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She does.
She looks at me for one, two, three seconds.
Then frantically, she pats her hands over my body.
“You didn’t visit. I thought he’d hurt you.”
With my blood struggling through my veins, I look over at Amy standing in the doorway.
Did she tell her about Rob?
Amy shakes her head, answering my unasked question.
I almost burst into tears when I see Jake standing behind her back.
“I asked him to come in. We might need him,” she explains.
She’s right. My mother is close to passing out.
Swallowing my pride, I look back at the stumbling woman in my arms. “Mama,” I say quietly. “Come back from the past. Look. I’m here. I’m okay.”
Delicately, she presses each finger to my throat. I know what she’s doing, and it’s going to break me.
“My baby couldn’t breathe.”
I suck in a shaky breath, feeling my throat burn. Grabbing her wrist, I yank her hand away. “Stop it, Mama. You’re not back there.”
“If you just stopped screaming. You should have stopped screaming.”
“Mama!” Amy shouts from the corner.
She turns away from me and reaches for the wine bottle on the broken piano, but I get there first.
Even angry and desperate for alcohol, she can’t find it in herself to look at me.
“Look at me, Mama.”
She looks at the floor.
My heart shatters.
But she needs to face this.
“I was trying to save your life.”
Bloodshot eyes glaze over, and I can almost see the break. “And I lost my damn mind saving yours.”
Each word is like a knife, slicing at me slowly. It’s not enough to kill me, but it’s enough to make me suffer every cut.
Gasping for breath, she collapses onto the couch, and rocks back and forth. “And I’d do it again. I’d do it again every day.”
Kneeling, I sit back on my legs, peel her hands away from her face and start braiding the ends of her hair. She relaxes into my touch.
“Remember when we were little, and you brought us to the lake in the middle of winter? I was too scared to get in because the water was cold. I sat there for so long, just watching you and Amy have fun without me. You let me be. You never pressured me. And when you felt I was ready, you said—”
“Claire Bear, if you never jump in, you’ll never know the adventures you’re missing,” she finishes.
A good memory.
