Chapter 25
As soon as I see my mom walking down the hallway, I stop bouncing my knee and stand. I’m jittery and anxious after spending forty-five minutes slouched in a hospital chair that felt like it had no cushion at all.
She heads to the nurses’ station first, exchanging a few words that are wrapped up by the time I reach her side. Purposeful, I’m sure.
Today’s doctor’s appointment is the closest I’ve gotten to concrete answers about my mom’s health. The only reason I even found out about this appointment was that I answered the landline when the hospital called to confirm it.
“Everything go okay?” I ask my mom. Scrutinize the nurse’s reaction.
“Fine,” my mom answers. “Thanks, Nora.”
“Have a great rest of your day, Ms. James,” the nurse—Nora—says cheerily.
I follow my mom outside, inhaling the fresh breeze deeply. The hospital smelled like prison—chemical cleaner and stagnant air. I’d experienced enough of that when I went to visit my former cellmate, Duke, yesterday.
“So, it went well?” I ask as we cross the parking lot.
“It went fine.”
I exhale, exasperated. “What does that mean, Mom?”
“It means nothing’s changed. I told you coming would be a waste of time.”
“Is it really that unbelievable I wanted to? I’m trying to?—”
“It’s a shit hand, Ryder. I’m stuck playing it out. You’re not.”
“So, I just … what? Leave? Let you deal with it all alone? Is that what you want, Mom?”
She stops alongside her car, shading her eyes as she looks up at me. “Have you seen Elle?”
“Fuck you, Ryder James. Fuck you for not caring and fuck you for acting like I shouldn’t have either.”
Those two sentences have been on an endless loop in my head since she shouted them at me.
I can’t get the look on her face out of my head either. The anger and the pain and also the conviction. She wasn’t just saying it. She believed it. Elle really thinks I stopped caring. That my feelings for her were a switch I flipped off.
I swallow, the span of time since my mom asked the question already stretching too long. “We’ve spoken.”
“And?”
I’m tempted to parrot Elle’s none of your business line.
Instead, I say, “She’s … she’s planning to visit you on Thursday.”
My mom smiles. The first one I’ve seen since I showed up at the trailer earlier to accompany her here. One of the few I’ve seen at all since I’ve been back.
I figured there was affection there after so many visits. But I’m taken aback by how apparent it is on her face.
We haven’t discussed Elle since my first night home.
“Why aren’t you getting treatment, Mom?” I blurt.
Her smile instantly disappears. “I already told you.”
“Yeah, you told me you weren’t getting treatment. Not why.”
“It’s my decision, Ryder.”
“Is it the money? Because I can?—”
“It’s not the money,” she tells me. “It’s—that’s not how I want to spend my last days. Doctors don’t think it’ll make much difference anyway.”
“They don’t know that for sure. It’ll make some difference at the very least,” I argue.
Her chin lifts. “I’ve made my decision. If you want to fuss over something, plenty to keep you occupied in your own life.”
No need to guess what she’s referring to.
“Elle and I are over,” I tell her.
Removing myself from Elle’s life was the best thing I could have done for her. I didn’t know she would be on Martha’s Vineyard. I didn’t know she’d be at that fancy bar in Boston. Tuck neglected to mention she’d be there when we returned the tools to his garage last week.
I’ve tried to stay away.
My mom sniffs. “I don’t think that lawyer is right for her. They sound too similar.”
“They broke up,” I confess like an idiot. I’m trying to put a fire out, not add kindling.
I don’t mention the twenty minutes, but I think it. It’s probably fucked up that I’m a little proud of that. I barely even spoke to Elle during that window.
It would be different if the guy made her happy. She looked uncomfortable for most of the twenty minutes I was there, although that might have been because of me and not her boyfriend.
“Really?” My mom looks thrilled about my impulsive confession.
Damn kindling.
“It doesn’t change anything, Mom. We’re over—for good.”
“You’re too young to decide anything is for good, Ryder.”
I exhale. “Elle didn’t decide not to visit me in prison, okay? She tried—tried hard. I … I refused to see her.”
A pause.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want her to see me like that. I didn’t want her coming to that place. I had nothing to offer her. I never really did. But there, I truly had nothing.”
“Did you tell her that? Explain?”
“No. I needed her to let go. She would have argued, pushed back. Elle’s stubborn.”
“She’s also entitled to her own feelings,” my mom says sagely.
“Fuck you, Ryder James. Fuck you for not caring and fuck you for acting like I shouldn’t have either,”runs through my head again.
I recall Elle sitting on steps with hunched shoulders. Staring at the ocean with a lost expression on her face. Standing in Tuck and Keira’s kitchen last week with a suspicious sheen covering her blue eyes.
All scenes so, so different from how I thought she’d look seven years later.
Reese wasn’t the only one wrong about Elle’s feelings for me.
“She hates me.”
Rather than agree, my mom laughs. “Bullshit.”
“She does. She should.”
“She showed up for seven years. Those visits weren’t for me. Or for Cormac.”
“I—too much has happened. Too much has changed. I wouldn’t even be asking for a second chance. We’re so far past that … it’s pointless.”
“Maybe,” my mom says. “Or maybe not giving it a chance, after everything, would be pointless.”
She lets me sit with that the whole drive back to the trailer. The nearest hospital is twenty minutes from Fernwood.
If the topic was less serious—less tragic—I’d be impressed by her success at totally turning our conversation around on me. I wasn’t supposed to be the one second-guessing.
My mom parks alongside the trailer, then glances over at me. “If I did treatment … that’s not how I want you boys to see me. To remember me.”
“That’s not how we would remember you, Mom.”
“It’s not what I want, Ryder.”
I literally bite my tongue, trying to keep more protests from coming out. “Okay.”
“Your father called a few days ago.”
When I say nothing, she sighs.
“You shouldn’t have told him.”
“Why?” I ask. “Because he’d come running to see you?”
Another sigh. This is an ancient argument between us. She’s always been quick to forgive my dad for his recurring disappearing act. So, I’ve held on to the resentment she let go of. Piled it on top of my own.
She climbs out of the car, so I do too.
“Do you need the car the rest of the day?”
My mom shakes her head, then tosses me the keys. “All yours.”
Tuck told me to take the rest of the day off, but I’m in the mood for manual labor. The screened porch is only halfway done, meaning there are still a lot of nails to pound.
“Thanks.”
She glances back, surprised, when I follow her toward the stairs. “You aren’t headed out?”
“In a minute. I need to grab something.”
She nods, heading straight into the kitchen when we walk inside. Without looking that way, I know she’s making a cup of her tea. It’s what she does now instead of smoking a cigarette.
I walk down the hallway to my bedroom. It’s so bare now, none of the stuff I threw out when I got home replaced. Blank walls. Bare furniture.
Digging through the closet takes me at least five minutes. I buried this box, trying to avoid temptation.
Not that it matters. I memorized every line of the letters Elle had sent me years ago.
I have to search once I find the box, too, in order to find the one letter I wrote to her in response. It’s at the very bottom, resting against the cardboard.
I stare at it, deliberating. Just like I’ve done ever since Elle told me I never cared last week.
There’s a lot I can handle. Easy isn’t an adjective I’d use to describe my life. There’s always been a lack of something.
A father.
Money.
Freedom.
Elle thinking she never mattered to me isn’t one of the things I can handle. Maybe she needs to read this—the explanation I never sent her—to move on. To shut that chapter—my chapter—of her life. Solve the mystery of our past.
I stand, the letter in my hand, and head back to the kitchen. My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through the mail delivered earlier.
I toss the envelope down next to the stack of bills and flyers.
“What’s that?” my mom asks.
I don’t buy her nonchalance. Elle is all that’s written on the outside. I didn’t know where to send it—what college she ended up at. I’m sure her parents would have burned it if I sent it to her house.
“Can you give that to her on Thursday?” I walk toward the door. “Thanks. I’ll be home for dinner.”
If my mom says anything else, it’s lost in the close of the hinges behind me.