Page 89

PLATES CLATTERED LOUDLY, the piercing sound putting a stop to the five-hundred-piece orchestra composing a death march in my skull. I rolled over, aware that my entire body ached as if I’d been hit by a wrecking ball - it might have been in the proverbial sense, but that didn’t lessen the damage.

She was cleaning.

That wasn’t good.

“Mom?”

My voice was so hoarse I barely recognized it.

“You’re up,” she replied. She came over to the sofa, and sat beside me, a glass of water in her hand.

“When did you get here?”

I gulped the water down, sighing when my parched throat no longer felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper.

“Two days ago,” my Mother sighed. “Your friend, Annabelle, called me. She stopped by but you didn’t answer, and your phone was off.”

“So you came all the way here?”

My Mother looked affronted, and even with the slight grey in her hair, she still did the whole ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ expression really well.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I came.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

After all the chaos that ensued once I got back from seeing my Mother, I had yet to give her my new address.

“Can I make you something to eat?” I frowned when my Mother tried to change the topic. “You must be starving.”

“Mom, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this now?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I’d rather you didn’t join the list of people who have been keeping things from me.”

Two days and the sting of what Caleb had done was still there, a low but steady hum of a thousand needles beating mercilessly against my body. I didn’t want to forget though. I needed the reminder that although people had the capacity to be good, and kind, they also had the capacity to hurt, and manipulate and lie, and that invariably they were both sides of the same coin. It was a harsh reality to accept about someone you loved, but still true nonetheless.

My Mother looked anxious, her gaze on everything but me.

“Your friend Annabelle isn’t the only one who called me,” she started. Her voice wavered as if she was unsure about whether or not to continue. It was rather uncharacteristic of her, which only made me raise my guard. “Caleb called me too.”

I shook my head with vehemence. “I don’t want to hear it, Mom.”

I tried to stand, but what came out of my Mother’s mouth next brought me to a standstill.

“He loves you, you know.”

Squeezing my eyes shut had become an involuntary reaction, like it would make everything disappear purely because I couldn’t see it.

But I could still see it.

All of it.

I spun around, and stared angrily at my Mother. She knew better than anyone what it was like to be lied to. “How can you say that after what he did?”

“Sweetheart.” My Mother sighed. “I am in no way excusing what he did, but when he called me, I heard the voice of a broken man, a man who regrets hurting you more than anything.”

“With all due respect, Mom, you are the worst judge of character when it comes to men.”