Chapter 39 #2
“I told you that you were going on a trip, but I wasn’t coming.
You started to get upset, asking why, and I said you needed to spend time with your grandparents.
You’d never had grandparents, but I knew you understood the concept, so that seemed to calm you down a bit.
We hadn’t spent more than a night apart your whole life.
I think you assumed you’d see me soon. You didn’t know to question something so fundamental, like the presence of the sun, or the sky.
“I told you I loved you, but I didn’t make it a big, dramatic moment.
I didn’t want to scare you. There was a bit of crying, but you tried to be a good girl and you went with them anyway.
I remember waving goodbye as they drove away and watching your little arm wave back until they turned the corner at the end of the street. ”
I searched my memory for some fragments of this moment.
Maybe a flash of skin or a burst of sun as we rounded the corner and headed toward the highway.
But there was nothing solid. I didn’t remember the sadness until later, at my grandparents’ house, playing alone in my father’s old room with his Lincoln Logs.
Gripped by a profound feeling of loss that I’d never shaken.
“I didn’t waste any time. I had their address from all of the legal documents, so I took a plane up to Minnesota and went around with a Realtor.
Once I’d found a place, I got in touch with your grandparents and let them know I’d found a house nearby, and I would be available to help with childcare whenever they needed.
They told me not to come anywhere near them, or you.
God, my stomach dropped. I should have known, considering the kind of people they were.
But I wasn’t going to give up. I went by the house and your school, always looking for a way to see you.
But your teacher had been warned, and I never got more than a few glimpses.
I started staking out your recess, but the teacher called the police, and they made me leave.
Eventually your grandparents filed a restraining order.
I had no legal rights; I’d given those up.
There was nothing I could do. I’ve never been so angry in my life.
I prayed the whole family would die so I could take back custody.
When God didn’t answer my prayers, I went back to Nashville, and I wrote ‘Lady in Black.’ ”
I had heard the song many times, and I tried to conjure the lyrics:
I go from room to room
Watchin’ him live his life
With joy and kids and love
And me not by his side
I once cooked in the kitchen
I once laughed on that spot
But now I’ve been forgotten
Without a second thought
It’s like I never existed
I’m erased, invisible, gone
I’ll haunt this house forever
I’m the Lady in Black
“ ‘Lady in Black’ is about Belle?”
“Not just about her. For years, I had this family—you and Lou. It wasn’t perfect, but we were happy.
I even thought we might try to have another baby.
” Hess wiped another tear. “Then Lou dies. And in all of the press and at the funeral, I’m not mentioned once.
Only Clayton and Tate, the two loves of her life.
I wasn’t famous then. No one treated me like her widow, except for the girls, but we had to be careful with so many people and reporters around.
And then your grandparents took you and shut me out, and it was like I’d been erased from my own life.
Like I was never a wife or a mother. I was a ghost, grieving in the shadows, invisible to the world. ”
I thought of how it’d been the last few months, knowing that no one believed me. Feeling utterly alone and silenced. It was an awful, desolate feeling.
Hess wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“So anyway, I channeled all of that heartbreak into an album, and my career took off. It was a strange feeling, losing everything and at the same time, unlocking the creative life I’d always wanted but never thought I’d have.
It took me a while to fully embrace it—for years I’d suppressed my talent or used it to help your mother’s career.
I finally got to be the singer I’d dreamed of being, with my own voice and something to say with it.
” She paused, finding my eyes. “But every morning, when I wake up, my first thought is of you.”
I stared into space, trying to take all of this in.
More lies. More secrets. I looked down at my hands, and I didn’t recognize them. The fingers were thick and wrinkled, and the left ring finger curved to one side like the bones had grown the wrong way. My body had become an alien, unpredictable thing. It constantly betrayed me.
And it was hiding things. Memories of being held by a wonderful mother, hoarded away to somewhere I couldn’t reach, left to think I was an unloved little thing. A demon child, like my mother.
I peered into Hess’s wet eyes, and beyond her sadness, all I could think was that she’d been lying this whole time. Keeping this from me while pretending to be my mother’s best friend, my devoted auntie. How could I possibly trust her now?
You can’t.
What else was she keeping from me?
Who knows.
I got up and left the room, and I could hear Hess hovering behind me. “Are you all right? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I just need to be alone.”
In the bathroom, I locked the door and sat on the lid of the toilet. My breaths were coming short and shallow, and I wondered if the air was thinner at this elevation. Maybe I wasn’t getting the oxygen I needed. Maybe I was slowly suffocating.
I stood up and looked into the mirror, the light going fuzzy with dusk and blurring the edges of my hair. I’d forgotten all about the wig. I pulled on one of the pasta-colored strands, and it tugged on my scalp like it was fused to my skull.