Chapter 1 Molly #2
I have missed you, and loved you, and carried you with me all this time.
X
Georgia
404--555--3660
Jesse leans against the wall, arms crossed. “She was here,” I tell him. “She found my address on a patient file, which is a blatant HIPAA violation—-and left this note like a fucking coward.”
“If she had knocked,” Jesse asks, “would you have let her in?”
“No,” I snap.
He tilts his head, letting me stew in my own response. “So she isn’t welcome face--to--face. She shouldn’t have sent a letter. And if she hadn’t gotten in touch with you today, that would somehow be even worse, wouldn’t it?”
“That is so unfair,” I seethe. “Excuse me for being a mess just hours after finding out that the mother I thought was dead has actually been alive and well for decades—-”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know she’s been well.”
I stare at him, incredulous. “Are you kidding me? You really think I should forget that I grew up thinking she was dead because for twenty--five years she forgot to drop me a line and say she was alive?”
“You don’t know she forgot to do that, either,” Jesse says evenly.
“That’s even worse! Then she consciously decided to not be part of my life?”
Jesse tugs me closer. “Baby, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be upset. But I do think you are going to want to hear her out. At some point, when you are ready.”
“And what am I supposed to say? Hi, Mom, so nice of you to drop back into my life, and by the way can I use your Netflix password?”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he offers. “You just have to listen.”
Mars, Venus. I don’t want Jesse solving my problems. I want someone willing to hear me vent about them. So I tell him I’m craving pistachio ice cream and that I’m going to Cumby’s. Instead, I park in the empty lot of the elementary school and FaceTime Tabs.
“You all right?” she says, immediately picking up. “You never call out of the blue.”
“Not really.” I can barely get the words out.
Tabs’s eyes go wide. I can see all the worst--case scenarios chasing through her thoughts. “I’m fine,” I tell her quickly. “So’s Jesse, and my dad and Evie. And the baby. No one’s dying.” I clear my throat. “It’s, um, my mother.”
She crawls onto her couch, knees drawn up to her chest. “They found DNA?” Tabs whispers. This, of course, is the holy grail for families who lost someone during 9/11 whose remains are yet to be identified.
“No,” I say. “She’s alive.”
Tabs’s mouth drops open. “What? How?”
I tell her everything, ending with the letter Georgia left in my mailbox.
“Jesse thinks I should talk to her, but I can’t.
It’s like I have this brick wall between us, now that I know she isn’t a victim.
Even if I give her the benefit of the doubt and she was, I don’t know, incapacitated in some way .
. . she eventually recovered. Why not come home?
She must have known my father was looking for her.
I mean, fuck, what kind of mother leaves a newborn?
” I take a deep breath. “Do you remember how we used to talk about what we missed most about our parents? You said it was your dad seeing you graduate from college, because you were the first in your family to do it. I said it was stupid, ordinary stuff—-making bunny ears with shoelaces so I could learn how to tie them easier or saving me the last bit of cookie dough from the bowl even though it had raw eggs in it and she knew better. But I could have been doing all those things with her. Instead, she let us think she was dead for a quarter of a century. And I know I should be thrilled that wasn’t true, but I’m not. I’m just so fucking angry.”
Tabs is silent for so long that I think our call might have frozen. I frown at the screen. “Tabs?” I ask. “You still there?”
She sucks in a breath, her voice quiet. “Do you know how many times I imagined a different ending to my story? That someone would call and say my dad hadn’t been there on 9/11, or better yet, that he’d walk through the door and tell me himself?
I’d give anything to find out that this was all a mistake.
” Her gaze meets mine squarely. “I’d give anything for the chance to be angry at him. ”
I’m assembling the Black Forest cake I make annually to bring to my dad’s place for Christmas when a white paper napkin is suddenly dangled in front of my face. “Truce?” Jesse asks.
In these days leading up to Christmas, Jesse and I have managed to avoid each other.
I spent twelve hours relocating residents of a long--term--care facility after an electrical fire from a Christmas tree swept through their building.
He was called in to polygraph three URI frat bros, to learn which one of them sexually assaulted an unconscious girl at a party.
I fold my arms across my apron. “Which frat bro was it?” I ask.
He leans against the counter. “Plot twist: all three.”
“Ugh.” I grimace.
Jesse nods at my abdomen. “Our child will never, and I mean never, take a drink from someone at a party.”
“Wow. I didn’t think you’d let her out of the house till she was forty.”
“I won’t. I’m talking about Tupperware parties. Perimenopause parties.”
“Women don’t throw perimenopause parties,” I tell him.
“Well, that feels like a missed opportunity.” He cages me in his arms. “I don’t want to fight, Molly.”
“We weren’t fighting.”
“This is your life, your mother. I’m not going to tell you what I’d do. I’m just going to sit on the bench until you call me into the game.”
“So in this metaphor, I’m the coach?”
He grazes his palms over my belly. “Stagecoach, maybe.”
“Are you really making a joke about my weight while you’re trying to negotiate a cease--fire?”
“Yes. Is it working?” He presses his forehead against mine. “You want to leave Georgia on read for the next thirty years? Go for it. Whatever makes you happy. You’ve got me, and you’ve got our baby. Plenty of family. No need to be greedy.”
I breathe in the spice and soap of him. “I thought you’d be mad at me if I decide not to talk to her.”
“No. But then . . . you probably should switch doctors.”
I had forgotten that every time I have an appointment at Dr. Mantillard’s office, I will have to interact with Georgia.
I look up to see a question in Jesse’s eyes.
“You are never getting off that bench. You’re disqualified.” I struggle in his arms, but he keeps me locked close, dotting my jaw with little nips until I give in and kiss him back.
We break apart with a gasp. “I’m still sending you to the minors.”
“You can’t,” Jesse says, grinning. “We’re a team.”
Normally when we go to my dad’s for Christmas, he and Evie meet us at the door—-Evie with a blinking Christmas light necklace and my father wearing a headband with felt reindeer antlers.
But today isn’t normal. Today only Evie greets us, and she looks tentative.
“I didn’t know if you were still coming,” she says.
I hug her tight. “I’m sorry. I should have called you back. I just . . .” I shake my head. “Everything is a mess.”
“I know,” Evie says. “Your father’s been doubling down on his 9/11 conspiracy theories, because how else could Eloise have just walked away from it?
” She folds her arms across her waist. “He—-he’s desperate to talk to her, but he doesn’t know how to find her.
He tried putting an emergency call in to the obstetrician’s service, but they shut him down when they realized he wasn’t a patient. ”
The scent of mulled cider wafts from the kitchen, and in the living room a fire crackles, sending sparks up the chimney flue like exclamation points. Beneath the Christmas tree are a scattering of gifts wrapped in silver paper. There’s no sign of my father.
Jesse turns to Evie with a bright smile. “How about some of that cider? With a healthy shot of brandy in it?” He heads into the kitchen.
It is 10:00 a.m. Neither of us stops him.
Evie sits on the couch, opposite me. “How did she seem?”
“Didn’t you see her?”
She shakes her head. “She must have run right past me, and I never noticed.”
“She wrote me a letter. Wanted me to contact her.”
“Did you?”
“No. I feel like if I tried to talk to her right now, fire would come out of my mouth.” I turn to her. “You were her best friend. Aren’t you mad that she faked her death?”
Evie’s gaze slides away. “I am so, so glad she is alive,” she says softly. “And I am so, so scared she’ll want to pick up where she left off.”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Well, you and Adam don’t need me, do you, if she’s back?”
“Evie.” I grab her hand and squeeze. “How could you ever think that? Just because she’s here doesn’t mean the last twenty--five years didn’t happen. You’re more of a mother to me than she’s been. I love you.”
Her breath shudders. “I’m afraid you won’t when you hear what I have to say.
” Evie lifts her chin, looking squarely into my eyes.
“I didn’t tell you because there was no point,” she says quickly.
“I thought Eloise had died and I wanted you to hold on to only the good memories. You know why she was at the Twin Towers that day?”
Jesse enters, three mugs gripped in his fists. He sets them down on the coffee table and sits next to me, reaching for my hand.
“She had a doctor’s appointment.”
“Yes, a psychiatrist. It was an appointment I forced your dad to get for her, the day after I saw her trying to drown you.”
Jesse’s fingers tighten on mine. “What?” I whisper.
Evie rubs a spot between her brows. “She . . . changed after she gave birth to you. If you could have seen her before, when she was pregnant—-God, she was so excited. At the time I was living it up as a single woman, and let me tell you, it was downright annoying to have every conversation revolve around birthing centers and breast pumps. But from the minute I held you, I understood. I got why mothers are able to lift cars off their children or why they step in front of a bullet to save them. You were just so . . . perfect. Like a blank slate. And it was up to all of us—-Eloise, your dad, me—-to make sure you stayed that way.”