Chapter 32 #3
I remember when you were born. The shock of you, so loud and perfect. I only wanted one daughter, but your birth was a gift anyway.
I thought, “I can’t possibly be trusted with this.
” I tried anyway. I really did. The best I could ever do was to keep you safe from the worst of it, but I see now that wasn’t enough.
I wish I could have told you about the dark water I was always swimming in, but I didn’t want to drown you too.
I see now that it found you anyway. That’s my fault.
You were never a burden, even if I made it feel that way. You were my reason for breathing, and sometimes that felt like a punishment, but mostly it felt like a gift. I’m sorry I never figured out how to say that out loud, or how to be gentle.
It’s too late for me, but it’s not too late for you.
I am going to a better place, where the sun will always shine, and where I no longer have to carry this heavy sadness in my heart, feeling it rip me apart day by day.
I am going to be free like a bird, like I always wanted.
Don’t grieve for me, don’t fall apart because of me.
I want you to fly in a way I never could.
I love you, my little butterfly.
Mom
By the time I was finished reading the letter, I was weeping.
It was the kind of crying that left the body aching, wrung out, scoured raw.
I sat on the floor with my back to the wall, and my knees bent to my chest, the letter falling from my grip to spread like a white flag on the grimy floor. I could have lain there for hours.
I thought I would be angry. Instead, I just missed her. Missed the version of her I’d spent my whole life resenting, the one who was always letting me down, the one who was a punchline at sleepovers, the one who called me in a blackout and left voicemails I never listened to.
I missed the way her voice used to fill the house, even if it was only to curse at the sink or shout at the news. I missed the weight of her presence, which had always been an obligation, a tether, a thing to escape from, until it was finally gone.
I wondered if that was the trick of grief, that it rewrote history to make the villain bearable. Or maybe it was just easier, for the first time, to see her not as a monster but as a person.
A person who tried, and failed, and failed again, but never stopped wanting something better for me.
This was her first time on this planet too, and I forget that.
Mothers carry the weight of their sadness too, a rock on their shoulders. Often, their sadness bleeds into their daughters. Sometimes, that sadness is invisible, rarely seen.
But with my mother, her sadness was a beacon, calling out for help, corrupting everything in its path.
In time, I got tired of listening, of trying, of hoping.
I wept for her, and for Lillian, and for the child I’d once been who believed there were still summers ahead with lemonade and easy forgiveness.
I wept because the letter was proof that she’d seen me, that she’d always seen me, and that everything I’d worked so hard to forget had mattered, after all.
The wall that I had built around myself began to dissolve, brick by brick, and I wanted somebody to hold me and to cherish me. I yearned for the closeness I never had growing up, the safety I never felt.
All along, she had some awareness of her shitty behavior. That knowledge hurt even worse. She knew, and she couldn’t stop; we weren’t enough.
Nothing is ever enough for an addict.
She had an incurable darkness. It wasn’t our fault; we did everything we could, and it was not enough.
It was her choice to fall and break.
She was born with ghosts, she lived with those ghosts, and died with those ghosts.
Glancing up, I realized that the sky had fallen to a grey-white hue. Moonlight filtered through the window. Time had stood still within these walls. I didn’t even realize how much time had passed.
It was as if I were frozen, like a ghost, drifting through this house and unraveling memories that were rotting in my mind in slow motion.
I pulled my phone out and checked it. Caiden had not responded. I had no way to get back to the motel, unless I called a cab, but I did not want to allow a stranger to see me hobbling out of his house, tears staining my cheeks, hobbling as if I were a dead thing.
More minutes passed by as I sat there, a lifeless spirit, contemplating my grief.
My phone lit up with a notification, and I looked down, expecting to see Caiden’s name, but instead saw an unsaved number.
Hey, Amelia. This is Dante. I ran into Caiden at a bar.
He caught me up on everything. I heard about your mother.
I’m deeply sorry. I came back to town after I left.
Didn’t find anything worth committing to anywhere else.
I saw your mom in town sometimes, and I would think about you.
I know this can’t be easy. Just want to know how you are doing, and I’m here if you want to chat while you are in town.
Memories came at me full force.
Dante.
My almost lover. The boy who took my virginity. The one who could’ve been if life had gone differently.
Then, anger.
While I was dealing with packing up memories of my mother today, Caiden had decided to go to a bar and drink. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t answer my text. He was probably too fucked up to even check his phone or remember that he needed to pick me up once I was done.
I know he was dealing with his own ghosts, but it hurt how selfish he could be.
The text sat there, blue and unread, as if it were caught on a wire, unable to cross the last inch to my brain.
I felt nothing at first but the jangle of longing and shame, which was its own sort of nostalgia. I wiped at my cheeks, knowing I was a mess, knowing he would remember me this way — salt-streaked, raw, the girl who never learned how to exit a room without breaking something.
If I’d been a different sort of person—a normal one, the kind who knows how to say “thank you” or “it’s good to hear from you, even now”—I might have responded with something like gratitude.
Instead, I stared at his message, feeling all the old, bad electricity running through my chest, and typed.
Not doing great. If you’re serious, you can come get me. At my mother’s house. Don’t want to be here. Caiden is not answering. I think you know the address?
He responded instantly.
Give me twenty. I remember the way.