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Just like that, I was irritated, my hackles up, the way I only ever felt when talking to Gillian. “I didn’t do anything.”
Well, Katy said.
Um, Didi added.
“I didn’t do anything you need to concern yourself with,” I amended.
“Well, clearly you did,” Gillian snapped. And for just a second, I could hear something underneath her annoyance—worry. I remembered how my heart had seized when I’d thought, just for a moment, that something might have happened to her. Had she had the same thing when she’d gotten a middle-of-the-night call about me?
“I’m fine,” I said, running my hand over my eyes.
All of a sudden, though, I felt just how long the night had been, everything hitting me at once. I was wrung out and exhausted, in a bone-deep way. I dropped the last thing I’d been holding, my canvas bag, and then I joined it, sinking down onto the gravel. I felt my lower lip tremble.
I wanted to be at home. In my own state, in my own bed. I wanted someone to bring me something to eat and brush my hair back from my forehead and tell me that everything would be okay.
I wanted my mother.
“Darcy?” Gillian’s voice was a little more hesitant now, some of the anger gone.
And my mother was right there. She was with me now, just on the other end of the phone. But this was the whole problem, and always had been. Because while most of the time I told myself I was fine with the fact I didn’t have a mother, that Gillian was never going to be what I wanted her to be—at certain moments, like now, it was as if the curtain was pulled back. And suddenly all I could see was the gulf between what I wanted and what I had.
And what I had was so little.
I shook my head, even though I knew Gillian couldn’t see me, and sat up straighter. She didn’t get to know anything about my night. It was information she wasn’t entitled to, a level of clearance she hadn’t earned.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, even as I could feel that tears were incipient, threatening to spill.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Oh, how would you know?” I snapped. “From all your experience with me? From the twelve hours total you’ve spent with me over the last ten years?”
I heard her draw in a sharp breath over the other end of the phone. The kind you take when someone sucker-punches you. “That’s not fair. I’m trying—”
“Oh, you’re trying? Alrighty, then. Great! So now everything is fixed.”
“Look,” Gillian said, and I could hear the irritation in her voice again. “I was woken up in the middle of the night—”
“I’m sorry, okay?” My voice was rising. “I didn’t know they were going to call you. I didn’t tell them to.”
“Are you in trouble? I don’t understand why they called me at all.”
“I’m not in trouble. And they called you because they were under the mistaken impression that I had a mother. I’ll be sure to correct them on that account, okay?”
She didn’t say anything, but somehow I could hear the hurt in her silence, radiating out over the phone line, crossing the country from her in Connecticut to me in Nevada.
“Well.” Her voice was going into cold-and-frosty mode, which always made her sound extra British. “The next four years will certainly be fun.”
“That’s your doing,” I reminded her. “I didn’t ask you for any favors.”
“No, but you accepted them.”
I blinked at that, surprised into silence. This was technically true, but…
“We can talk about this another time.” Gillian sounded like she was trying to pull us back to more solid ground, not this dangerous place where we might accidentally tell the truth. “But… are you okay? Do you need something?”
That was all it took for my chin to start wobbling. I’d needed so much from her over the years—I’d needed things I’d never even admitted to myself, because it would just be that much harder when I never got them.
“No.” I was trying to control my voice, even as I heard it crack. “Sorry that you were woken up. It won’t happen again.” Then I ended the call. I held the phone in my hand for a moment, tears balanced on the edge of my lashes, waiting to see if she’d call me back. Waiting to see if she would have heard something in my voice—known something; known that I needed her right then.
