32. Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Gina
My mom builds up the campfire and leaves me alone.
It’s dark. The kind of dark you only get far away from people. A black, velvety night, the sky studded with stars and a sliver of a crescent moon. Even with the campfire's light, I can still see a satellite blinking slowly across the sky.
A mosquito buzzes near my ear, and I pull the hoodie over my head. It’s too warm for the hoodie, especially next to the fire, but I’m not in the mood to provide a buffet to the bloodsuckers.
I lost my best friend tonight. Very likely my home, too. I’m not sure I can stay in Havenwood. I’m not sure I can face my mistakes.
It’s not something I can decide right now, anyway. I’ll need to talk to Benji about what he wants and if he wants to try to make a life together somewhere else. A fresh start where no one knows us, where we don’t have a past.
He’ll leave me when he gets bored. Why would I be enough for Benji to stay when I’ve never been enough for my mom or Milo?
I draw my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms tight around them to take the chill off that thought.
I’m not going to let my fears get the better of me.
Benji might be young, but he isn’t some reckless boy playing house.
He’s never given me any reason to doubt his feelings.
And while my mom has always been in and out of my life, she’s been around a lot more over the last few years.
She’s been trying, even when I’ve been reluctant.
And Milo…
Milo was the only person I felt like myself around when I was younger, so it makes sense that I took his leaving hard, even though it had nothing to do with me.
Making everything easy for him after he returned so he wouldn’t leave again was never my responsibility.
And I can’t do the work he needs to do with his grandmother or Havenwood.
I have my own work to do on myself.
And maybe that means staying right here in Havenwood and facing everyone I’ve spent years proving myself to.
I tip my head back and groan at the sky. It’s going to suck. Some small part of me wants to curl up and die at the thought of what everyone must be thinking about me. Facing it is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I’m not afraid of hard work.
They need to see that I can make mistakes. And that I won’t keep pushing my wants and needs aside, either.
Peace settles over me as the fire dies down.
An owl hoots, not too far away, and I take a deep breath and listen to the sounds of night around me.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk to Diana. Explain everything again once tempers have cooled.
Offer to pay her back for the wedding expenses.
I need to know if I still have a job and a home.
I get up, douse the fire, and go inside.
My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, a handmade mug full of tea steaming near her elbow as she squints at a bead she’s threading onto a thin wire.
I sit at the table and reach for the half-finished abandoned bracelet with tiger’s eye-colored beads. It takes me a little while to find more of the beads—they’re under a hat and a stack of bookmarks.
For a while, we work in silence. Well, maybe not silence. There’s music playing from a speaker buried somewhere in the other room, but it’s some atmospheric, relaxation type of thing and fades into the background.
“You used to make jewelry with me when you were little,” my mom says.
I remember. We’d sit on the floor in the living room next to the coffee table spread with colorful strings and a makeup case converted to store beads.
It was still a hobby back then, something to do on a rainy or snowy day.
Something she’d randomly pick up and then discard in favor of something new.
Another memory slips in. My mom upset that my grandmother had thrown out the strings—not because she wanted to make necklaces and bracelets, but because I did.
“You always brought home beads,” I say, because she did, even after she’d moved on to some other hobby. Beads made of Lake Superior glass from Duluth. Sparkly beads from the Cities. Faceted metal beads from Chicago. “And something interesting about the place or the people you brought them from.”
She nods. “You always liked the beads, so I always tried to bring some back.” She takes a sip of tea, her eyes going a little unfocused as a ghost of a smile plays over her lips.
“You won’t remember this, but when you were really little, we’d spread a blanket out in the sun, pick every daisy growing in the meadow at your grandmother’s place, and make daisy chains until we had crowns and necklaces. We’d make rings, too.”
I don’t remember, but my grandmother had photos.
I must have been four, so my mother would’ve been twenty.
She was only smiling in the first photo.
When she’d looked at the camera in the second one, she’d scowled.
I was oblivious to the tension between my mother and her mother, my hair in messy twin braids and covered in flowers, a smile on my face as I held up the clumsy daisy chain I’d made.
After a long moment, my mom sighs and sets her mug down.
“I thought you were better off with your grandmother,” she says, her voice a little sad.
“It was a cop-out. I was young. I wanted to see the world outside Havenwood. I didn’t want my mom’s life, and I thought that was what would happen if I stayed.
” She toys with a paper bead. “I told myself she knew how to care for you better than I did. That you deserved someone who knew what they were doing. I was a fuck up my whole life, but she could teach you to be more.”
I’m not sure if the lessons my grandmother taught me were the right ones or if I just took the wrong messages from them. I can’t remember.
My relationship with my mother was always going to be complicated, but I put roadblocks up to keep her out of my life, to prove I was like my grandmother, not like her. And I started young, before my grandmother died, and left the two of us alone.
When I stopped wanting to make jewelry with her at ten.
“Everything my mother did that used to chap my ass,” she continues as she randomly arranges the clutter surrounding her, “you embraced. I told myself you were happy and that I was happy. But one day, I noticed you weren’t happy and maybe never had been.
” She pauses, her hands stopping. “I’m not going to say I should’ve stayed and tried to be a good mother to you the way my mother thought she was to me because that might have turned out a lot worse for both of us.
I can’t take away the past. I certainly don’t deserve a do-over, and anyway, you did a good job raising yourself.
But I’m here for you now, anytime you need me.
I’ve been trying, but I was scared to say something, you know?
Christ, you mother hen me with the groceries and the bills—what could you ever need me for?
” She sniffles, brushing her nose with the back of her hand.
In a way, she’s right. I don’t need her to be my mom like I did twenty years ago, but maybe we can be there for each other anyway. “Tonight,” I answer, waving my hand to encompass everything. That’s what I need her for. “I really fucked up.”
She smiles. “That’s life, baby girl. Fucking around and finding out is how you grow. And I think you’re learning the value of your happiness, so it’s not as bad as it looks. Give it time.”
It looks pretty bad, but I’ll get through whatever happens next. I still have Benji.
“Once Diana cools down, go talk to her. And Milo…” she pauses, then shakes her head.
“His happiness isn’t your responsibility.
You’ve been a good friend to him for years, but he needs to grow up and get over himself.
Maybe the two of you need some space for him to recognize that.
” She reaches over and taps my finger. “You’re still wearing his ring. Do you have one from Benji?”
I glance down. She’s right. I am still wearing the ring Milo gave me.
I pull it off and set it gently on the table, then slip my hand into my pocket.
I slide the wedding band on. Since the engagement ring doesn’t fit and I don’t want to risk losing it, I slide it on just to show her, then hold out my hand.
My mom’s eyes are like saucers as she makes gimme hands at me.
“It doesn’t fit,” I say, sliding the diamond ring off and dropping it into her hand.
“Benji must be really good at his job,” she says, inspecting the band, then rummaging around the table for something.
“It’s fake,” I say, but suddenly, I’m unsure. What if it’s real?
My mom snorts and pulls a magnifying glass out, scattering containers holding closures. After two minutes of studying the diamond, she leaves the room.
It's weird, but not weird for her. Hopefully, she doesn’t drop that ring somewhere. Finding it in this house would be like a needle in a haystack, and even if I don’t want to wear it, I don’t want to lose it for real.
I get up to make myself a cup of tea while waiting for her to return. When she returns, I’m dropping the teabag into the compost bucket. She’s holding the UV light she uses when making resin jewelry. She sets it on the table, sticks the ring under, and turns it on.
I take a sip of tea and say nothing since I have no clue what she’s doing.
“I can’t believe you were carrying this ring around in your pocket ,” she says in a tight voice. “It’s glowing blue.”
“What does that mean?”
“Most real diamonds glow blue under UV light,” she says. “Also, most real diamonds have flaws, and this one has a faint hazy patch if you look closely. So I don’t believe this diamond was created in a lab, and it’s not fake.”
“How do you know so much about diamonds?” I ask. I’m not ready to believe, but what if she’s right? “You don’t use them in your jewelry.”
“Internet rabbit holes,” she says, putting the ring back in my hand. “Be careful with this. I don’t know what Benji paid for it, and I don’t know how to rate diamonds, but this might have cost him the equivalent of a new car. A nice one.”
“He didn’t buy it.”
I tell her how we got it, and her eyes widen.
“If you two aren’t attached to it, you should get it appraised and look into selling it.”
“We should try to give it back.” It’s too big for my finger, so I cut a length of vegan leather from a spool, loop it through the ring, and tie it around my neck. It’s safer there than in my pocket.
My mom nods. “Good idea. The ring might have some bad energy—you and Benji don’t need that. I’m hungry. How does midnight Kraft dinner sound?”
I tuck the ring into my shirt as my stomach growls. “It sounds good.”