Chapter 31 Ellis #4
“I’m not a religious person,” Rachel said on a heavy exhale.
“But this one scripture always stuck out in my mind—pure poetry, if you ask me. John 15:13: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
It hurts my heart, and my soul aches that it came to that, but I couldn’t be more proud of you, Liv—for what you did.
I’ll be forever thankful that Bri’s mother will never experience the agony of losing a child.
That she’ll never have to feel what I feel every morning I open my eyes and face another day without you living and breathing on this planet. ”
Liv’s face crumpled, and she buried her face in her hands. My chest ached as I watched her, as if I could feel her grief and pain flooding my heart. Dove hastily wiped her eyes beside me and cracked her neck.
“Tell her I’m sorry I was such an asshole to her,” Liv whispered.
“Tell her I’m sorry I was so angry. That I get what she means about choosing anger over sadness, because it hurts less—and that I could redirect my pain of losing Dad at her instead of the obvious truth.
Tell her I’m sorry that I threw her feelings in her face.
That they didn’t save him, and it was her fault.
Tell her I’m sorry I expected her to hold back the ocean with her hands. ”
Dove’s voice shook as she relayed the words to Rachel, echoing Liv each time she finished a sentence, uttering them word for word, as if getting it exactly right was important.
And it was. This moment was important for both Rachel and Liv, and Dove spoke clearly around the ache I knew she felt in the pit of her stomach. I was in awe of her once more.
Rachel’s mouth pulled downward as she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but not a sob either, just something raw that sat between the two. She shook her head.
“I knew,” she rasped. “I knew you blamed me. I would have taken every drop of that if it meant you didn’t have to feel it. I was willing to take the anger if it meant you didn’t have to face the blistering agony of it.”
Liv shook her head and came around the chair, resting on her knees in front of her mother, her hands on the arm of the chair. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I’m so goddamn sorry that I made her carry my anger on top of everything else.”
Rachel’s shoulders shook as Dove spoke, and she shook her head vehemently.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Her voice was urgent.
“I’m your mother, Liv. I’m here to protect you and shield you, and if that meant taking that horrific moment in our lives from you and carrying it, then I would. There’s nothing to forgive.”
We sat in the hum of the room for a moment as the old grief finally aired its wounds while the newer grief listened and bathed the sores.
My chest felt scraped clean by it all, and I stared around at the well-put-together room, its seemingly normal state, and thought of my own mother and how her brittle hope and fear paraded through the house dressed as practicality, and of all the conversations we’d never had.
Dove slid her thumb along my knuckles, a small anchor as we all stood poised on this teetering ledge of unbound emotion. She didn’t say anything, didn’t try to prompt or fill the silence—just held the air open for all of us.
And then Rachel drew in a heavy breath and let it out.
“I knew I sounded like a broken record that night,” she murmured, her eyes slightly unfocused as she stared down at her hands.
“I sounded crazy, as usual, and I knew how much you hated it when I said I had a feeling. I hated it too, truly. I hated being that mother. But I had woken up from my nap with the taste of blood in my mouth and pain in my back, and I just… this all-consuming dread filled me, and I was so afraid for you.”
Rachel pressed her lips into a thin line.
“It was the same feeling I had when I woke the morning your father killed himself. I woke with a lurch, as if I had been falling, and I knew. I just knew.”
Liv rested her head on the arm of the chair, her shoulders hunched.
“She’s right next to you,” Dove murmured, pointing to where Liv crouched. Rachel blinked at the spot, raising a shaky hand and resting it on what I’m sure she thought was the arm of the couch but was really the back of Liv’s head.
Liv let out a small, weeping sound in the back of her throat.
“I’m sorry that I made my fear your storm,” Rachel whispered hoarsely.
“I’m sorry that I could never tell the difference between protecting you and holding you close for my own selfish gain.
I’m sorry that I couldn’t work out what was superstition and what was real.
” She shook her head and swallowed thickly.
“But I’ll never be sorry for loving you loudly, and I’m not sorry for knowing when the air around you changed.
It was never meant to be about control, Liv.
My family—your father and you—were always my compass, and when I lost your father… you were my only true north left.”
Liv lifted her head, and I watched as Rachel’s hand remained on the arm of the sofa while Liv gazed up at her mother.
“Tell her I get it now,” she whispered. “And tell her I know she’s more than just my mother.
That she’s also just a woman going through life like all of us.
Tell her I think she’s inspiring. Tell her she needs to find like-minded people and really understand the gift she has.
Because it is a gift. I’d still be alive if I had listened to her. ”
Dove repeated the words, and Rachel softly began to shake her head.
“No, love,” she uttered. “Death comes for all of us, regardless of the warnings. When it’s time, it’s time. No amount of sputtering from me was going to stop that.”
“Then tell her I love her,” Liv whimpered mournfully. “Tell her I love her and that no matter where I go, I’ll be waiting for her.”
My heart thundered in my chest as Dove spoke. I watched Rachel and Liv and knew just how easily this could have been me with my own mother—goodbyes tearing from unwilling lips as the threat of death loomed, taking young lives too soon.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked hoarsely, wiping my eyes with shaky hands. “How did you… how have you been… how have you coped since losing her?” I sniffed loudly. “What did you hold on to?”
Rachel’s eyes softened as she looked at me.
“Nothing at first, love,” she said gently.
“I hardly left my bed. I got to know my bedroom ceiling really well. But I knew I couldn’t just lie there, and I imagined what Liv would be thinking if she was watching me.
She’d be screaming at me to get up. So I started small.
I started making coffee again. Making my bed.
Showering. Small steps that led to bigger ones.
I did things we had once enjoyed together.
I made wind chimes, went back to pottery, and I talked to her—even though I couldn’t be sure she was here.
Lying in bed depressed was never going to bring her back, and I was squandering life when she had lost hers. It didn’t seem fair.”
I swallowed and nodded, and Dove brushed her thumb along my knuckles once more.
“What happens then?” Rachel asked Dove expectantly, as if it were normal for her to reunite ghosts with loved ones.
“We have no idea,” I said softly.
“You’re into tarot cards?” Dove asked suddenly, glancing at Rachel. “I see you have a few decks.”
“Oh yes,” Rachel said with a watery smile.
“For years and years. My first ever reading was as a young woman, down on the pier in Santa Monica, from this beautiful woman who said some things that just… blew my mind. I had Liv with me for that reading, actually. Well, she was in my stomach at the time.”
I let out a soft laugh, and Liv smiled up at her mother with a shake of her head.
“Do you want to see the deck we used when Liv appeared?” Dove asked, eyeing my handbag. I frowned. Had she put them in there?
“Oh, absolutely,” Rachel said with interest.
Dove gestured to my bag, and I shook my head in disbelief before handing it to her. She rifled through it, pulled out the faded velvet pouch, handed the bag back to me, and held the cards to her chest.
“These were my grandmother’s,” Dove explained. “I’m retiring them once we get home, but it just seems fitting for you to see them, I guess.”
Rachel nodded, her eyes expectant, as Dove drew the old, faded cards from the pouch and placed them on the table between us. Rachel leaned forward, eyeing the cards with a spark in her gaze.
“May I?” she asked, gesturing to the deck.
“Of course.”
I watched as Rachel picked them up, her hands a little shaky as she held them, a small smile tugging at her lips.
“These are very old,” she murmured. “Look how faded they are.”
“They were my grandmother’s first deck,” Dove explained, her eyes shimmering. “She passed recently.”
Rachel’s lips thinned, and she looked at Dove. “I’m sorry.”
Dove shrugged with a small smile, and Rachel continued to inspect the cards, an air of ease around her as she handled them. Liv watched with rapt attention, soaking up any time she had left with her mother.
“Oh,” Rachel murmured, her brow furrowing as she stopped at a card, her eyes practically zeroing in on it. She pressed her lips together and frowned, her mouth moving inaudibly before I caught her whisper. “It can’t be. No.”
“Is everything okay?” Dove asked nervously, and Liv looked down at the card with a frown.
Rachel looked back up and held the card in front of her, her gaze locking on Dove.
“Was your grandmother Margaret Mystique?”