Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
Salem
From the driver’s seat, I take my camera and zoom in on the woman sitting on her front porch.
The house is old and small, some rotting blue rambler she inherited from her precious father who died before I was even born. She’s got a cigarette in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and a look on her face that could curdle milk.
Some things never change.
Click.
She doesn't know I’m here. Or maybe she does. Maybe she felt the shift in the air when I pulled up across the street, a shattered version of who I used to be.
My finger presses on the shutter button, not because I need another picture—Lord knows I have more of those than I should—but because this is easier than talking to her. Easier than breathing.
Click.
There’s a new wrinkle near her mouth. A new streak of silver in her red hair that reminds me so much of my own.
She looks older than I remember, but still naive, if that’s even possible.
My hands start to shake, blurring the focus in the lens.
I drop the camera into my lap and sigh as Beautiful by 10 Years plays from my speakers.
I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing here. My bags are packed, and the back of the Jeep is filled with everything I care enough to bring with me. There's an hour until my flight. Symbiotic's tour manager is waiting for me in Los Angeles. If I don't leave soon, I'll miss the plane.
But maybe it’s the grief. Maybe it’s the hole Logan left in me the shape of all the things I'll never get the chance to become. Maybe I just wanted to see the original blueprint of my damage, to remind myself that I wasn’t born broken. I was raised that way.
This woman has an entire flash drive dedicated to her, and yet I don’t have a single photo of my husband. I fought so hard not to become her that I lost him in the process, and I'll spend the rest of my life hating myself for it.
She takes another drag from her cigarette, eyes a shade darker than mine on the horizon. I know she thinks I’m the one at fault. She’d rather rot alone in that house than take responsibility for anything.
“I guess I’m just a horrible mother.”
“You're just too much like your father.”
“I pray you never have to raise a child like you.”
Still… I miss her.
And I hate myself for that, too.
Picking the camera back up, I capture another picture. “Smile, Mom.”
And this time, unlike countless times before where I visited from afar…
I open the door and get out of the car.
Dead grass crunches under my shoes, loud enough to set my teeth on edge. I half expect her to look over, to toss out an insult or curse, but she doesn’t. She just smokes and ignores my presence. It reminds me so much of my youth that I want to throw a fit like the child I never got to be.
Look at me, Momma. For once in your goddamn life, see me.
I climb the porch steps slowly, one hand clutching my camera. Rickety wood groans beneath my weight, the top step nearly cracking.
She speaks without looking up. “You finally decided to come out, then, instead of sitting over there like a creep?” Her cutting voice sounds the same, absent of anything warm.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
That earns me a brow arched in amusement. Or disdain. I was never good at telling the difference. “Well, well. I see you're still a cunt.”
And there it is.
My lips twist as I lean against the railing. “And I see you're single again. What was the reason this time? Dinner too cold? Couldn't get his dick up?”
“Don't you talk to me like that, I'm your fucking mother,” she spits, wine sloshing onto the deck.
I shake my head at her hypocrisy and swallow back all the words that want to claw their way free. “I don't want to fight.”
“Then why are you here?”
That makes me hesitate, because the truth is too complicated to voice out loud. Too exposing.
I just needed my mom.
Instead, I say, “I want to talk.”
For a second, something flickers across her expression, something dangerously close to affection. But it’s gone before I can catch it, just like everything else in my life.
She taps her cigarette against the edge of an ashtray. “Hope you brought your own booze.”
Snorting, I drop into the seat beside her and set my camera on the ground. “As much as I wish I were drunk right now, this is a sober conversation.”
My mother scrutinizes me with narrowed eyes as she takes a healthy swig of her drink. “If you've knocked yourself up, I'm not taking care of it. Figure that shit out on your own just like I did.”
Anger boils my blood despite all of my attempts at remaining calm. “By figure it out, do you mean marry a pervert who constantly cheats on you and molests your underage daughter?”
Her lips curl back over her teeth. “I put a roof over your head, didn't I? Fed you? Clothed you? You had everything you needed.”
“That’s what you're required to do to stay out of prison,” I shoot back, rolling my eyes. “Congratulations, you did the bare minimum. Mother of the fucking year over here.”
She slams her drink down on the arm of her chair. “You ungrateful little slut.”
“Ungrateful?” A bitter laugh bursts out of me.
“You think I’m ungrateful for surviving a childhood that I'll need decades of therapy to process? For learning to lie to my friends about why I couldn't have sleepovers because my stepdad liked to walk around naked? For learning to take care of you every time he left when it should’ve been the other way around?”
Her cigarette trembles between two fingers, but she doesn’t drop it. “You don’t know what it was like. I had no one.”
“Yeah? Neither did I.”
The silence that stretches between us feels like barbed wire wrapping around my throat.
I've learned to live with this, to let the “I want my mommy" moments come and go, but they always stick around like a festering wound.
Sometimes, I don't know what's worse—having a parent who's actually dead or one that might as well be.
My mind drifts back to Logan, and the pain that swells in my heart takes my breath away.
“Well,” she says finally, sipping her drink, “you turned out alright.”
It’s not a compliment. More like… bewildered resignation, like she can’t fathom how I made it through when she never could.
I clench my jaw and blink away the tears that aren't for her. I stopped crying over this woman years ago. “Yeah. No thanks to you.”
I should leave it at that, but the weight on my chest is worse now than it was before, an aching loss burrowing so deep that I can't yank it free. It fucking hurts.
With a sniffle, I pull the camera into my lap. “You want to know why I’m here? The only man who’s ever loved me died tonight, and I want to know if I could have loved him back without turning into you.”
She scoffs in response. “So you’re here to blame me for that, too?”
Sighing heavily, I press my palms into my eyes. “No. I'm already doing a good enough job blaming myself."
A beat of silence passes before she speaks again. “Was it your fault? Losing him?”
My throat tightens painfully. “I think… I lost him a long time ago. I was too busy running from everything that reminded me of you to even give him a chance. And now I'll never be able to.”
She looks away and gazes out at the darkened sky.
Crickets begin to chirp with the incoming nightfall.
“When I got pregnant with you, I was barely legal.
Hardly knew how to be an adult, let alone a mother.
Your father up and left the moment he found out, and I did what I thought was best. Even if you think it wasn't good enough, it was all I could do with the cards I was dealt.”
I nod and bite my lip until it bleeds. “Yeah. I figured.”
Same old song and dance. No matter how many times we have this conversation, we always end up in the same spot.
It's useless with her. She'll never admit she fucked up, and I'll never forgive her, so what's the point anymore?
What's done is done. She can't change how she treated me, and I can't change how I treated Logan.
All we are, and all we'll ever be, is collateral damage in someone else’s story. Fucked up people raising fucked up people in a cycle that's doomed to repeat itself until the end of time.
Standing up, I sling my camera over my shoulder. “Thanks for the honesty. Your version of it, anyway.”
I don’t look back, because I’ve heard all I needed to hear.
Even if the accident hadn't happened, even if Logan had survived and we'd gotten our chance to try again…
I would have ruined it anyway. It's in my blood.
Nature and nurture both play a role and in this case, I'm double fucked. I was always doomed to fail.
But just as I reach the sidewalk, intent on never showing my face here again, I hear the sharp click of a lighter. A soft inhale. And then…
“I’m sorry,” she calls.
I freeze, nearly stumbling. It's the first time in my life I've ever heard those words leave her mouth. That little sliver of hope inside my chest keeps me rooted to the spot.
Until my mother finishes her sentence. “I'm sorry if all I had to give wasn't good enough for you.”
Just like that, any hope I had left immediately winks out. The wind kicks up around me, rustling dead leaves along the curb. Somehow, it feels like my inner child finally saying goodbye to a parent who never existed.
I don’t turn around. No, she won't get that satisfaction from me. But I do nod, just once. Then I take a step toward my car, and another, each one more freeing than the last.
This time, when I drive away, leaving her alone in her misery, it’s not out of spite. It's not out of anger, or resentment, or cowardice.
It's just out of acceptance.
The kind that comes with letting go.