52. Colson
FIFTY-TWO
COLSON
A soft whooshing of water rams into my legs. Like a wave rolling onto shore, it wraps around me, wetting my shins and calves. When I look down, there’s a bandage over my left leg from the knee down. It’s submerged in the water but miraculously hasn’t absorbed a drop of it. I reach down and smooth my hand over the scratchy material to see a hole in my hand healed over by marred, reddish skin. It’s the size of a quarter and as much as I want to freak out over it, my body remains calm.
I take a step back. The water reaches for me all over again, stretching to claim my legs. My feet are bare below it, catching on a surface I can’t make out until I look up and see myself in Mom’s house.
Why is there water inside?
I glance around, my eyes climbing the walls and checking the ceiling for a leak. Perhaps a pipe burst, and it’s letting out water. Only, I don’t come across the culprit.
I don’t come across anything .
The house is spotless. The yellow tinge to the wallpaper has even cleared. The futon in the living room is gone. Outside of the cookie jar, there’s no dishes or random trash on the kitchen counters. The sink shines back at me.
And yet there are two feet of water bypassing the floor and trim.
A hushed voice travels down the hallway, and I swivel toward it, calling out, “Hello?” My face scrunches in confusion as I try to pinpoint where it comes from. “Is someone here?”
A laugh comes next, and I dart in the direction of the rooms. I check my bedroom, the bathroom, and push open Mom’s bedroom door last.
A silhouette of a person stands in the far corner. “Hello?” I pause. “Who are you, and why are you in my house?” I glance down to find that there’s no water in the bedroom. An invisible barrier is set up at the door frame, keeping it confined to the hall and open living space. I swallow down the uncertainty suddenly coursing through me. “Do you know why the place is flooded?” I ask, needing answers.
The person spins, brown hair sweeping off their shoulder when a clear, beautiful face regards me. “I don’t see any water,” comments the silhouette, stepping away from the corner and closer to the middle of the room. The only piece of furniture inside is the bed, where this person sits down.
I look down to my feet again, not understanding how she doesn’t see it. It’s right fucking there, and by the looks of it, it’s another inch or two higher than it was initially. Wherever the leak is, it’s gotten worse in the small amount of time I’ve been standing here.
“How?” I question, pointing down. “It’s right there. You couldn’t miss it if you tried.”
I catch the end of her shrugging when I glance back up. Her body is small, but she looks strong and healthy. I squint, trying to get a better look at her, but it’s not as bright in the bedrooms as it was in the living room.
“The only thing I see is my son,” she simply says, her lips twisting up into the most genuine smile. A rush of emotion works through my heart and body. I look closer, noting the color of her eyes, how the hazel is so much more vivid than I remember it. How her teeth are as white as the bandage on my leg. How her face is clear from wrinkles and blemishes. There are no bags under her eyes, and her clothes are clean.
It can’t be.
“Mom? Is that you?”
She chuckles, and it takes me back to some of my first memories as a toddler. Before her sickness got in the driver’s seat and took control of the direction of her life. It’s airy and light. The chirp of a baby chick on a Spring day. The smidge of dew coating the grass early in the morning. A kite soaring in the wind with no possibilities of it freefalling to its death.
“Of course it’s me,” she says. “Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know…I don’t understand. You’re…you’re supposed to be dead.”
She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “That did happen, didn’t it?”
A surge of grief and anger clutches me by my throat, the water from the floor suddenly in my eyes. I have a hell of a time blinking through it. Half a sob works its way into my mouth before the water returns to my shins. “You left me.”
“Oh, darling,” she mewls around a sorrowful tone. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” I accuse, burning up from the inside out. The water floods higher, sneaking past my kneecaps. “How can you be? You only ever cared about one thing.” And it surely wasn’t me.
Her face falls. Her beautiful fucking face. She’s the same person from the picture Aunt Bess gave me for Christmas. She’s not sporting a pregnant belly, but there’s life in all of her features.
“That’s not true,” she tells me, standing from the bed and stepping closer. She’s still half a room away. I hate her and want her gone, but I also really want her to make the trek to the door so I can hug her. Just one last time. “I loved you deeply, Colson. I still do love you. I’ll never stop.”
An ugly tear seeps from my eye and drips down my cheek. “You say that, but I don’t feel it.”
“I made plenty of mistakes when I was with you,” she agrees. “But buried beneath all of my shortcomings was my love for you. Perhaps it was hidden, but it never faded. I’m sorry I couldn’t show that to you.”
“You could’ve tried,” I clip out. “You were too busy doing whatever the fuck you wanted. Clyde Lincoln , really Mom? You married him, and he’s my father? Why didn’t you ever tell me? I deserved to know the truth.”
She gives me a sad smile. “He was one of many mistakes. I couldn’t see that at the time because I was so deep in it that he felt like home to me. But now…” She averts her gaze, fumbling with her fingers. “I can see I’ve hurt you, and I really, truly am sorry for that. I never wanted to cause you pain. I wasn’t good when it came to feelings. I can admit that now.”
The sob that I swallowed down makes itself known again. My eyes fill with tears. I don’t bother hiding them. I need her to see the truth of what she left behind. I need her to look at her son and understand how deeply she scarred him—and how that’ll stay with him forever.
“There’s a part of me that wants to hate you for what you’ve done. For all the bullshit you put me through, for never making me feel like I was enough to forget about all the other stuff. But then my heart wins out because…I still love you. I always fucking will, and that’s the hardest part in all of this,” I tell her.
I don’t want to care, but it’s etched into the marrow of my bones. I can’t get away from it even if I tried.
“You're just like Bess in that sense,” she tells me with a small smile, walking closer again. “She always had the biggest heart. Always put herself in other people’s problems thinking she could fix them if she tried hard enough. That can be both a strength and a weakness, Colson.”
“She paid Clyde off to stay out of my life,” I mutter out of the blue. “I could’ve known my father, but she kept him from me. Did you know that?”
Mom gives me a rueful smile and shakes her head. “I told you, a strength and a weakness. She did the right thing, Colson. Don’t be mad at her when she was only trying to protect you from something I wasn’t strong enough to.”
She cancels out the last few steps and stands in front of me. The water sloshes around my upper thighs now and she notices, reaching out until her palm rests against my ribcage. The water moves violently below me, bubbling into a wavy mess without the added heat.
Emotion like I’ve never felt surges through me like an electrical current. It renders me immobile. All I can do is blink at the woman in front of me who has put me through so much yet is telling me to let go of it all.
How can I possibly let go of all the pain she caused?
“Easy,” she answers like she’s in my head, hearing my thoughts as I’m thinking them. “You have to forgive.”
“How can I do that when everyone has betrayed me?”
Her. Clyde. Bess.
She tilts her head, and her eyes glow a beautiful shade of green that draws me in. I blink and there’s another person in the room. My eyes cut to the form standing behind her.
A ridge forms between my brows. “Violet?”
“She hasn’t betrayed you,” Mom points out.
Violet turns on her foot, looking around like she’s trying to figure out where she is. Like a double-sided mirror, she can’t see us, but we can see her.
“Did you bring her here?” I question my mom, frantically looking between the woman who raised me and the love of my life.
“I know she is,” Mom says softly.
“What?”
The water rises higher, and I can’t move my legs. Mom’s hand remains on my chest, and it’s like I can feel her heartbeat merging with mine, twisting into a double helix of emotion. The kind that encompasses me when I’m with Violet.
Pure love.
“I know she’s the love of your life, but you pushed her away when you needed her most.”
Embarrassment clutches me like I’m a football soaring over a field laden with hybrid greens. “Because I thought she didn’t deserve the weight of what I carried. It doesn’t matter if I want her when the fact is that she deserves someone who can give her more than I can.”
“There is no one better suited for her than you, my love. Look at her.”
I glance behind Mom, settling my gaze on Violet’s wispy brown hair and curious eyes. They lock with mine, and it’s like everything around us fades. The house disappears, the water draining and absorbing back into the dirt below. Mom vanishes, too, though her voice remains.
“Look around you, Colson.”
“The water is gone but so is the house,” I observe out loud.
“No more of the bad,” she confirms. “She settles you, and you do the same for her.”
“How can you know that?” I swallow, trying to push down the lump in my throat. “You’re dead.”
She huffs out a laugh as if that fact holds no merit. “I can feel the way she looks at you.”
“How?”
“Because I’m everywhere and have clarity I never had before.” She breathes out a soft breath, and then Violet is gone, and the house is back, including the water.
It catapults to my neck, little droplets jumping into my mouth. “What the fuck?”
I begin to panic, knowing it won’t be long until the water moves high enough to cover my head. What will I do then?
“You’ll reach for her,” Mom says like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Don’t force yourself into misery because you’re afraid to feel what I couldn’t give you. I kept you from love, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold yourself from it, too. You deserve it, darling. You deserve to be loved and for it to come in a way that calms and lifts you.”
My lower lip trembles, moving in sync with the sloshing water. “Mom, I can’t…you have to get rid of this water.”
“I can’t, Colson. You’re the only one with the power to do that.”
“But how?”
Make it stop.
“I just told you. Now, go,” she encourages with a film over her voice that mutes her words. “You have people waiting for you.”
“I don’t want to leave you yet.”
The water covers my mouth and washes over my eyes, too. Mom turns into this blurry, watery image before me, and before I can figure out how to stay, my vision cuts out.