She called Jonah on her walk to the old house.
“I’m on my way now. I wanted to say good night.”
“You’ll come back by tomorrow morning either way?” he asked.
“I’ll try my hardest. I don’t want to scare Dad, not after I’ve convinced him to stay here. And I can’t be grounded again. I don’t want to sneak around to be with you.”
“Will you tell Colt? About…us?”
“I probably won’t even see him,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper as she passed her neighbor’s house. “It’s been three months. I might never—”
“You didn’t answer.”
“Yes. I will. I’ll tell him.”
—EXCERPT FROM LEMONADE SKIES, BOOK 2: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
I wake up weary and ragged, my bones aching deep down. It’s like I never even slept, like I really was up hugging my mom the whole night.
I want to know more about Mom. But I don’t want to hear it from Mrs. Rizzo. Dottie. I want to hear it from Dad—I deserve that much. He can’t give me anything else right now, but this? It should be easy.
If he says no—well, then I’ll go next door. And I’ll steal that old box from Mia’s room, too. I’ll put it together for myself, every scrap of my mother that still exists on this earth. I can’t have my mom actually here with me now—patting my back, pushing my hair behind my ears, letting me drip tears and runny snot on her shoulder without flinching. But filling in the blanks would still help—a connect-the-dots to find even a hazy shape of the woman who once was my mother. A human-shaped constellation.
“Dad,” I say, barging through his door without knocking. I’ve waited fourteen years for answers, and suddenly I can’t wait a second longer. As soon as my foot is in the room, I unload: “Everything really sucks right now. But you know what sucks more than anything else? More than lawsuits or losing my best friend? Not having Mom. Not having Mom to hug me and tell me that things are going to end up okay. And not only is she not here, but I can’t even picture her in my mind. I can’t ask myself: What would Mom say? What would Mom do? Because I don’t know. I don’t have a clue how Mom would react in this situation, because you refuse to talk about her. That’s not fair, Dad. You’ve taken everything else away from me, but please—please don’t take this.”
Dad sits in his wheelchair looking at me, stunned. He doesn’t respond, so I keep talking.
“I want to see that box, too. That red box with Mom’s old things, her letters and pictures. I may not have known her—not like you did—but I’m pretty sure she’d want me to see what she left behind. She’d want her own daughter to remember her.”
When he still doesn’t say anything, I keep going. “I want to know about the day she died, too. I want to hear exactly how it happened. I don’t care if it’s hard. She was my mom. I want to know, the good and the bad.” I pull the desk chair over and sit next to him and we stare at each other for what is surely seconds but feels more like hours.
“Okay.” He sounds broken and defeated, but despite this, my hope soars. Finally. “I loved your mom. So much.” He closes his eyes, but I keep my gaze pinned on him. I want to see his expression, feel every part of this. “And she loved me. She loved you. Your mom loved you more than anything in this world. Don’t forget that, with everything else I’m about to say.”
Don’t forget that. My mind races to think of what he could say that might potentially undo my knowledge of this seemingly obvious fact.
“I’ll remember,” I say—anything to keep him going.
“Your mom…had always struggled with depression. That was no secret when we first started dating. She had it mostly under control at that point, but there were ups and downs throughout the years. For a while she didn’t feel ready for a baby, and then when she finally did, getting pregnant was much harder than expected. We weren’t sure it would ever happen, to be honest. And then you showed up, our miracle baby. But after she had you…well, she was blindsided. She’d been on a high during the pregnancy, confident that she’d beaten down her demons. Things were good. Really good. She was determined to be the best mom. Took a year off from her job at the ad agency so she could stay at home with you full-time. But after you were born, the depression hit again. Hard. Harder than ever, she said, though she didn’t admit that for a long time.”
He opens his eyes, and I wish he hadn’t. I can see just how sorry he is to be telling me this—he kept her secrets to protect me all these years, not himself.
“She tried to pretend it got better. And I believed her at first. There were good days. But there were more bad days. She never ended up going back to work. She insisted it was more important to be with you, and that she could freelance if we needed the money at some point. But she probably should have gone back for herself. She was so smart, so energetic. She needed a reason to get out of the house, to get dressed every morning. Three years out, she was still struggling, but just as hell-bent on the idea that she would handle things on her own…”
There’s a slow click click sound growing louder. Lucy. She’s poking her head in, looking up at me with those permanently mournful hound eyes. I reach out and she comes over, nuzzles her ears against my legs. My sadness must have been radiating from me in such powerful waves that she was helpless against its pull.
“She…” He hesitates, glancing down at Lucy. Whatever he’s about to say, I’m pretty sure it will tear me apart. But we’re too far gone now to turn around.
“Dad…”
He nods, grim-faced. “She admitted to me…near the end…that she could barely remember her first year with you. Could barely remember first steps, first words. But she told me she’d been getting better. She promised. Looking back, I can tell how much she must have hidden, the severity of everything she was feeling. She was ashamed to talk, even to me—it wasn’t until I read the letters that I really saw—” He breaks and I break—we’re breaking together.
“Dad,” I manage to choke out, reaching to squeeze his hand. “You don’t have to—”
“I need to finish. I started. And I need”—he pauses, taking a breath—“to finish.”
I nod, rolling my chair over so that I’m even closer to him, as close as I can be without crawling onto his lap like a helpless little girl. I’m so mad at him still, but I also need him so much it aches.
“The day it happened, the day we lost her, you and I were at home. Your mom had told me she needed a shopping day, and she drove to some outlet stores outside the city. She said she wouldn’t be gone long. But then it started pouring rain. Sheets, I remember. I could barely see out the windows. You’d just fallen over a toy in the living room and were hysterically crying when the police called. I couldn’t hear the officer at first—I had to ask him to repeat himself. He said she’d veered off the road into a tree. She was gone when they arrived.”
I feel dizzy. Nauseated. “Why am I always in the car with her in my nightmare? And why did you write that Marigold was in the car with her mom?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. But soon after it happened, you talked about the accident like you had been there with her. And in my mind, you were with her, in her heart. In her mind. We both were. I think that’s why you have the nightmare—it connected you to her, and it still does.”
“But it was an accident?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I’m ready to hear the answer.
“Oh, sweetheart.” My dad’s face is twisted into a grotesque caricature of himself, familiar but still so strange and unknowable. “I don’t know. No one knows. I’ll be asking myself that question every day for the rest of my life. She easily could have just lost her grip in that rainstorm—it was so nasty out there. Or—or it could have been a bad day for her. A really bad day. I wish more than anything in this world that I’d understood the full extent of her illness from the beginning. That I’d pushed harder for the treatment she needed. She’d been see
ing a counselor in those last few weeks—I’d begged enough, and she’d finally relented. But it was too little too late. I’d wanted to believe her when she said she could work through it. She was so independent, so strong willed. Just like you, Thistle.”
His fingertips coil around mine, and for now at least—for this one fleeting, slippery moment—I don’t care about everything Dad’s done wrong. I’m just glad that he’s still here, that his fall from the ladder didn’t take him away from me, too. We have time. We have a future.
“I’m sorry I’ve held this all back from you. I’m sorry that I kept your mother a stranger for so long, but having you was the best thing that ever happened to her. I want you to read her letters—her diary, really. I always knew I’d tell you, but the longer I waited, the harder it got to say anything. I wanted you to have the mom you dreamed she was—because she was that mom. There was so much good to tell you, but it was hard to tell you about her at all without telling you everything. All the strings still come together in the end.”
He stares at me, waiting for my reaction. I don’t have words, though. I feel everything. I feel too much. Guilt and shock and sadness and anger. And above all else: disappointment.
The myth of Rose Lockwood Tate is gone.
It’s what I’d always wanted. But I’d never pictured it like this.
“The box is under my bed. I had Mia bring it down for me. I read the letters sometimes, as you discovered. More than I should probably.”
I don’t speak. I don’t make a move toward the box.
“Say something, Thistle. Please. Tell me what you’re thinking. I know how hard this must be to hear, but your mom loved you so much. You’ll see that for yourself in the letters.”
“Okay.” It’s the best I can do. I unwind my fingers from Dad’s and somehow manage to stand without collapsing on top of Lucy. The box is right there, just a few inches from my feet. I pick it up, holding it out in front of me as far as I can, my arms stretched like it’s a box filled with spiders.
“Thanks,” I say, not able to meet my dad’s eyes as I turn toward the door.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too.”
I’m on the stairs then, in my room. I stare at the box on my lap. There will be no going back: once I see, once I read, I won’t be able to erase my memory. I take a deep breath, pop the clasp, and open the lid.
Mom. The scent is so strong, springtime and sunny flowers.
If I close my eyes, I can almost remember the way her voice sounds.
Almost.
* * *
I pull out the notes first, saving the pictures and knickknacks for later.
Each page is dated at the top. The first date I see is from just a few weeks after I was born. I flip through the pile, all in chronological order, my eyes jumping around her loopy, tangled words. There are notes, lists, letters that Mom seemed to have written to herself. I only have to skim to see that the handwriting gets more gnarled as time goes by, almost indecipherable in the later notes. I straighten the pile, tucking pages into neat and orderly lines.
I start reading.
The letters are sparse in the first year. There’s a lot of talk about how cute I am, how I ate my first Cheerios, took my first step, saw my first snowflake. Happy stuff. Each note at least starts that way, fluff and sunshine. But then she’ll start to talk about how tired she is—how she can never seem to sleep anymore because her mind is flooded with questions and fears and terrible, terrible dark and hellish and haunting images that she can’t understand.
She writes six months after my birth:
Sometimes I doubt that Thistle will ever love me.
How could she love me, when I have no idea how to really be a mom? I cry most days after Theo leaves; I cry most nights after he falls asleep. I cry rocking her, feeding her, changing her. I worry that Theo won’t love me as much now that he has Thistle, that he won’t need me anymore. I worry that he’ll see I’m a bad mom and take her away from me. I worry that I’d be glad if he did. Relieved. Because surely I’ll mess up fiercely as a mom and she’ll end up hurting. Emotionally, that is. Never physically.
I’m a good person. I love my daughter. I vow to be a better mother tomorrow. I vow to be the mother that this beautiful baby deserves.
Every word sears my mind, but I keep flipping through. Hoping for brighter, lighter notes. I find a pretty piece of floral stationery dated around my second birthday. Orange and yellow flowers. The first line seems promising: Things that should have made me happy today. But then I realize that should have negates any chance of an uplifting letter.
Things that should have made me happy today:
Waking up to Theo kissing my eyelids, two butterfly flutters against my skin.
Listening then as he crept into Thistle’s nursery, singing—on loop—his totally off-key but adorable rendition of “Hakuna Matata” (her favorite song, this week at least).
Thistle climbing into my bed when he left, her soft little baby arms wrapping around my neck and holding on tight, so tight.
Making chocolate chip pancakes with Thistle, smearing chocolate on my lips as she screamed and clapped her hands. I let her smear chocolate on her lips, too, and of course it ended up all over her clothes, the table, the chair. Conveniently it was raining, and we danced outside to clean ourselves off.
Napping together after our rain dance, listening to the pitter-patter against the windows, knowing we were safe and dry and warm.
Theo coming home with beautiful marigolds for my garden. Clipping two—one for my hair, one for Thistle’s.
Putting Thistle to bed and splitting a bottle of wine with Theo, watching a few of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld. Theo kissing me and telling me that I’ve never looked more beautiful.
Things that actually made me happy today:
(Must try harder tomorrow.)
I consider stopping. What good will this really do? Will I be better off for having read all of it? For having had this peek into my mother’s troubled mind? I’m not sure if the answer is no or yes, but it doesn’t matter. I have to get to the end. I need to see every good word there is—every single time she says she loves me, that I’m precious, that I’m beautiful or bright or kind. Even if there are ten bad words for every good, I’ll take those odds. This is all I’ll ever have. It’s like a cup of salt water in the desert, and I don’t have the willpower to not drink it in when there’s not a drop of anything else in sight.
So I keep reading. I dig in, deeper and darker. The next few notes seem to be letters to me, personally. Dear Thistle. Almost as if—almost as if she knew. Knew that there was even a tiny shred of a chance that she wouldn’t be around to tell me these things herself. I could be wrong. I hope with every piece of my soul that I am. That the car accident was exactly and only that: an accident.
I start reading one of these letters, her scrawl much messier now, harder to unravel.
Dear Thistle,
Have I ever told you about the day your father and I found out I was having you?
Of course she hadn’t. These aren’t conversations a mother has with a toddler. She must have intended for me to read it when I was older. But why not wait to tell me for herself?
I had been suspecting it for a week or two, though I can’t say exactly how I knew, just that my body suddenly felt different to me. Like it wasn’t only mine anymore. I didn’t feel alone, ever. Not like I usually did.
I took the test in the bathroom at work one morning and—I was right. You were there. It wasn’t just me now—it was me and you. I told myself I’d wait until that night to tell your dad, think of some cute way to do the reveal over dinner. We had waited so long for you, I wanted it to all be perfect. But an hour later, I left the office and drov
e over to his school. I parked by the faculty door and waited two hours for the last class to end. He saw me before I saw him, tapping on the window and making me scream. I looked up at him and started crying. Happy tears, of course. And he didn’t even have to ask. He just knew. He yanked open the door and pulled me up into his arms, swung me in circles around the parking lot.
It was the best day ever, Thistle. You’d already made me the happiest I’d ever been, just by existing. If only I could have stayed that happy.
If only I could be different.
The letters start to blur, and I slide from one to the next, caught up in a fast-moving current of misery. It’s like I’m riding high on a rushing river leading to a waterfall, watching helplessly as the edge gets closer, closer. The tears are coming quickly now, and I don’t notice I’m at the end of the stack until I have just one flimsy piece of that god-awful flowery paper left in my hand. It’s dated a few weeks before she died.
Dear Thistle,
We were at the park this morning, the two of us. I was pushing you on the swings, and things were good. You were laughing, and I felt okay. But then I had that terrible feeling that washes over me like a tidal wave—that feeling of total hopelessness, like I will never be able to do anything right, that I will never be able to protect you, that I am an unfit mother…
The next thing I remember clearly is me on a bench, a woman shaking me—Is that your little girl? She was angry. Yelling. I looked up and saw you then, and it pulled me out of my fog. You had slipped from the swing, your elbows bruised, bleeding. You were crying hysterically, and I started crying hysterically, too. The other mothers were watching us. The judgment on their faces, confirming my worst fear—that I cannot take care of you.
The Undoing of Thistle Tate Page 19
