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Her phone is still in my pocket. I slip my hand into it and produce the phone.
Sienna gasps. “You took my phone?” she asks, incredulous, reaching out to grab it from my hand as if I’m the one in the wrong.
“My phone, Sienna,” I say, staying composed. “And no, I didn’t take it. You left it on the kitchen table and I just happened to see an incoming text from Dad.” I pause, as Sienna looks down at her phone to see the text and to ascertain what else I may have seen, the blood leaching from her face until she’s milky white. “Why did you lie to me last night about texting Dad?” When she doesn’t answer, I go on. “Why are you sending me these awful notes? Don’t even try to lie to me, Sienna. I know you left that last note in the mailbox, calling me a bitch.” It’s hard to get the word out. I choke on it and then, fighting tears, because I never thought my child would say something like that to me, I ask, “What have I done to you?”
Sienna knows she’s been caught, except she doesn’t break down. She doesn’t cry or beg forgiveness. Instead, she lashes out, asserting, “I know what you did.”
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly, feeling the bottom drop out. Sienna knows that I pushed Caitlin Beckett off a bridge, that I killed her with insulin?
“What do you mean, Sienna?” I ask again because she’s said nothing. “What did I do?”
“She told me,” she says.
“Who told you what?”
“Dad’s girlfriend. Caitlin. She told me what you did. She told me Dad isn’t my real dad,” she says, and I feel the tables turn before she crumbles, breaking down as I reach for her, to fold her into my arms, the relief a thousandfold because she doesn’t know all the terrible things I’ve done; she only knows one.
“Sienna,” I murmur.
“Don’t even try to deny it,” she says, pushing me away so that I fall back. “You know it’s true.”
I steady myself. “When did she tell you this?”
“After Dad took me to see Dear Evan Hansen. She was here the next day when I got home. She told me everything.”
My throat tightens. That’s what Caitlin did then. After I opened up to her about Sienna’s real father, after I spilled my guts to her, telling her things I’d never told a soul, she had what she needed. She had something on me. I went to work the next day while she stayed alone in my apartment, going through my things, finding and stealing my rings, killing time until Sienna came home and she could tell her about that night at Guthrie’s. I imagine Sienna coming home, expecting to see my friend and finding Caitlin instead. I think of how Caitlin would have said it, if she would have broken the news lightly or if she would have found joy in breaking Sienna’s heart.
It was only two or three weeks later that I found that first note in the mailbox, BITCH, giving Sienna time to agonize over it, to conspire with Nico, to think of a way to get back at me.
“Why didn’t you talk to me, Sienna? Why send these awful notes instead of coming to me and telling me the truth?”
“Just like you told me the truth?” she fires back, and she’s right; the hypocrisy is glaring. I have no right to question her lack of honesty when I’ve been dishonest. Sienna is also sixteen and sending these anonymous notes was probably the only way she could think of to express her feelings and to confront me about her father.
There are hot, angry tears in Sienna’s eyes all of a sudden. “I fucking hate you,” she seethes. “I meant what I said in that note. You are a bitch. I wish you would have died down there in the basement. I wish you never would have gotten out.”
The basement. My mind reels. I think of the night I was locked down in the basement and scared. At the time, it didn’t feel like an accident. It felt intentional. Sienna was home. She was here, alone in the apartment. In fact, she’s the one who sent me on a hunt for the baby pictures. My mind goes back and a picture forms, imagining Sienna slinking down after me, imagining her closing the door and moving the door wedge so that I was locked downstairs, and then coming back up, getting under the blanket with her laptop to do homework, not the least bit worried that I couldn’t get out.
What happened? she had asked when I finally made it upstairs, shaken and upset. But she didn’t need to ask what happened. She already knew.
I’m mad. I want to punish her. She can’t get away with this. She can’t swear at me and speak to me like this. It’s not okay to send hate mail or lock someone in the basement. What if the neighbor hadn’t come home when he did? Would she have left me there all night? Would she have pretended she fell asleep on the sofa and say she didn’t realize I hadn’t come home?
But what I’ve done is infinitely worse, and she’s only lashing out in response. She’s angry, understandably so. I got pregnant by another man. I let someone who is not her father raise her. I never told either of them. For all these years, I let them live a lie.
“Does your dad know?” I ask, staying composed, as if she didn’t just call me a bitch or say she wished I was dead.
“Is that the only fucking thing you care about, Mom? If Dad knows?” she asks, and then she laughs, this cynical, mocking, droll laugh and says, “Dad. He isn’t even my dad.”
I want to hold her. I want to console her. I want to tell her how sorry I am, and I want to explain, to let her know how I grappled with whether to tell Ben when I found out she wasn’t his, but ultimately made the decision that I thought was best for everyone.
But I know if I reach out again, she will only push me away.
“Did you tell him, Sienna? Did she tell him?”
“Why do you even care? Because he might stop paying child support?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t care about that. I just need to know. Does he know?”
“He doesn’t know. Okay, Mom? He doesn’t fucking know. Because I didn’t want to make him feel the way I do,” she says then, and my heart breaks because I know inside, her own heart is broken. I step tentatively closer and set a hand on her arm, testing the waters, and then, when she doesn’t pull back, I reach for her, wrapping my arms around her.
