Chapter Forty-Two Stella
Chapter Forty-Two
Stella
I watched from the doorway as Mom paced in front of the fireplace, muttering and gesturing with one hand. Holding a wineglass
in the other. Being this animated while alone in a room was odd even for her. She liked to attract an audience. Playing to
a crowd of one wasted her talent.
Hours had passed. No news on Jeremy.
I worked. Played with Everly and put her to bed. I’d hoped for a few hours of quiet on the couch. Time to think of a way to
help Hanna. It looked like Mom had other plans.
“What are you doing?” I walked in and sat down, digging deep for an ounce of sympathy for all she’d been through since at
least one of the questions about Patrick—his whereabouts—had been answered in the worst way possible.
The discovery and identification of his bones had rocked her.
We all needed the finality of that moment but it didn’t make the end any less sharp.
She’d grown up with Patrick. She’d spent her life making excuses for his personal inadequacies and praising his intellect.
Being a cheerleader for the whole Tanner family encompassed a huge portion of her personality.
Without the one-step-removed fame she became another older woman who struggled to pay her rent. Nothing fancy about that.
“Everything’s falling apart.” She ended the comment with a flourish that included a glass-draining drink of wine.
Dramatic. Not unexpected but not helpful. “Mom, what’s going on?”
“I promised.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have a choice.”
A sensation like being carved out and hollowed filled my stomach. “About what?”
Her gaze seemed a little hazy, as if she couldn’t see a thing in front of her. Her white-knuckle grip on the fireplace mantel
suggested whatever words or visions played in her head terrified her.
“Hey.” I walked over to her. In a bold move so unfamiliar and foreign to our mother-daughter relationship, I put an arm around
her shoulders. Drew her body toward mine. Felt the chill in her skin. “Are you okay?”
“What?” She looked around and her eyes appeared to focus. Her gaze skipped to my hand on her arm. “Why are you on top of me?”
And we’re back. That’s the affection-hating mom I knew.
The more I eased away from her, the more my labored breathing returned to normal. Trying to comfort her was the equivalent
of scaling a huge mountain that left me shaky and exhausted. My nerves kept misfiring. I reserved spontaneous touching and
unconditional love for Everly. Mom had sucked most of it out of me growing up, but I found a well, this unknown reserve, when
I held my daughter for the first time.
This time I wrapped my arms around my middle, tight in a ball, not letting the pain in. I’d long ago stopped wishing for the mother I didn’t have. I should have shed the need for her completely by now, but that was a work in progress.
“You were talking to yourself. You seemed—”
“I’m fine.” She straightened, no longer frozen on the edge of an emotional abyss.
I should let it go. Did I really care? The chance of this being an act, one more way for her to chase attention, remained
high. Still, with so much unraveling and so much spinning out of control, I needed a quick peek into her mind. Mostly so I
had a chance of stopping disaster before it blew up in my face.
“You looked rattled. Did something happen?” I dreaded the answer but asked anyway.
“I saved us.”
Clear. Firm. Complete nonsense.
“From what?” Being penniless? All that begging and bootlicking, and Xavier still viewed her as expendable in the end. She
recognized his disdain. That’s what all the feigning was about. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
She delivered the perfect over-the-top Isabel Clarke sigh. “Of course you don’t. You never did. You accepted and took, then
demanded more.”
“That’s what little kids do. They need to be fed and changed. Given a bit of encouragement.”
She answered with an eye roll. All the haziness had disappeared. She was fully engaged and ready to fire her verbal cannon.
“Oh, please. You’re a doctor. I did something right.”
“Yeah, I succeeded because of you.” I loaded as much sarcasm as possible into the words.
“Correct.”
“How did whatever is happening in your head become an indictment of me?” I’m not sure why I asked since every conversation
devolved into this.
“When you hear the truth you’ll judge.”
“Probably.” It’s not like her actions ever gave me much choice.
She set the empty wineglass down next to the photo of Everly’s first visit with the mall Santa Claus. “Why do I even try with
you?”
No way. I wasn’t sitting down for that shit. “When the hell did you try, Mom?”
“I followed orders. I did . . .” She shook her head. “You’ve never understood family loyalty.”
I waded through the bullshit to the horror at the meaty center of her comment. “What did you do?”
“You’re welcome.”
Patrick’s bones. The fire. Jeremy being missing. Aubrey coming back. I mentally searched for Mom’s fingerprints on any of
those events but couldn’t see the faint impressions. “Mom?”
She paced, then stopped at the door. Made a swooping turn to face me again. “I protected Xavier while he was alive. I’ll hold
this family together now that he’s gone.”
Which part? Half of us were still missing. “No one is asking you to do that.”
“Xavier did. He needed me to step in more than once.” Her uncharacteristically unreadable expression didn’t offer any clue.
“Remember that.”
I doubted I’d think about anything else.