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I flinched. “No?”
“No. If you don’t remember, I’m not telling you. I heard he’s got some overpriced, fancy Harvard therapist helping you. ” A bitter smile curved her lips. “Did your father find something else he couldn’t fix with money and control?”
For a fleeting moment, the cemetery resembled a chessboard and my mother moved her queen. If Aires and I were pawns i
n our parents’ game, had she noticed that I quit playing?
“Heard?” I repeated as her answer struck me. “There’s a restraining order. How did you hear anything?”
Mom blinked several times and the color seeped from her cheeks. “I wanted to know how you were doing, so I contacted your father. ”
A sickening feeling slid down my throat. “When?”
She lowered her head. “February. ”
“Mom … why didn’t you call me? I gave you my numbers. ” I paused, unable to keep up with the emotions and questions flying in my head. February. The word vibrated through me. That was the month my father took away my cell and my car without telling me why. He’d lied to me so he could conceal me from her. “I wanted to talk to you. I begged you back in December to call me. Why would you call Dad? I mean, you could have gone to jail. There is a restraining order!”
“No, there isn’t,” she said simply. “The order was rescinded thirty days after you turned eighteen. ”
Now I felt as if someone drop-kicked me in the stomach. “What?”
“It was the terms of the order when the judge signed it over two years ago. Your father tried to have it extended until you graduated, but enough time had passed that the judge no longer saw me as a threat. ”
I couldn’t breathe and my head shook back and forth. “You mean you could have contacted me since February and you didn’t?”
She hesitated. “Yes. ”
“Why?” Was I that unlovable? Weren’t mothers supposed to want to see their daughters? Especially when their daughters asked them for help? Not knowing what to do with myself, I stood and wrapped my arms around my shaking body. “Why?” I screamed it this time.
“Because. ” Mom stood and raised her hands out to her sides. “Because I knew this is how you’d react. I knew you’d want to know what happened between us and I can’t tell you. ”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll blame me and I can’t take any more guilt. It wasn’t my fault, Echo, and I’m not going to let you make me feel that way. ”
A Mack truck hit my body and my shoulders rolled with the impact. What an unbelievably selfish answer. “You don’t know that’s how I’ll react. I’m not happy you went off your meds, but I get that you didn’t understand what you were doing. I understand that you weren’t in the right frame of mind that night. ”
She released a loud sigh and it echoed in the lonely cemetery. “I do know how you’ll react, Echo. I told you before, you and I share the same skin. Once we’re betrayed, we never forgive. ”
The dark sludge that had inhabited my veins since I found out my father’s role in that day moved slowly in my gut, chilling me from the inside out. “I’m not like that. ”
“Aren’t you? How’s the bimbo your father married? You once loved her. ”
I wasn’t her. I wasn’t my mother. I blinked and stared at Aires’ tombstone, half hoping he’d tell me she was wrong. What did this mean? What did this mean about me? And Ashley? And my father?
“Let’s not discuss bad things,” she said. “I’ve been on my medication for two years and I’m never coming off. Besides, I came here to catch up on the present, not rehash the past. I’ve got a fantastic job and a beautiful loft apartment. Echo? Echo, where are you going?”
From over my shoulder, I looked at the woman who gave birth to me. She’d never once said she was sorry. “I’m going home. ”
NOAH
Water trickled from my parents’ fountain. Children laughed and yelled from the playground behind the neighborhood. Frank had told me to take the day off. I didn’t need a day off. I needed to work. I needed the money. I didn’t need so much damn time on my hands.
I brought Echo here once. Either to impress her or seduce her, or maybe I brought her here to prove to myself I was someone worth loving. Who the hell knew, for all the good it did.
My mind had wrestled with the same question since Tuesday. How could I help her? I drew nothing but blanks. So much for those damn problem-solving skills Mrs. Collins said I was so good at.
“Noah!”
