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“There is pain you can’t outrun, Marah. Maybe you know that now. Some pains you have to look in the eye. What do you miss most about your mom?”
“Her voice,” she answered. And then, “The way she hugged me. The way she loved me. ”
“You will always miss her. I know that from experience. There will be days—even years from now—when the missing will be so sharp it takes your breath away. But there will be good days, too; months and years of them. In one way or another, you’ll be searching for her all your life. You’ll find her, too. As you grow up, you’ll understand her more and more. I promise you that. ”
“She would hate how I treated Tully,” she said softly.
“I think you’d be amazed at how easily a mother forgives. And a godmother, too. The question is: Can you forgive yourself?”
Marah looked up sharply, her eyes stinging with tears. “I need to. ”
“Okay, then. That’s where we will start. ”
It helped, Marah learned, all that looking back, all that talking about her mom and Tully and guilt and forgiveness. Sometimes she lay in bed at night, drawing her memories close and trying to imagine her mother talking to her in the dark.
Because that’s what she missed most: her mother’s voice. And through it all, she knew what she would someday have to do; she knew there was a place where she could find her mother’s voice when she was strong enough to go looking.
But she needed Tully to be with her. That was the promise Marah had made to her mom.
* * *
For weeks afterward, Dorothy fell into bed at night exhausted and woke tired. The to-do care list was never far from her grasp; she held it almost continuously and reread it over and over, afraid always that she had missed something. The tasks ran like a litany through her head. Elevate and lower, fifteen minutes every two hours; check fluids and food, check nasogastric tube, massage her hands and feet; apply lotion; brush her teeth; exercise her limbs through a gentle range of motion; keep bed dry and sheets clean; turn her from side to side every few hours; check tracheobronchial suction.
It took her more than a month to stop being afraid, and it was more than six weeks before the visiting nurse stopped adding to the notations on her list.
By late November, when the leaves had begun to fall and drop their bits of color onto her black, muddy, overgrown garden, she began to think—at last—that she could really do this, and by her first Christmas with her daughter, she had begun to leave her to-do list behind. The cycle of her days became routine. The nurse—Nora, a grandmother to twelve kids who ranged in age from six months to twenty-four—came by four times a week. Only last week she’d said, “Why, Dot, I couldn’t do better myself. Honest!”
As Christmas Day 2010 dawned crisp and clear over the town of Snohomish, she finally felt at peace, or as at peace as a woman with a daughter in a coma could feel. She woke earlier than usual and set about readying the house to feel like a holiday home. There were no ornaments in the back storage closet, of course, and she had no problem with that. Making do was one of her life skills, but when she was in that dark closet, she stumbled across the two cardboard boxes full of Tully’s mementos.
She paused, straightening, and stared down at them. A gray layer of dust covered the top.
When Johnny had delivered these boxes, along with Tully’s clothes and toiletries and photos, Dorothy had thought they seemed sacrosanct, for Tully’s eyes alone, but now she wondered if the contents could help Tully. She bent down and picked up the box marked Queen Anne. It was light—of course. How much would a seventeen-year-old Tully have thought to save?
Dorothy wiped away the dust and carried the box up to Tully’s bedroom.
Tully lay still, her eyes closed, her breathing even. Pale silvery light shone through the window, pooling and writhing on the floor, the pattern shifting with the movement of the trees outside. Ribbons of light and dark chased each other across the floor, amplified by the glass beads in the dream catcher hung at the window.
“I brought up your things,” she said to Tully. “I thought maybe, for Christmas, I could talk to you about what’s in here. ” She set the box down by the bed.
Tully didn’t move. A fuzz of graying mahogany hair had begun to grow back in, giving her a chicklike appearance. The bruises and lacerations had healed; only a few silvery scars marked where they’d been. Dorothy put some bee cream on her daughter’s dry lips.
Then she pulled up the chair and sat down at the bedside. Leaning over, she opened the box. The first thing she pulled out was a small Magilla Gorilla T-shirt; at its touch, she felt slammed by a memory.
Mommy, can I have a brownie?
Sure. A little pot never hurt anyone. Clem, pass me the brownies.
And then: Dot, your kid is flopping all over …
She stared down at the T-shirt. It was so small …
She realized how long she’d been silent. “Oh. Sorry. You probably think I left, but I’m still here. Someday you’ll know it meant something, that I kept coming back. I always knew where I belonged. I just couldn’t … do it. ” She set the shirt aside, folded it carefully.
The next thing she pulled out was a large, flat photo-type album, its plastic cover dotted with blue forget-me-nots and a pioneer-type girl. Someone had written Tully’s Scrapbook across the top.
Dorothy’s hands were shaking as she opened the book to the first page, where there was a small, scallop-edged photograph of a skinny girl blowing out a candle. On the opposite page was a letter. She began reading it aloud.
Dear Mommy, today is my 11th birthday.
