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The final recording of her manic, emotional voice faded into hushed static until there was nothing but the sound of my frantic heart.
Ray and I were quiet and still, holding our breath, as if we were scared to let new air slip into the room. Mutually scared of something neither of us was quite sure of.
Then, with a shaking hand, Ray put the phone back on the nightstand.
“Soldier …”
“Ray”—I shook my head—“please don’t.”
She sat down in front of me on the bed. “I just—”
“Rain.”
My voice cracked heatedly through the hush of hers, and startled, she looked at me, clamping her lips shut. Immediatelyapologeticfor saying something at all. For thinking she’d even know what to say about a situation she knew nothing about. But I wasn’t supposed to make her feel like that, and I scrubbed my hands against my face, inhaling deeply until my lungs couldn’t hold anything more. Then, I dropped them downtomy lap, already feeling exhausted after a full night of sleep.
“I’m sorry.”
Ray shook her head, her brows pulled together with sympathy. “No, don’t apologize. You’re angry and confused—”
“I’m not confused,” I interrupted, shaking my head. “There’s nothing to be confused about.”
Ray looked doubtful. Unconvinced. “But … why would she say all of that now? Why did she …” She shuddered, and I was sure she thought I hadn’t seen it, but I had. “God, why did she sound like that? She sounded so …scared.”
I didn’t want to be impatient with her. There were things she didn’t know about, things she had no reason to understand, and that wasn’t her fault. So, when I responded, I urged the anger and stress I only felt when it came to my mother to stay out of my tone.
“Ray, she sounded like that because she had probably popped too many pills and was having a bad trip.”
Disappointment seeped into my veins as I spoke the words out loud, and then I felt like an idiot for being disappointed at all. What the hell had I expected from my mother? Had I really thoughtthat,one day, she’d clean herself up and get better? Had I really thought that she might have a change of heart?
No, I didn’t think I’d truly believed it would happen, but I’d be a liar to say I had stopped hoping.
I didn’t think anybody ever truly stopped hoping. Even for the things they knew to be impossible.
“Do you really think that’s all it was?” Raywhispered,her hesitancy obvious. “Because, Soldier, I don’t know. She just … she sounded really—”
“What? Desperate? Anxious? Terrified?”
Ray picked at her cuticles and nodded reluctantly.
“Yeah, I know. That’s how she always sounds when she’s on some heavy shit.”
Ray’s eyes met mine with more skepticism than I appreciated. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” I snapped, throwing the blanket off and climbing out of bed with enough haste that I nearly tripped over my own stupid feet. “I think I’mpretty fuckingsure, Ray. More so than you are.” I glanced over my shoulder on my way to the closet. “No offense.”
“Okay.”
She’s just trying to help. She’s just trying to make sense of this with me.
I gripped the top of the doorframe, squeezed my eyes shut, and pushed outa breath. Then, I turned around to face her, still sitting on the bed where I’d left her.
“You don’t know my mother the way I do,” I said, my voice quiet and gravelly. “And I can understand wanting to believe that she’d say that stuff for a reason other than being stoned out of her mind. I get wanting to believe that she mightactually love—” My voice cracked beneath the heaving weight of a pulsing need to cry, and I cleared my throat, pinching my nose and willing those feelings away. “She’s incapable of loving anything, Ray. That’s how she is, how she’s always been.”
Ray barely nodded, could hardly look at me. Couldn’t even blink without letting one rogue tear slip over her cheek. At first, I thought thattear wasevidence of pain I had inflicted, and I hated it. I hated myself for speaking harshly, for snapping and bringing forth memories of her past.
But then, when she got to her feet, squeezed her eyes shut, and propelled forward until her arms were around my waist and her cheek was pressed to my chest, I realized she wasn’t upset with me at all.
She was upsetforme.
