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“I’ll wait outside.” No questions asked because she lives in this world too. She walks down the hall and around the corner.
My wimpy knock hits the picture taped on her door of our family vacation to Disneyland. The year my sister had no front teeth.
All the resident’s doors are covered in pictures. Not for fun. For functionality. A collage of triggers—images of them, their families, their friends—to help them remember which room is theirs.
Mom’s collage is an organized timeline of her life. David’s doing. Coley wouldn’t have been so chronologically anal. Mom wouldn’t have chosen the candid in the corner that hints at her gray roots.
I knock again, tightness gripping the space between my shoulder blades, then open her door and peek in. Light spills from the gap at the bottom of the bathroom door across the room, and I hear water running in the sink.
Curtains from home hang in the windows. Her bedroom furniture’s pushed against the wall to my right. The floral loveseat and chair from our living room surround a coffee table on my left.
I step inside onto the thick chocolate rug that used to cover the floor in Mom’s den. Forty K buys choices, and David’s choice was to insist Mom’s private space behers. To make her feel grounded and safe.
I glance down at the transition of rug in her room to the faux wood in the hallway wherehomeintersectsinstitutionand becomes a mindscrew of an illusion.
That clammy chill on my neck extends to cold sweat on my lower back, and I have an insane urge to toe off my shoes and sink my feet into the plush pile like I did when I was little.
Across the room, the bathroom door opens, sending my heartbeats vaulting against my ribs.
Mom steps out in bare feet, designer jeans, a sleeveless navy shirt, blonde hair loose around her shoulders. A manicured hand flies to her chest. “I wasn’t expecting—”
“You want me to go?” For months, I’ve been messed up over seeing her. I didn’t even think about her being messed up over seeing me.
She fidgets with her earring—when she’s never been a fidgeter. “I wasn’t expecting...” Mom says again, dropping her hand from her chest. She tugs on the hem of her shirt. “You.” Her repetition, the confusion twisting her face, the hesitancy in that last word—like she couldn’t decide how to fill in the blank—fires up that kick in my chest.
I say the only thing that will come out. “You look pretty.”
A smile and a quick touch to her hair buffer some of her confusion. “There’s a girl that comes from the salon. To do my makeup and hair.” She walks closer, like she’s getting more comfortable with me being here, comfortable enough to lift her hand and touch my jaw.
That’s when I look deeper than the hair and the makeup and the clothes and see the changes. They’re hidden behind her eyes. They’re still the same piercing blue she passed on to Coley but different. Like she’s not quite here with me.
“I missed you.” Her arms go around my waist. Her cheek rests against my chest.
She smells the same, like Chanel, but that vague look in her eyes won’t stop screaming—Not the same!
I force words past my quickly closing throat. “I missed you too.”
“Then why haven’t you come?” She pulls out of my arms, those not-quite-right eyes wounded. “You promised you’d come every day.”
Every pound of guilt I carry lifts that eighteen-wheeler that’s perpetually parked on my chest and slams it down on my heart.
Her hand goes back to my jaw. “David, you promised.”
David.That semi rolls back and forth, crushing the hell out of me. Just. Like. Last. Time. “It’s Gabe.”
She wrings her hands. “I have a little boy named Gabe.” Underneath the vague layer in her eyes that seems determined to keep her prisoner, something tries and fails to break free—like she knows she messed up, that she’s missing something. Eyes overflowing with tears, she wrings her hands faster. “It’s my fault you don’t visit. I pushed you away. I said all those terrible things when you told me to leave Mark.” She moves in. Claws at my shirt.
In her eyes, there’s a wild regret towing her under that sucks me in too.
“Please forgive me.” She stops trying to rip my shirt and smooths it, dragging her nails across my chest in a way you don’t touch your son, drilling home how completely she believes I’m David.
Stomach spinning, I still her hand with mine.
Everything she put into that caress transfers to her face, and she’s glowing. Forhim. “I chose the wrong brother.” She pulls her fingers free and touches my cheek.
What.
The.
