Chapter 47 Eliana
ELIANA
morning prep /?m?rniNG prep/: noun
I wake alone. My hand reaches across the mattress before my brain fully engages, searching for warmth that…
… isn’t there. The sheets on Bastian’s side are cold. Not recently-vacated cold, but hours-ago cold.
My heart jabs my ribs as I jackknife upright. He’s gone. He left. He—
Then I hear voices in the kitchen. Bastian’s rumble, hardly audible through the walls but unmistakably his. Sage’s sardonic teenage drawl. The clatter of pans. The hiss of bacon.
I collapse back against the pillows, my pulse slowly ratcheting down from imminent cardiac event to something quasi-normal.
The domesticity of those sounds feels almost obscene after everything we’ve been through.
Yesterday, I thought the father of my child was rotting in a Chicago morgue. Today, he’s making breakfast.
Life comes at ya fast, et cetera.
Right on cue, as if to continue the theme of life just recklessly blowing past every speed limit ever conceived, my mom knocks on the door.
“Bastian told me you take your tea with honey now,” she explains, hovering at the threshold like she’s not sure if she’s allowed inside.
“Because of the baby and all. So I brought you some. Can I come in?”
“Yeah, of course.” I push myself against the headboard and pat the mattress beside me. “Come in, Mom.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she slips inside and settles onto the mattress next to me. “How’d you sleep?” she asks.
“Fine. You?”
“Oh, fine, fine.”
Awkward silence follows. I wring my fingers, she clears her throat a few times, neither one of us says a word. Until, with one more cough, she launches into something she’s clearly been waiting for.
“I know I say sorry a lot,” she begins hoarsely. “But I’ve never really said it right. So I’m going to try.”
She takes a shaky breath.
“Do you remember a boyfriend of mine named Rodney? I let him stay three months after he called you a ‘burden’ to your face. You were eleven.” Another breath.
“On the day of your eighth-grade graduation, I was passed out in the parking lot of a Denny’s with some trucker whose name I never learned.
You walked home all by yourself in your cap and gown.
” Hitching, rolling sobs begin. “All those voicemails you left when you first moved out… I listened to every single one, baby. I just—I couldn’t pick up. I was too drunk and too ashamed.”
I feel my face wetting with tears.
“Those are just a few of the things I’ve done wrong, and I’m sure there are a million more I’ve repressed or forgotten.
I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Mom continues.
“I don’t deserve it. Lord knows I’ve given you every reason to write me off forever.
” She fumbles for my hand and squeezes it with those bird-bone fingers.
“But I’ve been going through the steps. Making amends, as they call it.
So I just need you to know something, Elly: Even when I was at my worst, I loved you.
I loved you so much it terrified me. And did I screw up?
Oh, God, of course! So many times.” She brings my hand to her lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles.
“But you were never unloved, Eliana. Not for one single second.”
My throat burns with everything I’ve held back for years. I open my mouth with no plan of what I’m going to say and just let things pour out.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to forgive you, Mom.
I’m still not sure I can.” I wipe my eyes and keep going.
“I spent my whole life trying not to become you. Because I looked at you and saw someone who needed to be loved so badly that you couldn’t think of anything else.
But Mama… that just messed me up in its own way.
I built walls so high I couldn’t see over them.
I was so careful. Until Bastian came along and bulldozed every single one of them.
“I fell for him even though I knew better. Well, that makes it sound simple. It wasn’t, though—because I ran from him first. I hated him for making me depend on him.
Because you taught me that depending on others was a surefire way to ruin your life.
I don’t know how to get over that fear. It’s, like, inside me.
You put it in my bones. Every day now, I’m so fucking terrified that loving Bastian is going to destroy me the same way loving all the wrong men destroyed you.
I keep thinking I’ll wake up one day and realize I’ve repeated every mistake I swore I’d never make, all the mistakes you spent my whole life making.
I’m so mad at you for doing that to me, Mom. God, I’m so fucking mad at you.”
Out of nowhere, I’m full-on sobbing. Mom doesn’t try to shush me or fix it. She just pulls me into her arms and holds on while I fall apart.
“I know, baby,” she whispers into my hair. “I know. You have every right to be angry. Every single right.”
She pats my back like a mother ought to. I honestly didn’t know she knew how to do that. Where was it when I needed it most, all those years ago?
“I’m not asking you to stop being mad,” she says. “You be mad as long as you need to. But I’m not going anywhere this time. Even if you yell at me. I’ll be right here, being your annoying mother, showing up whether you want me to or not.”
A wet laugh escapes me. “That’s not how amends are supposed to work.”
“Well, I never did anything by the book.” She pulls back and cups my face in her hands. “I’m learning, Elly. Slowly. One day at a time.”
“I don’t know how much Bastian told you, but ‘one day’ might be all we have left,” I mutter pessimistically.
“Well, I don’t know anything about all this mess you all have found yourselves in. I’m an air-headed old lady just trying to figure life out. But love… I’ve got a bit more expertise there. And you know what I have figured out?” she asks me.
“That asking to go halfsies on a first date is a red flag?”
She wrinkles her nose. “It’s not a good sign, that’s for sure.
But no, not that. What I’ve learned over my many hard years is that the difference isn’t in whether you love someone.
That part… you can’t control that. Goodness, how I tried.
The difference is in what you’re willing to accept from those you love. ”
She takes my hand again and sandwiches it between hers.
“I chose men who took and took and gave not a damn thing back. Not that they’re the only ones to blame—guess we went ‘halfsies’ on the guilt, to steal your word.
But they took ‘cause I let them, baby. And I let them because I thought that was all I deserved.” She dabs at my tears with soft touches.
“But Bastian? That man dragged himself eight blocks with a bullet hole in his gut just to get back to you. He didn’t run away from you when things got hard; he ran toward you.
And that right there is the whole damn point.
Loving someone who loves you back, who fights for you—that’s not the same as what I did.
Don’t punish yourself for finding something real just because I never could. ”
“Love’s so fucking stupid,” I mumble.
Mom laughs. “Oh, it sure is. The stupidest thing on this planet. The best, too, incidentally.”
I bury my face in the crook of her shoulder. “I do love him, Mom. Is that wrong?”
“Right and wrong’s got nothing to do with it,” Mom says. “Love just is. Like gravity. You can fight it all you want, but eventually, you’re gonna fall.”
I pull back and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “When did you get so wise?”
“Oh, that li’l chestnut? Stole it from a TV show. Did it sound good when I said it?”
I laugh snottily and rap her knee lightly. “Maybe ‘wise-ass’ would’ve been more accurate.”
“Takes one to know one,” she says with an irrepressible grin. She strokes a fallen bang out of my face and kisses each cheek. “I love you, Elly Belly. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Now, drink your tea. Growing a baby is thirsty work.”
I take a sip of the mug she brought me. The honey sweetens it just enough to settle my stomach and my tears alike. We sit companionably side by side, enjoying the sun on our faces through the bedroom window, until there’s a knock on the door.
“Everything okay in there?” Bastian asks carefully.
“We’re fine!” I call back, my voice still thick with tears. “Be out in a minute.”
His footsteps retreat down the hall.
Mom stands and shuffles toward the door.
But she pauses at the threshold and turns back to face me.
“I’m not demanding to be part of your life, Elly.
I know I haven’t earned that.” She swallows hard enough that I can hear it from across the room.
“But if you ever want me there—for the baby, or for anything else—I’ll show up this time. I promise.”
The lump in my throat makes speaking impossible. All I can do is nod.