Epilogue Mary #2
My mother reaches out and takes my hand. For one suspended second, something shifts. Something intuitive and terrifying. Her brows knit, tilting her head.
She feels it.
Her lips part, as if she’s going to say something, but then the door creaks open, and the words fall into the space between us, taken up by the morning breeze and forgotten.
Jocelyn steps outside in her Hello Kitty pajamas, hair tousled, fists rubbing the sleep from her big blue eyes.
She looks confused as her gaze travels between me and the two strangers in the rockers—our rockers: hers and mine.
Without a word she makes a beeline for the swing, climbing up next to me.
I lift my arm so she can snuggle in against my side.
Doug and Terry Langston have gone perfectly still, breath held, eyes wide.
I know what they see. I know who they see.
Heart-shaped face, bent left ear, long hair the color of spun gold.
At nine years old, Jocelyn is the spitting image of her mother at that age.
Or, at least, how I imagine her mother looked at that age, taking into consideration the fact that she looks exactly the way I did at that age.
She’s staring at them as intently as they’re staring at her.
“Jocelyn, this is Mr. and Mrs. Langston. They’re . . . they’re your Auntie Mary’s parents.”
The little girl twists around to look at me, like I might be pulling her leg. “Auntie Mary has parents?”
I nod, smiling.
“We talk about Mary a lot,” I explain to them.
“You wanna see the pictures?” Jocelyn asks. “We have pictures of my mama and my Auntie Mary!”
My parents are as transfixed by her as I am.
“Um, yes,” my mother manages to choke out. “Yes, I-I’d love that.”
When the child tumbles off the swing and runs inside, their eyes fall on me, full of the questions they’re afraid to ask.
“She’s mine,” I explain, the lie falling easily after all this time. “I was—well, let’s just say the circumstances of her birth weren’t ideal. And she was taken from me. For a long time, I didn’t know where she was . . .”
Mom looks aghast. “Samantha! Why on earth didn’t you ever tell us? We could have helped you!”
Of course they would have, but Sam had no way of knowing that. What she did know was that the man who’d made her life a living hell was a longtime friend of our family. A man my parents had me call “uncle.”
Why would she think for a second that they would take her word over his? It’s why she kept the truth from me until the very last minutes of her life. No one had ever fought for Sam Kinski before. It never even occurred to her that someone would then. And she couldn’t risk it.
“It’s a long, complicated story,” I tell them. “Maybe someday . . . but not now. Not with her right here.”
As if on cue, the door slaps open again, and my girl comes tumbling out, hair streaming behind her, arms full of the photo albums. I had them printed up to share with her, like so many children’s picture books.
Their pages chronicle the brief life I shared with Sam, just a few drops in what could have been—what should have been—an ocean of memories.
Jocelyn marches up to my father and hands him the stack, which he takes.
I’m amazed when she proceeds to crawl right up into my mother’s lap, holding out her arms for Dad to pass one of the albums back to her.
“This is my favorite,” she tells them, small hands flipping pages, small pink-nailed fingers pointing to images of us in the woods, on the river, in a tent.
They are simply mesmerized by her, as am I every day.
In two years, this little girl has taught me so much about the bond that exists between a mother and daughter, whether by blood, or by choice, or by fate.
Because it doesn’t matter that I didn’t birth her myself.
She’s the only person who knows me completely, even without knowing the truth.
She’s the one place I don’t have to be Sam or Mary or anything but hers.
She trusts me with her whole small world.
And all I can think is: Please let me be allowed to keep it.
Now, as Doug and Terry Langston stare, spellbound, at the little girl that Sam and I share from beyond the bounds of this earth, I recognize that the rage I once held for them faded long ago—softened and reshaped by my newfound understanding of parenthood and the depthless well of love that comes with it.
Julian stole that instinct, twisted it, and turned us all against one another.
But he’s gone now.
And still . . . we carry on.
Yet some nights, when the house goes quiet and Jocelyn’s breathing settles into that deep, even rhythm I adore, the questions slip in.
What happens if this facade ever cracks?
If she grows up needing answers I can’t give?
If someone looks too closely?
If I ever let myself fall in love and have to build a future on the fault line of a lie?
Terry looks up at me again, something dawning behind her eyes—a tiny recognition, or maybe just intuition. A seed planted.
A truth waiting to bloom.
She smiles—tentative, bewildered.
I smile back—hopeful, terrified.
Because somehow I know this:
I can keep the secret forever.
I can be Sam for the rest of my life.
I can shoulder it, bury it, breathe around it.
But I also know the weight of it will always keep me at arm’s length from every person I might ever love—except the two girls who made me who I am now: the one I lost and the one I’m raising.
And somewhere, in the quiet place where guilt and grace coexist, I already know how this story ends.