Chapter 35
The streetlight pooled around her like stage light as Rebecca crossed the empty road.
Her cheeks were warm from cider and laughter she hadn’t expected to find, with Melanie and Heather, of all people.
The night air smelled like ripe apples and woodsmoke.
She breathed it in deeply as she walked, then paused in front of the diner.
The downstairs lights were still on, and, upstairs, the apple-blossom lamp was on, too.
Instead of the diner looking lonely, the way it had before, she felt like she was being welcomed home by her past self.
She let herself into the diner and stood a moment in the quiet, listening to the soft tick of cooling pipes, the compressor’s far-off thrum, sounds she’d been hearing forever.
Upstairs, she toed off her boots and shrugged out of her jean jacket, poured herself a glass of water, before weaving toward her bedroom, realizing as she did that she was more than a bit buzzed.
She passed the bed and bumped into the bookshelf, thinking it was where it had been when she was a teen—but she and Sabrina had moved it slightly.
She heard a topple, then a crash. The unmistakable sound of breaking glass.
Dismayed, she realized she had broken the picture frame with the image of her mother, pregnant with her beneath the apple tree.
The glass had cracked in a single lightning bolt across her mother’s serene face.
Rebecca knelt, heart knocking, palms braced on the old floorboards.
For a moment she just looked: Evie in the yard by the apple tree, late-afternoon light on her skin, one hand curved over the soft swell of pregnancy.
Love distilled into an image. She felt suddenly, achingly clumsy, like she’d hurt something sacred.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to the photograph, to herself. “I can fix it.” But could she?
She carried the frame to the bed and sat cross-legged.
The metal tabs on the back were stiff with age; she pried them up one by one and slid the cardboard loose.
The cracked pane of glass lifted away. When she eased the photo free, the paper rasped against the mat and something else shifted beneath that.
Behind the picture, an envelope. Her breath caught as she coaxed it into view.
The paper was cream, thin and velvety, edges browned with age. And her name was on the front, unmistakable. “Baby Rebecca.”
Her mouth went dry. She didn’t realize she was shaking until the flap trembled in her fingers. She slid the page out carefully, flattened the crease, and let the past rise up to meet her.
My little girl,
I don’t know your face yet, only your heartbeat.
I feel you when I’m still and quiet. When I’m scared or sad—which isn’t all that often, since I found out about you.
I want you to know that. I wanted you. You and I, we’re going to be fine.
We have Lenore—my mother, your grandmother.
And we have each other. I don’t regret your father, either, and I think it’s important for you to know that.
I’ll give this to you when the time is right.
Maybe when you finally really need to know, whenever that is.
Your father was a good guy. But he was my TA at McGill.
And he wasn’t ready for a family. He said he loved me, and he probably did, in the moment, but really, we didn’t know each other all that well.
Not enough to be a family. I left because I knew what I wanted, and that I didn’t need him to stay with me out of obligation, that we would be just fine on our own.
I haven’t even told your grandmother this, and perhaps I never will, but you should know.
His name is Pierre Margaux, if you ever want to look him up.
He told me you were more than welcome to, for family health history matters and all that mature stuff.
I know him well enough to know it will all be fine.
He is careful and logical and only let himself not be careful and logical for a brief period, when it came to me.
That’s over now, and it’s really fine. I’m glad I got you out of it.
I promise you, I am. Because you and me… we just feel meant to be.
So now, the things I feel you need to know, as my daughter. As a woman in this world. I hope to be able to add to this over the years, but for now, here goes:
Find the thing that makes you feel alive and let it do that. But don’t be upset if that thing you love also changes over the years. You don’t have to do the same thing forever, or be the same person forever. But carry those previous versions of yourself without shame.
You don’t owe anyone the version of you they prefer.
Roads fork. It’s okay to take one path, then double back. The map of your life is yours, and no one else’s.
Be kind and be brave. (Brave doesn’t mean seeking out conflict. Sometimes it means saying no. Sometimes it means starting again. Kind doesn’t EVER mean being a doormat or not being brave.)
Don’t give up on yourself. Ever.
If you do too much, rest. If you do too little, try again tomorrow.
Laugh at the wrong moments and cry at the right ones (or vice versa). I do that all the time. I’ve learned these emotions come from the same deep place.
When the world feels too harsh, put on a little red lipstick or a red dress, smile at your reflection, and go meet your life.
I love you so much already. I know I always will.
Yours,
Evie (your mom)
By the time Rebecca reached the signature, her vision had gone blurry with tears. She pressed the page to her chest and felt the pulse of her own heart against the paper, and it was as if for just a moment, the paper had a pulse, too.
She blinked her tears away and she read it again.
And again, slower. It made her smile and it made her cry some more.
It made her know her mother in the way she had always wanted—and she realized that actually, Evie hadn’t been such a mystery.
In her heart, it was possible Rebecca had always known these things, had somehow absorbed them. But now she had them in writing.
Go meet your life.
A sound rose in her, half laughter, half sob. She wiped her eyes and looked around at the familiar little room, at the bookshelf, at the cracked glass on the quilt catching the lamplight like ice on a river during the winter that would come whether she wanted it to or not.
She slid the letter back into its envelope, then under her pillow. She moved the broken glass to her desk; she’d throw it away safely the next day.
On the floor lay the photograph, freed from its broken pane. She lifted it carefully and smoothed the edge. In the picture, Evie’s gaze was down and inward, as though she were listening to something. Her inner voice, maybe.
“I hear you,” Rebecca whispered. And in hearing that, she felt something clearing away, pulling loose, with the satisfaction of a splinter removed. She could also hear herself.
She pulled the duvet over her without bothering to take off her clothes, turned off the lamp, and closed her eyes.
In the silence, she listened. The apartment clock hummed its small electric hum.
Down on Main Street, someone’s dog gave a hopeful bark, then quieted.
The dark wasn’t empty anymore. It was full of her mother’s words, floating like fireflies on an early-autumn night.
And it was full of her own dreams, ones she was no longer so afraid of.
Behind her eyelids, she saw lights. The warm glow of her grandmother’s apple-blossom lamp, the blinking glow of the flashlight messages she and Sabrina used to shine out to each other as girls, and the soft, simple beacon of her mother’s love, a thing she could touch and carry with her now, constantly illuminating her world so she would always know which way to go.