Chapter 16
The next morning, my phone buzzed violently on the bedside table, and I jolted awake. I’d forgotten to pull the curtains shut, and although it wasn’t California sunny, the natural light filtering in through the window made me blink and rub my eyes. I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even seven.
Ugh. Why is anyone calling this early?
Alec and I had stayed up talking until two, and my body felt drained after such a late night. Still half-asleep, I stretched across the bed toward the nightstand. Right as my fingers brushed against my cell, the buzzing stopped.
Much better.
I burrowed back into the blankets. My alarm wasn’t set to go off for another two hours, and I didn’t want to waste another minute of my allotted sleep time. But before I could fade back into unconsciousness, the buzzing started again.
“Seriously?” I groaned, throwing off the covers and snatching my cell. What could be so important that someone needed to get ahold of me right now? I looked down at the caller ID and my heart sunk into my stomach.
It was my mom.
I’d expected a call from her today, but not this early.
She hadn’t planned to be home until late.
When Asha, Boomer, and Alec convinced me to push on to Seattle, I knew I’d have to tell her I’d left LA.
But I’d been hoping to put that off until Monday.
My plan had been to say I was sleeping at Asha’s tonight, then call her tomorrow after I found Rose. Looked like I’d have to fess up now.
I sucked in a small breath and pressed the talk button. “Mom, hi.”
“Hey, baby!” She was unusually upbeat, which I took as a positive sign.
Maybe she wouldn’t get too upset about my road trip if she was in a good mood.
“Your room’s empty. Are you at Asha’s? I know I wasn’t supposed to get back from Dave’s until after dinner, but we have some exciting news that I couldn’t wait to share. ”
My shoulders slumped. “So you’re at home?”
“Yup. Dave’s making breakfast for us. Why don’t you have Mr. Van de Berg drive you home, and I’ll tell you all about it over bacon and pancakes.”
“I’m not at Asha’s,” I told her.
“Are you working a shift at the diner?” she asked. Then, “Do you want the Italian roast or the French?”
I frowned, unsure why the subject had suddenly changed to coffee, but then I realized she was talking to Dave and not me. I sighed and switched the phone to my other ear. It was time to get this over with, to face the truth whether I was ready to hear it or not. “I found the letters, Mom.”
There was a long pause on her end. My pulse picked up, and I pressed my hand to my heart as if it could slow the pounding.
“Honey, what are you talking about?” Mom said at last.
The knot in my chest unraveled a bit, her answer giving me hope that she was as clueless as I had been, that there was no way she could lie about something this big.
“The letters Rose wrote to me?” I was trying to sound calm, but my voice crept up an octave. I could no longer ignore the dread I’d been feeling since the discovery. “They were hidden under your bed.”
More silence. Finally, “What were you doing in my bedroom?”
There was no denial in her response. “So you knew?” I whispered. “You knew she was writing to me?”
My mom heaved a sigh. “You don’t understand, Felicity. It’s more complicated than you think.”
I tried to wrap my mind around what she was saying, wondering if I’d misheard her even though I knew I hadn’t. “How could you do this?” I exclaimed. My dread was quickly heating to sizzling anger.
“Felicity, baby,” she said, and I could picture her leaning against the kitchen counter, dragging her fingers through her bangs.
“Don’t!” I snapped. “You pretended you didn’t know where Rose was for four years. You let me think that she didn’t want anything to do with us. With me.”
“But I didn’t always know where she was and—”
“I don’t care,” I countered, not giving her a chance to explain. “You knew she was okay, that she was alive, and you didn’t tell me!”
“You’re right,” she said. “I kept this from you because I was trying to protect you. I know you’re upset right now, but let’s not do this over the phone. Come home, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Too flustered to sit still any longer, I leaped out of bed, hardly blanching when my bare feet hit the cold wooden floor. In fact, I welcomed the cold—it helped cool the flush spreading through my body. If she thought she could gain ground with me by admitting the truth, she was so wrong.
“I’m not coming home, Mom,” I said, fuming. “Not until I talk to Rose.”
“Felicity.” From the tightness in her voice it sounded as if she was on the verge of crying. “Where are you?”
I glanced out the window at the backyard. Now that it was daylight, the long stretch of forest wasn’t as foreboding as it had been last night.
“You know that boy you didn’t want me to see?
The musician who drove me home from the masquerade?
” I knew what I was going to say would upset her, but I didn’t care.
I wanted my mom to hurt, to feel the same anger I was feeling, so I flung my words at her.
“I’m with him. He’s helping me find Rose.
” Not waiting for a response, I punched the end button and chucked my phone on the bed.
Three seconds later, it started buzzing, but I ignored the call.
My whole body trembled.
Ever since Rose ran away, I’d felt protective of my mom because I was all she had left. Everyone else had deserted her. I thought our mother-daughter bond had been strengthened by adversity. It was the two of us taking on the world. That she could deceive me like this seemed inconceivable.
Maybe, deep down, I knew my mom had been lying to me when I found the letters.
And maybe I’d overlooked that deception because acknowledging she’d kept me from my sister meant that all the choices I’d made since Rose ran away—choices about school and my future, choices that made me who I was today—were based on a devastating lie.
All of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming sense that I’d lost a part of myself, like a bunch of little pieces that defined me were slipping away.
Yesterday morning, after I found Asha and Boomer together, I mistook my feelings of surprise and confusion for betrayal. At the time, I didn’t have a real understanding of the emotion.
Now I did.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t stop the silent sobs that racked my body.
This was what real betrayal felt like.
Asha’s best-friend telepathy must have kicked in, because there was a knock at the door and she poked her head inside.
“Hey, Fel. You up?” She glanced at the bed first, and then gasped when she spotted me crying by the window.
“Oh hell, what’s wrong? Something totally happened, didn’t it?
” she asked as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
Unable to answer, I merely nodded my head.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Did that boy hurt you? Because you know Boomer and I will kick his ass if he did.” Her gaze flickered over me, from my face to my feet and back up again, as if she was scanning for signs of bodily harm.
“What are you talking—” I stopped short. By boy, she meant Alec. “No, of course not! How could you think something like that about him?”
Asha winced. “I’m sorry. You’re right. He’s a total sweetheart, isn’t he?
It’s just… The last time I saw you, you were with him, and now you’re crying, so I’m freaking out and jumping to conclusions,” she blurted out, waving her hands about in a manic fashion.
“Besides, I doubt I’d be able to follow through with a promise like that.
Not that I wouldn’t want to defend you or anything.
I don’t think I could actually kick someone’s ass and—”
The next thing I knew, I was trying to calm down Asha, instead of the other way around.
Her rambling had snapped me out of whatever spell I was under.
I put both hands on her shoulders, giving her a little shake.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to apologize.
” There were still tears trickling down my cheeks, and my heart felt like it had a hole in it, but somehow, comforting Asha brought me back to myself.
“Right. I’m going to stop acting like a crazy woman now, and you’re going to tell me what happened.” Her fingers snaked around my wrist, and she pulled me over to the bed where we sat cross-legged on the comforter. “Okay, so what’s this non-Alec problem you’re having?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my palms against them as I searched for an answer. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say, but that it would hurt even more to admit the truth out loud. “My mom called,” I said after a long moment.
“Oh, Fel,” Asha replied, her face falling. “She knew about the letters, didn’t she?”
The stinging returned to my eyes, and I bit down on my cheek to keep from crying, though it didn’t help at all. “Yeah,” I managed to get out, and it wasn’t until her arms wrapped around me, pulling me into a hug, that I realized my face was wet again.
Without a word, Asha held me until I ran out of tears. My whole body felt spent, like I’d made the trip from LA to Portland on foot and hadn’t slept in days.
“Why would she do this to me?” Mom knew how it felt to be abandoned. How could she put me through the same kind of pain?
“You know how moms are,” Asha said in attempt to come up with a logical answer, although we both knew there wasn’t one. “She probably thought it was best for you.”
I swiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand, trying to get rid of the swollen, post-cry feeling. “How is keeping me from Rose best for me? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m not saying it was the right thing to do. Obviously she was wrong, but Rose did leave you guys. Maybe your mom thought the letters would only remind you she’d left, and that it would be less painful if she was out of your life instead of on the fringe of it.”