhat?”
“I know you weren’t driving Heller’s truck that night,” she says.
My shoulders tense and everything around me grows still. “What?”
Mom sighs, wrapping her arms around her stomach.
“But...” I say.
Mom holds up her hand. “No buts. I know.”
“How...”
“You don’t drive stick.”
Mom unfolds the paper she’s holding and hands it to me. I scan the page and realize it’s a report from Frank’s Auto Shop from January.
“I went down to Frank’s a few days after the accident to see the damage to the truck. Whole thing was totaled but I made Frank walk me through it, show me every piece of damage. When he got to the console, I saw it’s manual transmission.”
I’m shocked into silence for a moment but then a realization dawns on me. “You knew I wasn’t driving,” I say. “Then why didn’t you say something when things got so bad? Why did you let me go through that alone?”
“Oh, Goldie,” she says, her voice full of sorrow. “I—I...”
“Say something!” I’m screaming now but I don’t care who hears.
“I went to Stu and Mellie,” she says, the words coming out fast. “I called them as soon as I left Frank’s and I asked them what to do. But they were skeptical and said to trust you, that maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. How could we prove it, especially since you had been so hellbent on giving up everything for that boy?”
“And you never came to me. You never thought,Hmm, maybe my daughter isn’t thinking right and she’s going through some shit and I should try to be there for her?I should try to be her mom?”
Mom closes her eyes and presses her fingers to her temples. “Stu and Mellie said there was no way we’d get Heller to admit the truth. That you probably had good reason for taking the fall and that we should trust your judgement.” Mom’s eyes are welling with tears and her knuckles are white as she grasps on to the table in front of her. “I didn’t expect it to get so bad.”
“All this time you knew and you let mesuffer,” I say. The tears fall hot and fast down my cheeks. “You’re supposed to protect me.”
“We were falling behind on the mortgage,” she says, small. “We couldn’t afford a lawyer. And Stu and Mellie had figured everything out already. I didn’t know what to do.”
I shake my head. “I can’t believe this.”
“Baby, I’m sorry. This whole year’s been a mess. We thought you’d spend the summer here and everything would be good again. That a summer here, with your friends, at this place would right all the wrongs and set you back up to get going with your life. But then...”
“Then Heller died,” I say.
“Heller died.”
“I don’t have anything else to say to you except I need you to answer this: Do you really think Heller drowned by accident?”
Mom look at me, her bottom lip quivering. She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
