Page 124 of The Exit Strategy

Now I’m fucking nervous. “Okay.”

“Do you often throw things away?”

I close my eyes.

She asked me this on my first day here.

Do you often throw things away, or only when someone you love betrays you?

I’ve thought about that question more times in the last six weeks than I’ve thought about my own mother. Strange that my mother is all I can think about now.

“I was fourteen.” My voice betrays me, speaking words I don’t say out loud. “When she told us she had colon cancer.”

Bea doesn’t move, but she does hand me a travel-sized tissue pack that she might’ve pulled from her bra.

“For three years, everyone kept telling her to fight. Hold on. Don’t give up. I said it too. I said it every day, even when I didn’t mean it. I said it when I was so tired of saying it that I could feel the words getting bitter in my mouth. I said it at the kitchen table, the oncology appointments, and when she stopped being able to sit up on her own. I said it when my father would come by, pushing her to sign variousdocuments. I said it in hospice, when the nurse asked me if I wanted a minute, but my brain was screaming something else underneath it.”

“What was your brain screaming, Juniper?”

“You know what it was screaming.” Bitterness slithers around every word.

“I do. But I’d like you to say it.”

I glare at her.

Bea’s eyes are the color of weak tea. She isn’t smiling or frowning, she’s just here, in her chair at her house, holding space for me to put something down that I’ve been carrying for years.

“It was screaming,just go.Just. Go.”

Bea pats my hand, but I hardly feel it. What the fuck am I doing? And why can’t I stop?

“When she died.” The words tumble out like a dam blown wide open. “What I felt—under everything else—was relief. Because she wasn’t in pain anymore. Because I didn’t have to be the outlet for her pain anymore. Because she couldn’t say horrible things to me anymore. Because I was so tired of hiding and I wanted to know what it felt like not to hide. And I thought—I thought if she died, all of that would go away. My anger. The fights. The bills. The fear. The hurt. The embarrassment.”

“And did it?”

A tear slips down my cheek, and I angrily swipe it away. I’ve shed these tears. I’m not about to do it again.

“For about a week,” I say. “Then it came back in a different color, and I…held on to it.”

Bea nods as though she understands, but she doesn’t. What kind of person feels only relief when their mother dies?

“I’ve never said that out loud,” I say.

“I had a feeling.”

“Not to Nolan. Not to anyone. Not even?—”

“Not even?” she gently pushes.

“Not even myself,” I say.

“Relief and grief aren’t opposites, Juniper. They’re roommates. They share a bathroom. They take turns. You’re not a monster for feeling both. You were a child doing the work of an adult for years, and your body registers the end of that work the way bodies do. Grief doesn’t come with an etiquette manual. Not for you, not for anyone. But I can tell you, I don’t think you were alone in that shame spiral.”

I frown at her.

“Nolan told me you might end up here, and he said it was okay to tell you that he too sought me out his first summer visit here after your mother passed away.”

“But Nolan’s not a monster.” Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that.