Chapter 57 Mom Always Knows #2
My feet drag across the threshold into Mom’s house. I’ve been gone for two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes of reliving that dark parking lot on an endless carousel. Answering the officer’s questions and then the same questions again, just asked in a different way.
Kristen looks up from the chair at Mom’s bedside.
I try to mirror her easygoing expression, but I know it’s weak. “Hey! She woken up at all?”
“No, sorry,” she replies, on her feet now. “Richard’s not back yet either.”
“Yeah, he texted me a little while ago. He’s on a quick house call for one of his patients and then he’ll be here.”
My friend slides her arms into her coat. “Richard sounds like a good one.”
I nod, unable to find the strength to take off my own jacket.
A hand curls over my shoulder. “You okay?”
My eyes won’t leave Mom. It’s okay to not be okay.
“I did it.” The words are barely there. Maybe I said them, maybe I didn’t.
“Did what?” She closes the gap between us when I don’t answer. “Hannah?”
I meet her gaze, wobbly but honest. “I reported it.”
Her face falls into a knowing frown for one…two…three beats before she yanks me forward, clutching me tight in a hug.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head and shift back, glance at my sleeping mother. “I just want my mom.”
“Of course. I’ll leave you two alone.”
The door opens behind me and I spin around. “Kris?” Her brows lift. “I promise I’ll talk about it with you soon.”
“Oh, Hannah, if you don’t want to—”
“I do though. I wanna tell you what happened and I will. Soon.”
A single nod. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
After Kristen leaves, the house goes quiet. Still. My gaze pans the room.
Where Mom’s bed is now, there’s a patch of damaged wood underneath where Maddy and I spilled a bottle of nail polish remover when we were twelve.
We panicked and tried to hide it by pulling the living room rug and everything on it back a few feet thinking my mom wouldn’t notice.
When she discovered what we’d done, which was instantly, she wasn’t even mad.
“Accidents give a home its character,” she’d said right before she helped us move everything back to its original spot.
Pencil hashes marking my height over the years line the archway to the main hall.
The sharp corner of the kitchen peninsula still has the foam pad Mom duct taped into place when I was five.
I kept bumping my head on it when I’d barrel into the kitchen like a, as Mom used to say, “bat outta hell.” If you asked her why she never removed the protective barrier after I outgrew the countertops she’d tell you it was because looking at it reminded her how quickly time passed.
And she never wanted to forget how fleeting time was.
God, I don’t want to forget anything. I want to remember it all.
I trudge to the bed, kick off my boots, and toss my coat over the footboard. The wood squeaks as I climb to the middle of the mattress and burrow up next to Mom.
Her eyes are closed, chest rising slightly every several seconds. I tuck my hand under hers, weaving our fingers together.
“Hi, Mom.” No response. “I did something tonight, and I really wanna tell you about it. Everything I’ve read says you can probably still hear me so…” I watch her face, looking for a sign—an eyelid flutter, a wince, anything. But nothing.
I take a breath and start at the beginning. Not Daniel. Rowan. Until now, I’ve gotten by with the bullet points. But time is running out and I want my mother to know everything.
The parts she already knows and the parts I’ve left out, I tell her our love story. I even tell her some of the sexy bits because, well, this is Lydia James we’re talking to after all.
And I tell her what Daniel did. About the blind date, the parking lot. About how I fought him off, screamed and screamed before help arrived. About how Rowan saved me that night in more ways than one.
And the grocery store where I ran into him again. How I panicked but Rowan was there and he was so patient with me.
And tonight. I tell her what it felt like to spot Daniel across the street and how I drove to the police station and filed the report.
Tears fall quietly as I talk, my eyes bouncing over Mom’s sleeping face. “Thank you for always recognizing when I’m not okay. I’m sorry I ever pretended like I was. You should know…Rowan recognizes too. He really does see me, Mom.”
I tell her how hard it was to say goodbye to him. That the ache in my chest from missing him hurts differently than anything I’ve ever felt before.
“I’m in love with him. Like the crazy, can’t-think-straight, head-over-heels kind.
It’s the best and scariest feeling, and I have no idea when or how things are gonna work out between us but…
I’m okay not knowing right now.” I squeeze her hand.
“I mean it this time, Mom. I’m gonna be okay because you’re strong and brave and good and.
..” My voice trails off and I sniff back more tears.
“And in all the ways that matter, I’m just like you. ”
Her fingers pulse between mine and my breath catches. I look down at where our hands are linked and her thumb twitches again. My gaze shoots to her face. Hope stretches taut in my chest when I see her eyelids flutter. One more time, please.
Long seconds later, her eyes finally drift open the slightest bit.
“Hi, Mom.”
Her lids look like they weigh a thousand pounds. She attempts to speak, but all that comes out is a painful rattle from deep in her throat.
“Sshhh, don’t try to talk,” I plead.
She squeezes my hand with the tiny bit of strength she has.
I open my palm and position her index finger in the center. “Here, can you write it?”
Her finger taps once and begins to move. It’s shaky and slow but I manage to make out the message. With tears in my eyes, I look up and meet her weary gaze. “I love you too.”
Only a moment passes before she sinks back into unconsciousness. Something deep inside me shifts, a bond snapping like a branch that’s been severed from the vine.
This is it. I feel it down to the marrow. The very makeup of who I am has altered course. Inevitable and irreversible.
Mom doesn’t open her eyes again.
An hour later, one hand in mine and the other in Richard’s, my mom—my soulmate—was gone.