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“She said I reminded her of her little bean. Isn’t that funny, Beans?” Sarah asks me.
I immediately turn my head in each direction, scanning the steps, trying to find Mom’s face in a sea of tourists, cell phone cameras, pigeons, and breadcrumbs.
It’s as if she’s everywhere and nowhere, all at once. She was here, and now she’s gone again.
Sarah looks worried. “Did I make you sad?” she asks me.
“No,” I tell her. “Not at all.”
She smiles, relieved. Her saucer blue eyes sparkle again.
I stare at the lima bean charm on her wrist, my initials and birthdate engravings, and the tiny scratch in the left-hand corner.
But for the first time, I realize it isn’t a scratch—it’s a smalls.For Sally, Mom’s other bean. The daughter she never had the chance to know.
Eddie takes my hands in his, realizing what’s happened.
“She’ll always be with you,” he reminds me.
I’m overwhelmed with emotion. And on cue, ED starts whispering all his greatest hits in my ear. Telling me I’m worthless. Telling me Mom abandoned me again because of the gelato I’m about to eat. Telling me if I don’t do what he says, my life will fall apart.
No, I’m not worthless.
No, she didn’t leave me because of what I eat or don’t eat.
No, my life won’t fall apart if I don’t listen to you, so take a hike!
I beat him back and imagine him melting into a pile of water, just like Dr. Larsen first taught me to do when I was fifteen years old. She was a mother figure who stepped in when I needed one the most, the same way I get to be one now to Sarah, who’s still standing in front of me, holding the cone with purple berry gelato dripping down its side.
“Wanna bite?” she asks me.
I flash to the first birthday party I went to for one of her classmates, how out of place I felt among the other moms, how I didn’t feel I deserved to be there, and how I turned down her bite of cake, wishing I could be who she needed me to be.
This time I say “Yes.”
