Chapter 41 #3
“That was the last time I ever saw her.” A few tears escaped down her cheeks.
I tried to remember the feeling of my mother’s last touch. But I had been asleep.
Hess took a deep breath, wiping her eyes.
“I will always regret not listening to her when she said something was wrong. For not fighting harder for her. I saw what I wanted to see.” She broke again, then righted herself.
“Even if she’s still out there, in a way, she’s already gone.
” She reached for my hands, and I let her take them.
“But Rhea, you still have a chance. And yours is not the only life at stake here. Think of what your death will do to Micah. Or me.”
I pulled my hands back. I knew this was bigger than me. Did she think I didn’t know that? She had no idea what was at stake here.
I thought back to eight days before, to the morning before I left. I had woken up and realized my period was late, so I took a pregnancy test just to be sure.
When the double lines appeared, I threw up in the sink.
All I could think was, Why now? Why now when I’m so close to the end?
I imagined the life the baby would have led, if only I had figured out how to save us both.
They would have been different from every person who’d come before them. They would have been blameless, untainted, uncursed.
Or maybe they would have begun the cycle again, hurting themselves and others, hurtling toward the same painful, inevitable conclusion.
It was better to end it now, while I could still die on my terms. I had a few minutes left.
“I need you to leave,” I said to Hess.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Fine, then I’ll go.” I tried to stand up, but Hess grabbed my arm and held me down.
“No.”
I tried to twist out of her grip, but Hess was strong, and my body had become so weak.
“You know what I will never stop thinking about?” she asked.
I stilled.
“I should have told her that I would never leave her, no matter what.” Hess’s voice cracked, and I felt it as a pain in my left side. “I should have pulled her to me and not let her out of my sight until I knew she was okay. That she was safe.”
The pain intensified, and I wished it would just stop. I didn’t want to hurt anymore. I moaned and hunched forward, my body nearly spent. I was so tired. So tired I could feel my cells slackening and losing shape. I couldn’t hold it together any longer.
“I’m pregnant.”
Hess put her fingers to her lips. “Oh, God.”
“I know.”
“How far along?”
“Only a few weeks.”
Hess exhaled and looked away with the back of her hand held up to her mouth. She did not let go of my arm.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were my mother?” I asked suddenly. I didn’t want to die not knowing.
She turned back to me with her brows knit together in shame.
“Oh, honey.” She closed her eyes, then opened them.
“When Mr. Blau told me you didn’t remember me, I figured it would be too overwhelming for you.
You’d just found out Belle was your mother, and now I was going to drop another bomb?
I had all this love for you, and it just seemed like too much to put on you.
So I decided I would rebuild our relationship from scratch, and when the time was right, I would tell you the truth.
But then so much time passed, and I was afraid it would hurt you and you’d cut me off again, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of it.
” She exhaled. “I was also ashamed of having given you up, and of you finding out who I really am. Not that I think there is anything wrong with what Lou and I had, but when you grow up the way I did, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something wrong with you if you love another woman like that.
” She grimaced. “Basically, I was a coward. I’m so sorry. ”
As much as I wanted to hate her for it, I could feel the love in what she was saying, and I could understand what she’d done.
Sometimes you held back, or you changed yourself, just so you wouldn’t scare someone with the full force of your emotion.
Sometimes you felt like a little tortured thing, a dirty, sad demon child, who didn’t deserve real love.
I pulled out my phone with the other hand. 9:00 glowed from the screen. I gritted my teeth and leaned back against the tree trunk.
“Three more minutes,” I said, eyeing the figure at the edge of the clearing. He was still there, watching. Waiting.
Hess squeezed my arm.
I had run out of time. I wouldn’t be ending this on my own terms.
But at least I would not face it alone. I could not describe the relief, knowing that someone was there with me. Someone who loved me.
I felt the figure move closer, fear searing my insides, and I willed myself to be calm and collected when he arrived.
I closed my eyes, and “Lullaby for a Demon Child” popped into my head.
I knew it by heart, from listening to the album over and over again.
And perhaps from even before then, when my mother sang it to me as a goodbye, and the melody of it penetrated my sleep and left a sad, elegant scar on my brain.
I started to hum the song, and Hess hummed with me.
I sang the first round, and then Hess came in with hers, and then we came together, singing in harmony.
There was Hess’s ancient sound offering comfort, and my wispy sound offering a bit of my own fragility.
And then, Lou’s phantom voice rose above us both, offering a glimpse at the beauty to be had in this life.
We were three women in a dark wood, singing comfort to a doomed girl:
Baby, don’t be ’fraid
When it comes for you
Baby, don’t be ’fraid
’Cause I’m there with you
As our singing tapered off and dissipated in the air like smoke from a thin candle, my phone screen glowed 9:03.