Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
I ’d never been to Sydney. It was strange that despite the dozens of times my parents had moved, not once did they venture into this major capital city.
Now that I was here though, my first impressions were not good. The traffic was hell. The people were busy and the crowds were huge. I’d been to some of the biggest capital cities in Europe, yet despite Sydney only having a fraction of the population of Rome, it was so much more jam-packed.
My early morning arrival coincided with peak-hour traffic, and it took over an hour to travel from the airport to the hospital. I’d slept well on the plane. Probably too well, on account of me being able to stretch out on the row of chairs at my disposal, and the three sleeping tablets I’d swallowed after I’d consumed everything on my dinner tray.
Now I was wide awake. And as the taxi driver dodged other cars and swapped from lane to lane like he was trying out for a role as dodgem car king, I tried to dodge all the unanswered questions flitting through my brain. My thoughts bounced around my brain like they were playing totem tennis .
How Roman was coping after I’d abandoned him like that?
How was Mother going to react when she first saw me?
The questions were as pointless as a third nipple.
The taxi pulled into the curb, and after paying the driver an obscene amount for the fare, I yanked my suitcase from the trunk and slammed it shut.
I glanced up at a wall of hospital windows above.
My skin crawled as I wondered if she was staring down at me. We hadn’t been face to face since I was seventeen. Twelve years. I still pictured her as a young woman full of life. If the last photo I saw of her was a true reflection of her now, I may not recognize her.
In the last decade, I’d spoken to Mother twenty-seven times. Nine of those calls had been in the last six months. And unfortunately, three more in the last week. Each call was more desperate than the last.
For the first time in her life, my mother wanted to see me. The feeling was not mutual.
Inhaling a deep breath, I strapped on my backpack, grabbed the handle of my suitcase, and headed into the hospital. The ground floor had a reception desk with several individuals lined up. I stepped in behind a woman strangling the hands of two young kids. Plenty of people were around; most were talking in whispers as if revealing a terrible secret. One woman however, sitting on a couch centered in the middle of the lobby, was talking loud enough to revive a comatose patient.
As she banged on about how much chafing she had, I shuffled forward in the queue.
When my turn arrived, I dragged my suitcase up to the counter with me. “Hello. I’m here to visit Patricia Chayne.” At the mention of my mother’s name, the receptionist’s eyes shifted downward, morphing into a look of utter sorrow that she’d probably used many times in her career .
After she gave me a brief instruction on how to get to Mother’s ward, I dragged my feet along the antiseptic-infused corridor toward an elevator. I paused at the buttons and told myself that it wasn’t too late to turn around.
But where would I go? I didn’t have a home.
That admission floored me like a freight train. I grew up without anywhere to call home, and despite all my attempts to flee from that status, I’d come full circle.
I strangled the handle of my suitcase containing everything I owned, and fought the urge to pick the damn thing up and hurl it at the wall like a world-wrestling champ would toss an opponent.
How had I let this happen? I was nearly thirty and had nothing.
Stepping back from the elevator, I stared down at my suitcase, waiting for my thumping heart to simmer down. That suitcase had been with me since I got my cruise ship job. The two of us had done some serious miles together. I huffed out a huge sigh, and in that instant, I made a promise to myself:
Before the tick of the clock to my thirtieth birthday, I would find a place that I could call home.
That gave me seven months to figure my life out. Mission accepted.
With that decision made, I swallowed the anxiety in my throat and pushed the up button for the elevator.
After following a series of signs, I arrived at the reception for the oncology ward and was greeted by a young woman who looked like she was nearing the end of a fourteen-hour shift. Her hair was ruffled, her lips were puffy, and her uniform was crinkled. Either that or she’d just shagged a doctor in the utility cupboard.
Hoping it was the latter, for her sake, I smiled and stepped forward. “Hello. My name is Daisy Chayne, and I’m here?—”
“Daisy!” Her eyes lit up. “It’s so nice to meet you. Oh, your mother is going to be so pleased you’re here.” She came out from behind the counter. “Let me show you to her room. I want to see her reaction.”
Grabbing my suitcase handle, I followed the excited nurse as she continued rambling, barely pausing for air. “Patricia is so lovely. She brightens everyone’s day. Poor thing is going through a bit of a rough trot at the moment. But she never complains, you know? And her stories—oh, what a life your mother has led.”
I stared at her, wondering if she had me confused with another Daisy Chayne. But of course, she didn’t. Mother was the queen of telling stories, and she could bend and mold those stories to suit any situation, depending on her own selfish needs.
“I wish all my patients were like Patricia,” the nurse babbled. “It would make every day a pleasure.” She paused outside room 519. “Here we are.”
Before I even entered the room, a ghastly combination of bleach and bacon smells invaded my nostrils. There were three patients in that room, each one separated by a curtain. From my vantage point at the door, I could see three beds. On the first bed, a pair of bare feet were visible. Although the white curtain concealed the owner of the feet, a tiny tree-of-life ankle tattoo and the ring on her toe, left me with no doubt they were Mother’s. While they were embellishments I’d never seen before, both of them suited the woman I used to know perfectly.
If nothing else, my mother had always remained true to herself.
The nurse trotted ahead of me, and as she tugged back the curtain, she said, “You have a visitor, Patricia. ”
“Oh, I hope it’s Doctor Alberts. He’s such a lovely man.” Her brittle voice cut a swath of sorrow through me. In my childhood, my mother’s beautiful singing voice had mesmerized many intimate crowds into the small hours of the night.
I inched forward, staring at the veins crawling up her legs. They were also confronting. Mother had always had beautiful shapely legs that she wasn’t afraid to show off in skimpy shorts or a dress with a split that went all the way up and played peekaboo with her thighs when she walked.
Forcing myself to move forward, I stepped around the curtain.
Mother’s head rolled toward me. Her eyes snagged on my hair and then met with mine.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Daisy?” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Daisy!”
I stepped forward and she clutched my hand in hers.
“Oh, it’s so lovely to see you together at last.” The nurse fluffed about with Mom’s pillows. “I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. If you need me at all, you just press this button here. Okay, Daisy?”
I nodded.
“Daisy Chayne. I just love your name. And the story of why your mother chose it—” The nurse clutched her heart. “Oh my. Talk about tugging at the emotional strings.”
I blinked at her. Blinked at my mother.
Fucking hell. A complete stranger knew the origin of my name before I did. Typical. I added that question to my already enormous list.
As the nurse wrote a few things on Mother’s chart at the end of the bed, she hummed a chirpy tune that was so out of place with her dire surroundings. It was interesting. The only images of hospital rooms I could conjure from my memory were ones I’d seen on television. They always had flowers, or balloons, or get-well cards .
Mother had none of those. I guess you needed friends or loved ones to get such treats. Clearly Mother still had neither.
The nurse said goodbye and vanished out the door, leaving us with the sounds of beeping and the ragged breaths of one or possibly both of the patients in the neighboring beds.
“I can’t believe you are actually here.” Mother burst into shallow sobs.
I had no idea why, but as I squeezed her hand with mine, I cried with her.
It was an eternity before her crying reduced to sniffles and the lump in my throat shifted enough to allow me to talk.
She swallowed so loudly I heard it. I reached for the water on the trolley at the end of her bed and held the straw to her mouth. As Mother drank, I studied the face of the woman who’d once been the envy of everyone. Mother had lit up any room with her beauty and energy. They were both long gone. The frail woman before me had a gray complexion and was all skin and bone.
I put the cup aside. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m dying.” She said it so matter-of-fact.
Releasing her hand, I shoved my suitcase out of the way and peeled off my backpack. When I stepped to the bed again, she clutched my hand like it was her lifeline.
“You’re not dying, Mother.”
She rolled her eyes and barked a cough that was so rough, I imagined it would truly hurt. Many times in my life, I’d seen Mother fake an illness—cancer being at the top of her acting repertoire. She wasn’t faking it now—the doctor’s diagnosis was evidence of that. This was fate. She’d brought this upon herself.
Karma was a bitch .
When she finished coughing, she sipped her drink again and clutched my hand with her bony fingers. “I am dying. It’s too late for me.”
“Mom—”
“Stop. I don’t want to talk about it.” She squeezed my hand so tight; it was a wonder her fingers didn’t snap.
Reaching for the chair at the bedside, I tugged it forward and sat without releasing my grip from hers.
“I want to hear all about you, Daisy. Please.”
She closed her eyes, and it took so long for them to open again, I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. When she looked at me, her eyes glimmered with some of that spark that had infuriated me so many times in my childhood.
“Please. This is my dying wish. I want to get to know my daughter.” She scraped a hand through her hair. It was much thinner now, and no longer had that silky-smooth look that would glimmer in the sunshine. “How are you?”
I glared at her, unable to hold back the doubt and suspicion that crept into my thoughts. The woman before me looked nothing like the woman I’d last seen over a decade ago, but I’d learned the hard way that Mother always had an ulterior motive. There was every chance she was still as conniving as ever.
Her wanting to know me, as in, truly know me, was the last thing I’d expected. She’d spent her entire life trying to ignore my existence. And I’d come to accept that. Not this.
It took a long time to form my response. “I’m fine, Mom.”
“I don’t want to hear fine. I want to hear every tiny little detail.” She smiled and adjusted her body so she could look at me more easily, and when I looked into her eyes, I saw something I couldn’t recall seeing before—sincerity.
This change . . . it had my resolve crumbling.
Her dying wish was me. Me .
A wave of pride swelled up inside my chest. Yet at the same time I reminded myself that Mother was born with an unyielding focus on self-importance. She only wanted to know other people to help her establish how she could get what she wanted. Mother was the smiling predator. I was certain her new curiosity in me came with an endgame.
But I had a hand of my own to play. I would give her information. In return, I wanted answers.
Let’s play.
She squeezed my palm to hers, prodding for a response. “Tell me about where you live. What’s your home like? I want to learn all about your job. Are you with someone? Daisy, I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner, but I’d like to know my own daughter better.”
I was horrified that many of her questions would draw a blank. No home, no job, no partner. Finally, I said, “Well, I gave everything up to come here. So there’s nothing to tell.”
“Hey, don’t do that to me. I don’t want the glossed-over details. Or how will I get to know you? I spent my whole life pretending to be the happy one, so you can’t fool me.”
“You were happy, Mother.”
“No, I wasn’t.” She groaned and rolled her eyes with great exaggeration. “The only person I was fooling was me.”
As she smacked her lips together, I studied her, trying to establish what angle she was playing. At first, it seemed like the sympathy angle was coming my way. She had plenty of practice at that. But there was also a glimmer of defiance. I figured if I did my trick where I remained silent, she’d keep talking. So that was exactly what I did.
After a while, she prodded the pillow beneath her head and tutted. “Oh, come on. Do you really think I enjoyed moving around all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I enjoyed scraping money together all the time? ”
“Well, no, of course not. But you were always happy.”
“Darling, you were always so naive.”
Darling! My skin crawled.
I raised my eyebrows. Mother’s blunt statements hadn’t diminished like her failing body.
“All those men.” She shook her head. “I was fooling myself. None of them meant anything to me. They didn’t want me. They wanted my body, and I was stupid enough to give it to them. Oh my god. If you only knew. Those happy times were short-lived compared to my lows. When I hit bottom, it was like I’d eaten a giant ball of razor wire. It cut out all my insides.”
Mom’s declaration floored me.
She was never frank. She’d fucked a few Franks. Two, if I remembered correctly.
What she’d just said was probably the most truthful statement she’d ever made.
She reached for my hand again and squeezed. “I was the worst mother.”
I wanted to shake my head, to disagree . . . but I couldn’t. It was true.
Maybe she expected me to refute her claim because she paused and examined my expression. “You are so beautiful.”
My brows shot up. That was the last thing I’d expected to hear from her. Many times during my childhood Mother had shoved foundation my way, insisting that I used it to cover my freckles. Freckles that were now on full display given my lack of makeup.
“You don’t believe me. Do you?”
I lowered my eyes. Mother saying the truth was as rare as straight pubes.
“Daisy, you are beautiful. It’s the truth.”
I sighed. “Thanks. ”
She tugged her dry lip into her mouth. “I hope your man tells you that.”
I huffed, and instantly regretted it. Shit!
Her nonexistent eyebrows shot up. “Oh, Daisy, don’t tell me you don’t have a man.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” The lie came off my tongue so easily it was a slap in the face. I am such a hypocrite. Here I was bitching about my mother’s endless lies, and yet I could voice them just as easily myself.
Her shoulders lowered as if the weight of the world had been lifted. “I’m so happy for you. Tell me about him. I want to hear everything.”
The joy on her face rolled back years on her aging complexion. I couldn’t retract the lie now. She seemed so pleased for me. So instead, I pictured Roman in my mind, which was delightfully easy to do, and prepared to describe the man who’d made my heart swell and subsequently shatter, all in the space of a few months.
“His name is Roman.” Even saying his name created a sense of peace inside me.
“Oh, wow. Sounds so exotic.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. He’s Italian. He grew up, and still lives, in a tiny town on the Italian Riviera. Have you ever heard of the Cinque Terre?”
“Oh yes, I have. You are so lucky to have been to all these wonderful places. I’ve never even left Australia.”
I wanted to tell her that my motivation for leaving was to get away from her and William, but I stopped myself. Instead, I said, “Roman has an enormous family. Four sisters, all who are married with children. His mom and dad are still together and he lives with them.”
“Oh my. What are they like?”
Oh crap. This lying business was tricky.
I was a heartbeat away from saying that unlike my fucked-up family, they were perfect. The kind that loved each other. And helped each other. And always told the truth. A family that I so desperately wanted to meet, but probably never would. Instead, I simply said, “They’re great.”
“I bet they just love you.”
I smiled as I pictured Roman’s expression each time he’d mentioned his mother or father. Their love was true and genuine. Something I’d never experienced with my family. My mind jolted to my father. Or to be specific, the man who I’d thought was my father.
She tilted her head. Her eyes darkened. “What is it?”
I cleared my throat. I’d never told Mother what I’d learned on my fourteenth birthday. Partly because she’d been so devastated by him disappearing the way he did . . . without saying goodbye. Or maybe it was because he’d taken the car. But also, partly because I’d wanted to believe that his story was total bullshit.
But what he’d said was something that had messed with me ever since that day. Now was the time to get some answers. “Can I ask you something?”
Her skin paled even further, and when she swallowed, I had a terrible feeling she was going to throw up. She looked bloody nervous. And she should be. There was a lot of water between us, and at the moment, there was no bridge long enough to bring us together. It would need to be built piece by piece. And I was about to toss her the first brick.
Mother hooked her gnarly fingers into the triangle brace over the bed and wriggled up the mattress, maybe stalling for time.
I stood and fiddled with the pillows behind her. It was a moment of care that I’d never had with Mother, and I couldn’t decide if I was comfortable with it or not.
When she finally stilled and looked at me, there was something in her eyes I couldn’t pinpoint. Wariness maybe. Or fear. She cleared her throat, and twisting her fingers, she said, “You can ask me anything. Lord knows you must have a thousand questions.”
All right. Here we go.
I inhaled deeply, picturing the man who I’d known as my father sitting across from me. His pale eyes were wide, his beard-stubble rough, his expression aloof. He had not shown any ounce of the stress that an announcement like his should have produced.
“Dad told me something on my fourteenth birthday that I never told you.”
Her eyes dipped upward as if exploring the darkest reaches of her brain. She blinked, frowned, and blinked some more. “That was the day he left.”
I nodded but remained quiet, waiting to see if she pieced things together.
A moment later, her eyes dimmed, and her jaw muscles tensed. “What did he tell you?”
I sucked in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “He told me he wasn’t my father.”
“Oh.” She flicked her hand. “Of course?—”
“Don’t lie to me,” I barked.
Her eyes snapped wide and she swallowed. I’d never spoken to her like that. Not face-to-face anyway. But I wasn’t a child anymore. When she’d last seen me, I’d been seventeen. I was no longer that girl. I was a woman who had seen the world. A woman who needed the truth. A woman who deserved the truth.
Mother chewed on her lip, and blood smudged her teeth. I resisted offering another drink. This was a conversation we had to have. If she suffered, it was not because of me.
Mother flicked her head. It was a move I’d seen her do a thousand times. But she no longer had the mane of long, golden hair that she’d flick from her eyes with that sexy move. She barely had any hair at all. “You don’t know what it was like.”
“No, I don’t. It’s time you told me.”
“Why would you want to hear about that? It was so long ago.”
“Cut the bullshit,” I snapped.
Her jaw fell open, then it shut and she pulled a pathetic, sad face. “I’m a dying woman.”
I was not falling for her crap. “Exactly.” Our eyes met, and I was torn between feeling guilty about the venom in my stare and feeling justified. “You are dying. It’s time to tell me the truth. Was he my father?”
“All right.” She fired a defiant glare at me. Her chin lowered and she twisted her hands. “I don’t know. Okay?”
If the truth was meant to set me free, this did the opposite. I was still trapped in the nightmare. I squeezed my eyes shut and images of the dozens of men Mother had paraded through our trailer over the years flitted across my mind like prison-offender photos. “Was I conceived during an orgy?”
Her jaw dropped open. “Is that what he told you?”
“Yes.”
She placed her hand on her heart and with a wracking sob, her tears flowed. It was an emotional performance I’d seen her do way too many times. Mother should have put her energy into being an actress.
I was not falling for it this time. “Stop it,” I hissed.
She gasped.
“Tell me the truth or I’m walking out of here.”
She scraped the tears from her eyes. “It was the early nineties. It’s what we did back then.”
My gut twisted. Get up and walk out anyway. Nothing she said from this moment forward would provide relief.
Go, Daisy. Save yourself .
But I couldn’t move. I had to hear every sordid detail. So, I waited. And waited.
The silence stretched out between us like a deserted road in the middle of Australia, and I’d seen enough of those to know how desolate they could be.
“It was a Thursday night.” Mother’s voice was as brittle as cracked China. “Every second Thursday was the day the miners finished their shift at the coal mine.” She scrunched up her forehead, creating deep lines. “I can’t remember where they came from. Anyway, they’d fly into town with fists full of money and be ready to party.”
My heart slammed into my chest and I gasped. “Were you a prostitute?”
“What? No! Of course not.” Her eyes nearly popped out her head. “How dare you?” Her voice boomed, showing no sign of her apparent sore throat, and the horror crawling across her expression gave me a strong indication that she was telling the truth.
Thank God. But I had no intention of apologizing. The question had been justified. “Okay then,” I said. “So why was their money important?”
She did a little jig with her head and smirked. “Because they bought me drinks, of course.”
Relief washed through me. Mother was many things. Thank Christ I didn’t have to add prostitute to the list. “Okay then. So, the miners would come into town to drink and party. Then what?”
She squinted at me, all defiant as if I’d accused her of the most heinous of crimes. But I wasn’t sure if the rest of her story would bathe her in a more innocent light.
“I don’t know.” She lowered her eyes to her fingers that were twisted so tightly together, her knuckles bulged white. “I guess things got a little out of hand. We drank a lot. Danced a lot. We partied hard. The pub threw us out early in the morning and I invited the guys back to my place.”
“Four guys.”
Her eyes narrowed. She was calculating her response.
Lies came easily to her. Telling the truth did not.
Instead, she raised her chin and met my gaze. “Yes. Four men.”
“Was . . .” I stalled. All my life I’d called him my father. I will never call him that again. “Was Rob one of them?”
She paused as if weighing up the consequence of her answer, then said, “Yes.”
“So, let me get this straight. You invite four strangers, men, back to your trailer, and you just flop into bed with them.”
“You make it sound so sleazy.”
“It was sleazy.”
“It wasn’t like that. It was beautiful.”
“It’s disgusting.” If my eyes were daggers, I would have sliced her head off. And still stabbed her fucking eyes out.
Her expression dropped to her classic sulking look that had overcome many young men’s resolve. “It was beautiful. Sweet.”
“It wasn’t fucking sweet, Mother. It was just sex.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, it was the only thing I was good at.”
Fucking hell. I blinked at her. Did she really just say that? To her daughter?
“What can I say? I’m not proud of many things in my life.” She raised her eyes to mine. “I’m proud of you.”
I shook my head. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Oh, bloody hell, Daisy. What do you want to hear? I was a slut. A dirty, filthy slut who slept with men because I liked it. Is that so bad? Yes, I like sex. Any sex and lots of it. There, you feel better now? ”
No, I didn’t feel better. I felt like a piece of shit on the sidewalk that’d been stomped upon by an angry mob of protesters.
Mother liked sex. Was that something her daughter should know?
A thought shot through me like projectile vomit.
I liked sex too. I slept with complete strangers and liked it.
Oh, God. Here I was, all high and mighty, pretending I was better than her. But I was no different.
Fuck.
I stood so fast my chair toppled. Leaving it there, I paced the room. Seven steps to the wall and back again. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Her eyes tracked my movement. She remained silent. I did too.
The people in the other two beds made ghastly sucking noises, and if they’d heard our conversation, they’d given no indication. Maybe we’d given them heart attacks. More likely they were loving every minute of our family reunion.
Family! Gah! Zali was right. Back and forth.
Mother may be my blood relative. Back and forth.
But she had no idea how to be family. Back and forth.
It was a long time before Mother cleared her throat. “Rob was your father. His sperm may not have been the one that made you, and we will never know, but he was the man who accepted you as his own. He loved you. We loved you.” She cleared her throat. “I have always loved you, Daisy.”
“You had a funny way of showing it.” I mumbled the words, not really expecting her to hear.
“I know I wasn’t like all the other moms. But I was so young when I found out I was pregnant.”
Ahhh, that was another question I’d wanted to ask. “How old were you? ”
She smiled so sweetly, like she’d drifted off on a memory that was truly special. “I was eighteen.”
I did a double-take. “Eighteen?”
“Yes. When I found out I was pregnant it was the biggest shock of my life. I wasn’t ready. But . . . Daisy, you saved me.”
I stopped pacing and spun to her. My jaw dropped. “I saved you?”
“Yes. You did. Please will you come sit down?” She patted the bed like it was a puppy.
Against all my rational thoughts, I returned to her beside. But I didn’t clutch her offered hand and I didn’t sit on the bed. I picked up the chair and sat with my arms folded.
Her shoulders sagged and she looked at me like I’d smoked her last joint. “Daisy. I’ve never told you this.” She heaved a massive sigh. “But I guess I should have told you a very long time ago. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I was gutted.”
“Jesus Christ, Mother?—”
“Let me finish,” she snapped.
I blinked at her.
She held her finger to her lips. “Shush.”
I did, and then she made me wait an extraordinarily long time before she heaved a sigh. Mother had center stage—a podium she loved.
“What I should have said, I guess . . .” She rolled her eyes. “. . . is that at first, when I found out I was carrying you, I had the shock of my life.” She cocked her head at me. “Better?”
“Oh, yeah. Much better.”
She flicked her hand, dismissing my sarcasm. “You always were a drama queen.”
Drama queen! I scowled. A drama queen was not something in my repertoire. At the very least, I bottled up my emotions rather than put them on display. Unlike her.
Maybe that was my problem .
I waited. She eyeballed me. I waited some more.
“But after the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant, I realized how lucky I was. I was about to bring a beautiful little human being into my life.” She smiled at me like she’d just knitted me the most glorious sweater.
After a moment of discomfort, I ogled her. “So how did I save you?”
She shook her head. “Because of you, I had to clean myself up. I stopped doing drugs.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Mother, I can give you dozens, if not hundreds of examples of times I’ve seen you high on dope or jabbing some fucking needle in your arm.”
“Oh, Jesus, you make it sound like I gave you the worst childhood.”
I stood again. Rage scraped through my veins. “I did have a shit childhood. I saw you with heaps of men. Strangers! Not the man who I thought was my father. Complete strangers who you’d introduce as your boss, or the new neighbor, or the trailer-park gardener, or the fucking guy you picked up at the gas station. They were always more important than me.”
She clutched her chest like she was having a fucking heart attack. “Don’t be silly. Nobody was more important than you.”
“If that was true, then tell me what you did for my thirteenth birthday?”
She rolled her eyes skyward. “Oh, Lord, that was so long ago. How could I possibly remember?”
“I remember.”
“Oh, here we go.” She slumped down on the mattress.
“Yes. Here we go. You lie there thinking you did nothing wrong. Thinking you were the best mother. ”
“I never said I was the best mother.”
“No, but you were thinking it.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“No, I don’t. I’ll tell you why. Because most of what spills from your mouth are lies.”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling.” It was true. I wasn’t. Which was a miracle because that was exactly what I wanted to do. The only thing keeping me from screaming at her until my throat hurt was the poor patients in the other beds.
“Yes, you are.”
“See? You’re lying now.”
She clamped her jaw and pouted her lips.
“My thirteenth birthday. We were in a trailer at the Lennox Head caravan park. The morning of my birthday. Do you remember?”
She shook her head, and I was already wondering if she was lying.
“I’d made my own breakfast, like I always did.”
“Nothing wrong with that. You were clever. And independent.”
Ignoring her attempt to flatter me, I continued, “While I was eating my cereal, you came out of the bedroom with two men. Two. Neither of them were the man who’d pretended to be my father. You spent more time kissing them goodbye than you did with me the entire day. You remembered my birthday the next day when you emerged from your stoned-out fucking fog.” Clamping my jaw before I spewed out another depressing memory from my childhood, I glared at her.
She blinked a few times and her blank expression made it impossible to ascertain if she remembered that moment, or even what she was thinking. That hadn’t been the first time she’d had two men in her bedroom. It was, however, the first time she’d done it on my birthday.
Mother huffed out a sigh. “I cannot undo the past, Daisy.”
Her words were like a noose around my disjointed memories, tugging them all together. I clenched my fists. “No. I guess you can’t. But you can help me understand.”
She smiled, but it was all jagged edges and worrisome eyes. Mother was walking on eggshells. She didn’t want me prodding any further, and that only served to make me want more. It also convinced me there was something she didn’t want me digging into. Something worse than what had been revealed already.
If it meant digging until I hit fucking China, then I was going to do it.
I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Even if it meant shattering my fucked-up childhood even more.
When Mother reached for the white sheet around her legs and tugged it up to her chest, the rings on her fingers twinkled in the light. I stared at her hands again. She had a ring on every finger. Except her wedding finger. She used to. Many, many years ago.
One of my unanswered questions slapped me in the face like a dead fish. It was a question that’d crossed my mind several times.
When I aimed my gaze at Mother’s eyes, she may have sensed I was about to ask something she didn’t want to answer. Because she suddenly gasped for air, clawing at her throat, and making wild sucking noises.
Her eyes bulged. Her legs thrashed.
I lunged for the button the nurse had pointed at and strangled the thing. But nothing but a tiny light came on over her bed.
Mother was fighting for air—drawing it in like every breath was caustic .
I raced out the door and dashed along the corridor I’d come in through. “Nurse. Nurse. Help.”
Two nurses came running toward me.
“It’s my mom, Patricia Chayne. Room 519. She can’t breathe.” I led the way and burst into the room like a tidal wave. Racing around the bed, I kept my distance, letting the nurses do their job. But Mother’s eyes were on me, fixated like I was going to be the last image she ever saw.
The nurses were calm—checking tubes attached to Mother’s wrist, studying monitors. This was an everyday occurrence for them. It seemed like forever before Mother settled, but it was just minutes.
Mother closed her eyes, and with her breathing restored, she looked peaceful.
When the nurses left the room, I grabbed my suitcase and backpack and followed behind them. “Excuse me, nurse.”
One of the nurses stopped and turned toward me with an expression that was almost blank, devoid of emotion.
“Hi, sorry. But . . . but what was that?” I flicked my thumb over my shoulder, toward Mother’s room.
“Your mother had a panic attack. That’s all. It’s not uncommon for patients who know they are near the end.” She touched my shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry. She’s in the best of care, and her pain is being managed as best as possible. That’s all you can ask.”
I blinked at her, unsure of the appropriate response. She nodded at me as if expecting as much, and I said, “Is there anything I should be doing?”
She heaved a sigh. “Well, if you haven’t already, you might want to organize her funeral.” The nurse silently drifted away.
For the first time today, genuine tears flooded my eyes.