Chapter 43 Rachel
RACHEL
Rachel pulls up outside the Grand Valley Institution for Women and turns off the ignition.
Stevens has been her constant travel companion over the six weeks of this investigation, but she’s alone today.
He’d offered to come with her, to drive her home after, but Rachel declined.
It was nice of him, and he seemed to genuinely care when she confided in him about Mary.
But this is something she needs to do alone.
As for driving home, well…she’s been through worse. She can handle this.
She makes her way across the parking lot to the visitor entrance, feels the heat from the afternoon sun baking up at her from the asphalt. She hikes her purse up her shoulder in a determined sort of way and heads for the front doors as though she’s visited a thousand times.
But she hasn’t. Not once.
It doesn’t take long to get through security, and soon she’s shown into a large white-walled room scattered with round tables, chairs bolted to the floor.
Rachel wills her hands to still in her lap.
She’s only ever been inside jails and prisons in uniform, armed, and the sense of vulnerability she feels in her floral midi skirt and tee is doing nothing to help the anxiety raging up from her gut into her throat.
She starts to question why she’s come at all, and is just wrestling a panic-induced urged to leave when the guard appears at the door with a line of inmates.
Heart pounding, Rachel stands up, knowing she doesn’t want Mary to approach her sitting down. She needs to be at eye level.
And there she is, fourth in line with all the other women, equalized by their dark-teal prison uniforms. Rachel inhales sharply when she gets a full look at her mother.
Time and incarceration have not been kind to Mary. Her skin is sagging a little beneath her chin and her mouth is lined with wrinkles. She’s pale, and her natural dark-brown hair colour is all grown out, but heavily grey at the temples and hairline now. She’s gained weight.
The guard guides Mary to the table, and she’s visibly surprised to see Rachel standing there. She saunters over, not in any kind of rush, and faces her daughter for the first time in ten years.
“Didn’t think you’d ever show up,” she says. Her voice is lower than Rachel remembered, a little gravelly. Damage from years of smoking and drinking, or lack of use in prison, Rachel isn’t sure. Maybe both. But the tone is the same—indignant judgment laced with self-destruction and hurt.
Mary lowers herself into the hard plastic chair with a little grunt, and Rachel’s feet itch to leave, but she gets a hold of herself and sits down again. They stare at one another for a long moment.
“Well,” Mary says. “How you been?”
Rachel opens, then shuts her mouth. She hasn’t really considered how much to tell her mother about her life now.
She’s wondered how Mary would respond to her being here, given that Rachel had testified so strongly against her.
But then, she’s the one who’s been writing to Rachel all these years.
Rachel has never opened any of the letters, but it must have indicated some desire to talk.
“You married?” Mary asks.
“No.”
“Huh. You do anything for work?”
Rachel swallows, unsure of how her mother will react, but she reminds herself that Mary can’t hurt her here. If she’s ever going to have the upper hand, this is it. “I’m a cop,” she says. “A detective.”
Mary’s eyes narrow, but then she throws her head back and laughs.
“Sounds about right,” Mary says, crossing her arms over her chest now, protective. Maybe a little angry. “You still in the house?”
Rachel doesn’t answer. She doesn’t really want Mary to have confirmation of where to reach her. For all Mary knows, those unanswered letters were tossed out by the new owners before Rachel even saw them.
“Well, good you finished school, anyway,” Mary says with a shrug. “Beats scooping ice cream for the rest of your life.”
Rachel watches her mother, curious about the comment.
Mary still sees her as a child, still pictures her in that paper hat behind the counter on Main Street.
She can’t even conceptualize Rachel as the adult she is now.
Her mother never understood her, and never will.
Because she doesn’t want to. And if Mary doesn’t want to do something, it isn’t going to happen.
Rachel decides to dispense with the small talk, and get right to it. “I want to ask you something. Between you and me, here, today, tell me the truth. Did you push your brother off that cliff?” she asks, watching Mary closely.
Mary runs her tongue over her teeth. Slowly. “You don’t actually want to know the answer to that.”
A chill runs through Rachel. “So you did kill him?”
“That’s not what I said. I said you don’t actually want to know.”
“Don’t speak to me in fucking riddles, Mary, or I’m leaving.”
“No you won’t,” Mary scoffs.
“Excuse me?”
“You won’t leave, because you came here for an answer. But what I’m saying is, I don’t think you want it.”
Mary locks eyes with her, and it takes everything Rachel’s got to meet her gaze and hold it.
“You want to keep thinking I killed Walt,” Mary says, “because then this all makes sense to you, and you get to keep hating me and loving Dora and then we get a nice black-and-white picture, don’t we?
Nice sharp edges.” She pauses. “You don’t want the grey.
Especially not now that you’re a damn cop.
You want a yes or no and you can’t live with a maybe. You’ve always been like that.”
“You wouldn’t even know what I’ve always been like,” Rachel fires back. “You were in and out of my life for twenty years and you’ve been in here for the remainder.”
“Well, you heard my defence, didn’t you?
He was always the golden boy, couldn’t do anything wrong.
And that was all stacked up next to my little fucked-up self, so that’s one hell of an idyllic backdrop to have to live in front of.
Dora was abusive, and so was my dad. Emotionally abusive, psychologically.
They didn’t give a shit about me once Walt was born, and even before that, I know Dora didn’t think I was good enough.
Nothing I ever did was good enough because I wasn’t a boy, and she wanted a boy. They both did.”
“None of that sounds like her. You’re a liar, and always have been. Pathological. I don’t even know why I—”
“It might not sound like the version of her you knew, Rachel, because you were both always united against me, like I was some kind of curse you’d both been hit with. She tried to abort my fucking fetus, she—”
Rachel holds up a hand. “Enough. You always hang everything on that, but do you not hear that you sound crazy? Calling your mother a witch and talking about curses?”
“Well, that was my whole defence, wasn’t it?” Mary says, flashing Rachel a sarcastic smile with intent to wound. “That I’m just too crazy to be responsible for myself.”
“Right. And that defence failed, didn’t it? Has it not occurred to you that you were sick enough for her to maybe know what might be best? That she was actually trying to help you by terminating—”
“Just stop it,” Mary says, and now her eyes are shining. “Stop it.”
They’re silent for a minute as the conversations of the other inmates and visitors swell in the large white space.
“You won’t just tell me, will you?” Rachel says finally. “About Walter Jr.?”
“My parents didn’t have me charged, did they?” Mary says. “So what does that say?”
The lump forming in Rachel’s throat threatens to choke her, but she manages a shuddering breath. “I think that says they were loving parents who didn’t want to lose both of their children. I think that says they were trying to protect you.”
Mary is quiet, but only for a moment. “Except they still just acted like they hated me. Hated me. Is it even possible to love your kid and hate them at the same time?” She shakes her head, scoffs.
Rachel sighs deeply, knowing the conversation is at an end, and that this will probably be the last one she ever has with her mother.
And she’s okay with that. As has been the case her entire life, she’s never going to get what she wants or needs from Mary.
Her mother is too sick. Too selfish. Too much of a run-of-the-mill asshole.
Too complicated, yet too narrow-minded. Too everything.
But Rachel will still spend the rest of her life wishing things weren’t such a mess, and trying, day in and day out at her job, to tidy up the messes for other people.
“I wouldn’t know,” Rachel answers. “But I think you do.”