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There were three hundred people here, along with another couple dozen outside, all here to pay their respects to this woman—this awful woman. They would never truly know.
We sat as actor after actor came up to honor her, telling stories, laughing, and crying. And Amelia and I had to endure it all like a sick punishment.
“Noah,” Amelia whispered, leaning into me, “I can’t take much more.”
Nodding, I squeezed her hand, looking over to find the organizer—
“No. She’s our mother,” Mayko said under her breath. “She deserves this, at the very least.”
Amelia glanced over, her annoyance displayed clearly on her face. Since we had come back, she and Ma
yko were butting heads. I’m sure it was grief, but they couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. Amelia just gave up and let her do whatever she wanted with the funeral.
“Fine,” Amelia said, looking back up front.
Amelia
I needed a second to breathe, and the only place that offered that was the bathroom. Rushing in, I grabbed the edge of the sink, dropping my head.
“Amelia!”
Leave me alone! Go away! Please go away! I screamed in my mind when Mayko burst through the door, dressed in black with a yellow ranunculus, Esther’s favorite flower, pinned on her chest.
“You can’t just run away from the reception!” she yelled at me.
“Why not?” I asked, facing her.
She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “She’s our mother—”
“So you keep telling me. Esther was our mother, and now Esther is gone, and I’m tired. I’m so tired you can’t even begin to imagine. I don’t want to be around people—”
“You just want to be with Noah?”
“Yes.”
“You are so fucking selfish,” she sneered. “His brother is the reason why she’s dead, and you can’t even separate yourself from him for a second? Esther said once that you lost sense of what was really important when it came to him. And I didn’t get it I was young and—”
“And ignorant!” I was done doing this with her. “Esther. Esther. Esther! Since I have come back, that is all I have heard from your mouth. Maybe it didn’t connect, but I lost my mother, a friend, and was kidnapped a week ago, Mayko—a week! The woman you’re talking about, the woman everyone is honoring today, I loved her too. But she hurt me. She hurt me often and for her own selfish gains. Do you remember seeing me as a kid? Are their any family photos us of as children together? She did that. She blew her money and then worked me to death. On holidays, birthdays, I could never breathe! Food was snatched from my mouth because she didn’t want a fat daughter. I thought of killing myself. You can romanticize her all you want. You can pretend she was the best damn mother in the world. But don’t ask me to give any more of myself to her because I. AM. TIRED!”
As I walked past her, she spoke up when I pulled on the door.
“You lied to me, you know that?”
“What?” I faced her again.
“When we were in Chicago. I called you and asked had you heard from her, and you said no, you hadn’t for months. That she might have run off with someone. Then the very next day, you and her are in a car accident. I can’t help but have this feeling that you are hiding something.”
“I am,” I answered truthfully, and she looked at me with shock, which I didn’t understand. “I’ve been hiding things about Esther from you and Antigone all your lives. I did my best to spare you from as much of her as I could. So when you saw her, you got the fun mom. The mom that let you skip school, eat ice cream at 3 a.m., and throw massive sleepovers. The only adult in our family was me. So I’ll ask you, Mayko—do you want to know the truth? Do you want to carry Esther’s skeletons too? Because once you know, there is no unknowing, and you’ll never ever be able to remember her kindly again.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t. She just stared, and that was more than a good enough answer.
“I thought so. Noah and I are leaving. I won’t be home for Christmas. Noah and I go on the promotional tour for our movie soon—”
“Is it really that bad?” She interrupted. “Esther—are her skeletons really that bad?”
“They are worse than you can imagine. And if I could switch places with you and not know, I would. So don’t ask anymore, Mayko. Remember the good Esther.” Because I couldn’t, and she deserved at least one person to truly care.
Noah
