Splinters of Light

by Rachael Herron

  When my daughter kissed me at midnight that year, I missed my old life a tiny bit less than I had the previous New Year’s. Paul was becoming more and more adept at dodging phone calls from his first daughter as he busied himself with his new family, but his leaving us meant I got this little girl all to myself. A girl with his blond eyebrows and my concern for wrongs to be righted. A little girl who liked to suck the rinds of our homegrown lemons (making faces all the while) as much as she liked to lick the honey spoon I handed her in the kitchen.

  So this year, I wish you more honey than lemon. And I wish it for all your years to come.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m not wearing those,” said Ellie. She remained where she was, lying flat on her back on her bed, her cell phone held above her face with a hand that floated, the phone seemingly weightless.

  Nora said, “But these are the ones you asked for.”

  Ellie blew out her breath in a whoosh. “I was kidding.”

  How was Nora possibly supposed to know that? “I gave you the catalog a month ago and that’s what you stuck your Post-it note on.” Nora had thought the light pink pajamas with the ducklings had looked impossibly juvenile for her sixteen-year-old daughter, but she’d felt a warm glow as she’d clicked buy. It was proof that her little girl could still be just that—little. She’d even started a column: “Big Girls Still Like Footie PJs.”

  “I picked the ugliest pair of pajamas in the whole catalog and you thought I was serious,” Ellie said. It wasn’t a question.

  The hurt was shallow—like a sharp jab under the nail—but it stung, nonetheless. “Okay, I’ll wear them, then.” They were almost the same size, a fact that surprised Nora every time Ellie raided her closet.

  The phone jerked in her daughter’s hand. Good. She’d gotten a reaction, at least.

  “You can’t.”

  “I could. Would you really mind that much?”

  Ellie sat up, tucking the phone under her thigh. “Aunt Mariana is coming over.”

  “Yep.”

  “I bet she won’t be wearing dumb baby pajamas.”

  Nora’s twin, Mariana, still seemed cool to Ellie. Nora herself had lost the ability to be anything but pathetic to her daughter this year. No, that wasn’t quite true, she acknowledged to herself. Ellie also thought her mother was naive, overly enthusiastic about too many things, and possibly stupid.

  Nora refolded the pajama top and put it on top of Ellie’s bureau. She used the cuff of her sleeve to rub off a water-glass ring. She’d have to take the Pledge to it later, when Ellie wasn’t in the room to complain about the lemon smell.

  “Mom.” In Ellie’s voice was the apology Nora had gotten used to not receiving in words. “You gotta see that’s horrible. Right? You can see that?”

  Nora stroked a flannel duck’s head. “I guess if I’d stopped to really think about it, I would have been concerned about your choice.” Instead, she’d been pleased that Ellie had taken a moment to choose anything at all. “I should have taken you to Macy’s. Or Target. They have cute pajamas.” Wanting to stop talking but unable to prevent her lips from moving, she said, “Want to go now? They’re open till at least nine. We could make it and be back for—”

  “No, thanks.” The phone hovered above her daughter’s head again. Ellie had hit sixteen years old like it was her job, like she was going to get a bonus from her boss if she could be the biggest pain in the ass possible. She didn’t clean her room without threats of physical violence, and she had mastered the art of making Nora feel like something not even worth pulling off the bottom of a shoe.

  “Have you played that game yet?”

  “Which one?”

  In trying to find her daughter a Christmas present she wouldn’t hate, Nora had researched which multiplayer online games were most popular for Ellie’s demographic. She’d used her Twitter account for the research since it was a safe bet Ellie never looked at her feed. Nora’s followers, mostly longtime readers who were also parents and often single, had overwhelmed her with suggestions. Queendom seemed like a game Nora could get behind—with its feminist slant, women ruled the game’s domain, and Ulra, the Dragon Queen, was both the ultimate monster and the creature players wanted to become.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Why not?”

  Ellie raised her head and met Nora’s eyes briefly. Then her head dropped back to the bedspread again. Her thumbs spun and danced over the phone’s keyboard.

  “Fine,” said Nora. “I can see you’re busy.”

  “It just seems like something girls would play.”

  Nora switched on the night-light—a tiny dark-haired fairy peeping out from behind the moon—even though Ellie hadn’t slept with it on for at least three years. “You’re a girl. In case you hadn’t noticed.” What Nora wanted was for Ellie to scoot sideways, offering her—even tacitly—a place to sit. A moment to talk.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s a storytelling game. You get to narrate the action. And you’re so good at writing—”

  “No, I’m not. You always forget I’m not you.”

  Nora played her trump card. “And almost half of the players are male.”

  Ellie rolled to her side, newly interested. “Where did you read that?”

  “Somewhere online, in all of my vast and far-reaching research into the game that you would like the most.”

  “How long did you spend doing that?”

  Not long enough. “Days.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Okay, at least two hours.”

  “Oooh.” Ellie’s tone was sarcastic, but Nora could tell she’d scored a point.

  One measly point, racked up against Ellie’s three million or so. It still felt good. “What are you going to wear tonight?”

  “Isn’t the whole point to wear whatever we want? I mean, that’s what you wrote in that god-awful book.”

  A person could die of paper cuts, given enough blood loss. Nora had run every essay in When Ellie Was Little by her daughter before it was published, giving the then twelve-year-old Ellie ultimate say over what could and couldn’t be published. She’d objected to one line that called her baby cheeks “pudgy,” but the rest had stood. They never talked about the book, just like they didn’t talk about Nora’s lifestyles column for the Sentinel.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m just wearing what I’m wearing now.”

  “Great.” It was so stupid for Nora to want to argue with her. Of course it was fine if Ellie came downstairs in an antique Sonic Youth T-shirt and jeans.

  “Great!” Ellie flopped back to the bedspread. Sometimes Nora thought what Ellie was best at was that backward dive. Forget the fact that she was in calculus, the only junior in the class, forget that she placed first in honors English—what Ellie could make a full-time job of was falling backward with a sigh so heavy it seemed likely to pull down the ceiling with her someday.

  She didn’t close Ellie’s door behind her, but she heard the soft thunk of the door shutting before she reached the stairs.

  Nora hated closed doors.

  Chapter Three

  A new tradition for New Year’s Eve. An extra one.

  That’s what they needed.

  Nora sat on the back porch with the plastic Michael’s craft store bag at her side. It was balmy out, surprising for this time of year. Usually late December brought cold winds and thick fog to this section of the coast. Even as protected as the marina town of Tiburon was by the San Francisco Bay, it still got bitterly cold overnight sometimes, frost forming on the gnarled twists of hobbyist grapevines in backyards, ice coating the Mercedes and Land Rover windows.

  That night, though, was warm enough for Nora sit outside with nothing more than Paul’s old red flannel over her T-shirt. It was the best thing he’d left, besides his daughter, whom he wanted no part of,
rat bastard. Nora looked down the hill and over the Smythes’ new roof, past the Miller-Reids’ redwood, which really needed trimming, down to the boats bobbing in the dark water. Most of them still bore their Christmas lights, a week old but still cheery. The boats looked tiny from the six-block distance, brightly lit toys left behind in a vast tub of black ink. The air smelled of pine and, faintly, of car exhaust.

  From the bag, Nora took three fat white candles. The fake vanilla scent was almost strong enough to banish the smell of the trees. Deodorizing the outdoors. She took out the scraps of lace she’d bought, idly running the longest one through her fingers. What next? Instead of gluing the fabric to the candles, instead of perusing the magazines she’d brought outside with her for inspiring images to snip out with her paper scissors, she continued to stare into the night, seeing the inside of the doctor’s office rather than the top of her back fence.

  It should be more worrying, this staring habit of hers. It had been getting worse lately. A lot worse. That new inability to concentrate, something Nora had always excelled at, was the reason she’d gone to the doctor eight weeks before, the reason she’d done the first panel of blood work. She was forty-four. Too young to be starting menopause, but maybe she was hitting perimenopause. Maybe the doctor would give her supplements or instructions to go to acupuncture more often.

  Then the office had called back, requesting more blood. Nora was pleased. They were taking it seriously. The next thing on her doctor’s very thorough list was a neuropsychological test. It had been strangely exhilarating, doing silly tasks like drawing the face of a clock and explaining how the hands worked, demonstrating how to tie her left shoe. That was followed by another, shorter pen-and-pencil test during which they asked more seemingly random questions. Memory work. Then a PET scan of her brain, something that would measure the uptake of sugar, they said.

  Nora had thought the doctor’s overreaction was a good sign, solid proof that she had excellent insurance. But the week before, she’d begun to feel as if she were a scientific pincushion, someone they were just pushing for fun—See how much blood she’ll give us. Lay your bets on the table! Maybe Nora was an experiment. She had consoled herself with the fact that she was probably good at it. She was acing their exams, whatever they were. She smiled when they jabbed her with needles that looked like straws, and she got to know the names of the phlebotomist’s kids. He had two, Juan and Roberto. He was as white as sourdough, raised in the inland valley, but his wife was Latina, and she’d gotten to name the kids. She was pregnant again, this time with a girl, and she was going to let him name her. Nora told him with mock seriousness, Nora’s a good name. Sure, he said, agreeing with her, but she could tell it wouldn’t make the short list.

  No one had diagnosed her with anything yet. She was getting older, that was all. Everyone had the same affliction, and at least she had her column in which to work it out. Whatever it was, she was sure she’d be able to milk it for both humor and a paycheck. She wasn’t very worried. When her blood work came back, it didn’t support a cancer diagnosis, and after she’d heard that, she’d relaxed. With any luck it would be something embarrassing. Her biggest reader response always came after her confessionals: My daughter came as close to asking me for a divorce as she ever has. While sanitizing my Diva cup in boiling water, I let the pot go dry, and the cup caught on fire while Ellie was studying in the living room with three friends. If you’ve never smelled a burning menstrual cup, you’ve never lived, my friends. I had to shove cinnamon sticks up my nose while I aired out the place, and my daughter refused to talk to me until I promised never to say the word “menses” out loud ever again. Her e-mail would blow up with shared mother-daughter humiliation stories.

  Telling stories about getting older, being diagnosed with small strange ailments (corns, joint aches, vision degeneration), would just be good fodder. Memory lapses, the kind she’d been having lately, were more annoying than worrisome.

  She blinked, unsure how long she’d been staring over the treetops.

  With the marina lights still twinkling below, Nora took out the tiny bottle of glue she’d bought at the craft store. It wasn’t like she didn’t have at least ten bottles of glue already in her craft room, but when she’d been at the store, she couldn’t remember what kind she had. Mod Podge? Wood glue? Elmer’s? Standing in the glue aisle, she couldn’t even picture what her craft room looked like. Funny, really. Years ago she’d spent so much time setting up that space, which had been a wine cellar for the previous owners. She and Paul didn’t drink much more than the wine they bought at the grocery store, and they’d laughed about a whole climate-controlled room just for alcohol. She’d rolled her fabric so that it fit in the wine bottle nooks. Her yarn fit in the round holes, perfectly—she could fit two, sometimes three skeins in each. She’d added two long wooden tables, an OttLite, and a space heater. Nora loved it down there, and so had Ellie before crafting had gotten embarrassing.

  Before Nora couldn’t remember what glue she had.

  She’d bought a little bottle of Aleene’s, just in case.

  “Nora?”

  She jumped, dropping the bottle of glue. It skidded away from her, off the side of the deck, and she heard it making tiny crashes as it rolled down the steep hill toward the Smythes’ fence line.

  Mariana said, “What are you doing out here?”

  “I was . . .” What had she been going to do? “These candles.”

  “Ellie said you’ve been out here in the dark for an hour.”

  “No, I haven’t.” Nora glanced at her watch. Almost ten. “Damn.”

  Mariana was wearing a ripped black leather jacket and a ragged blue scarf, the first one Nora had ever knitted. Her jeans were frayed at the knees. Her shoes were the exception to her outfit—they were purple leather boots that had probably cost more than all of Ellie’s fall school clothes put together. How many times had Nora mentioned that her sister might do better saving money, rather than buying four-hundred-dollar shoes that couldn’t be worn in the rain?

  “You must be freezing,” Mariana said. She took off the scarf and wrapped it around Nora’s throat.

  “You’re not wearing your pajamas,” said Nora. It had gotten cold, she suddenly realized. An ache had seeped into her lower legs, as if she’d been jogging too much lately, whereas the truth was she couldn’t remember her last run. “I can’t remember,” she said.

  “What?” Mariana’s smile lit her whole face.

  That face. Nora loved it—it was her own visage, reflected back at her but prettier. Everything a little better than her own. Mariana’s eyes had more hints of cocoa and spice, whereas Nora’s were plain crayon brown. Mariana’s chin was defined and firm; Nora’s was getting a little weak, she knew. Even though they were fraternal, they’d looked identical enough to trick people growing up. And now, it was just nice, seeing her own face look so pretty on someone else.

  “What do you mean?” asked Mariana again. The wind lifted her long brown hair—smoother and shinier than Nora’s—and she tugged it back.

  “Nothing.” Nora shook her head to clear it and then touched the scarf. It smelled of Mariana, of patchouli and gardenia, sweet and spicy at the same time. “I should make you a new scarf. This looks awful.”

  “Nah,” her sister said. “I like this one. Let’s go inside, huh?” Mariana linked her arm with Nora’s and, as if it were her house and not Nora’s, led her up the three steps and inside.

  Chapter Four

  S omething was wrong with Nora.

  When their eyes met on the back porch, Mariana could tell. Something was different—not missing, not even out of place. It was just off enough that Mariana couldn’t quite touch it. It was just a feeling. Her friend Beth could read auras. “Hey, we should do lunch with Beth soon.”

  Nora didn’t even look at her as she spilled the bag of lace on the kitchen counter. She poked through the pieces as if looking
for something important.

  Mariana lined up the candles and tugged at their wicks until they stood at attention. “Look. I’m turning them on. Get it?”

  Nora rolled her eyes. That was more like her.

  “Okay, tell me what you were going to do with these.”

  Nora’s voice was defensive, as if they’d been arguing about it. “They’re wishing candles. For wishes.”

  “Well, yeah. I would guess that’s what wishing candles were for. How do they work?” Mariana examined a bit of lace. She held it up to her eyes and peeked through the holes.

  “You pick a word for the new year. Then you carve the word into the side of the candle, and when we burn them together, the words will come true the next year.”

  Such a Martha Stewart–Nora thing to do. “I like it,” said Mariana, and it was true. “What’s the glitter and the lace for?”

  A short pause. “For whatever you like. Decoration.”

  “But if you cover the candles with lace, then where do we carve the—”

  “Never mind.” Nora swept everything back into the bag. “It doesn’t matter. It’s fine if it’s not your thing.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Did you bring the screwdriver Luke was going to lend me?”

  Mariana knew she’d forgotten something. As usual. “Crap, I’m sorry.”

  Nora folded the top of the bag tightly. “It’s fine. I’ll just buy one. Where’s Ellie?”

  “She said she was going up—”

  “Ellie!” Nora bellowed up the staircase as if she’d lost her daughter on a crowded beach.

  Something was definitely wrong with Mariana’s sister. She didn’t look different. It was like when a computer screen started that slight flickering. It was visible only when you looked sideways at it.

  Mariana steered Nora by the shoulders to the refrigerator. “I’m starving.” She wasn’t, but her twin loved nothing more than someone asking for food. “I bet you have something amazing in there.”