Page 186 of Knot Their Starlet

My cheek is throbbing, and my eyes are burning with the threat of tears.

Her phone has clattered to the floor at my feet, and I see the tracking app she uses.

How could I be that stupid?

Being with the guys that weekend, away from LA, made me sloppy.

The thought of that weekend, surrounded by people who actually gave a shit about me, who thought I was funny and smart and talented and beautiful, makes something bubble up in my chest.

I lower my hand from my face.

“Mom,” I say.

“Don’t you dare⁠—”

I think of Edison. My dad. The door that he kept all these years. The paint in my childhood bedroom. His reasonable explanation for everything that happened between him and my mom.

“Stop.” The word leaves my lips, making time slow.

She freezes and stares at me.

I don’t know who’s more surprised.

“I did go see him,” I say, my voice surprisingly even, despite the fact that it feels like my insides are trembling in the face of my mom’s unbridled emotions. “I don’t think that’s wrong.”

Something flares to life in her eyes, but I continue. I need to get this off my chest.

“I—I don’t know all of what happened between you two. I know it must be complicated, and maybe you two had a bad relationship, but I’ve never been allowed to find out.” I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears. “I’ve spent my entire life being told who he was by you. I’ve never gotten to decide for myself.”

I wipe my clammy hands on the back of my jeans.

“Why can’t I even see him? He’s my dad.” My voice finally breaks on the last word. “You’re not the only one who gets to decide what that means.”

She goes very still.

I don’t think she even breathes.

I watch her face cycle through something I can’t follow fast enough.

You know how sometimes, when shit goes down, people describe those moments as happening in slow motion?

That’s not what happens.

One second, my mom is standing at the top of the landing. The next, she’s gone.

She threw herself down the stairs.

There’s no other way to describe what happens. She topples, her frail body cracking against the hardwood with a sound that turns my stomach inside out, until she hits the bottom.

“Mom!”

I’m moving before I’ve decided to move. I take the stairs too fast, my socks nearly slipping on the second-to-last step, my hand barely catching the railing.

Stuart somehow materializes in the entryway to the living room. His expression is carefully neutral, which is insane because my mom just threw herself down the stairs.

Has he been waiting? He had to have been.

My mom is crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, and the sobs that pour out of her are enormous. They fill the whole house, echoing off the walls.