She doesn’t know my new name, my Pastoral name, and hearing her say Maggie grates against my eardrums. A past creeping its way back in.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Theo says, and before I can object, he strides past my mother and down the hall. I imagine him sitting in the lobby alone, or maybe he’ll retreat to his truck, waiting until it’s safe to return to our little room. All we have left.
Mom steps through the doorway, letting the door close shut behind her. “It’s good to see you,” she says, and already I see the pain—some foreign regret—gathering in her eyes. “It’s been so long.”
“I know.”
She crosses the room but doesn’t try to draw me into another hug. Perhaps she senses that I don’t want to be touched right now, that I’m struggling to make sense of my surroundings, of her, of everything.
“I could use a cigarette,” she mutters, crossing her arms and smirking to herself. I’ve never known my mother to smoke, but maybe she started after I went missing. A nervous addiction. I wouldn’t blame her.
She lowers her arms again, fidgeting, before meeting my gaze. “I don’t know what happened between you and Travis out there. Or how it is that you’re married, but—” Her voice sputters away, maybe she’s decided not to say whatever she was thinking. She starts again. “The police told us that you’re having a hard time remembering things about your life before you left.”
I push myself up from the bed, a slow effort, and thankfully she doesn’t try to help me, just watches as I walk to the window overlooking the parking lot. A pool sits far below, glittering an unnatural shade of blue under the early evening sun. “The memories are coming back, slowly.”
“Do you remember the stories I used to tell you, about the place where I used to live?”
I swivel around to face her, leaning my hip against the window frame. Steadying myself.
“It was a place called Pastoral,” she says.
My throat dries up.
“I know that’s where you were,” she continues. “I know you went back to where you were born.”
I touch the edge of the window to keep my knees from buckling beneath me. “I was born in Pastoral?”
Her eyebrows crush together. “I never wanted to tell you the truth. But you were so mad at me that day; you needed to understand—”
“What day?” I press, cutting her off.
“At the ferry.” She frowns, as if just now realizing how little I remember. And maybe she’s trying to decide if she can backstep her way out of this, avoid telling me anything. But it’s too late now.
“What happened at the ferry?”
She rubs her palms against her knees, craving a cigarette worse than ever, I imagine. “It was a week or so before you disappeared. You came to the house for dinner—you don’t remember?” She looks at me, but she must see in my eyes that I need her to keep going, I need her to tell me what happened. “You were angry with me. You said—” Her voice breaks off, and for a split second she glances to the door, her exit, her way out of here if she wants to bolt back out into the hall and escape whatever it is she doesn’t want to say. But then her eyes sweep back to me. “You said I hadn’t been a good mom; you said I loved your brother more than you. But that’s not true; it’s not.” She’s fighting the tears now, but it’s a helpless effort; they spill down her cheeks in little damp trails. “You said your father was the only one who really cared about you.”
I release my hold on the windowsill, remembering now. Remembering that day on the wharf, waiting for the ferry. “And you told me that he wasn’t even my real father,” I say so she won’t have to.
Her jaw trembles. “I never planned to tell you, I didn’t mean to.” She touches her face with her hand, smearing away the tears and mascara, making an ashy smudge at the corners of her eyes.
It was raining hard that day, the sky indistinguishable from the sea, and I remember the anger I felt growing inside me. But it wasn’t only about her, I was angry at a lot of things. My career had suffered in the previous year, several kids had gone missing, run away from home in search of the underground—the fictional place I had written about in my books. My stories were too dark, many said. And they were inspiring children to trek into forests and backwoods, hoping they might find the place where Eloise had followed the fox and become the monster. But the worst had happened only a month before I stood on the wharf with my mom—a boy had died. Markus Sorenson was only fourteen years old when he walked into the Alaskan wilderness not far from his home, the first book in the Foxtail series tucked into his backpack along with a thermos of hot apple cider, a flashlight, a small shovel, and an extra pair of socks. His body wasn’t found until a week later; hypothermia had taken his life only a couple days after he vanished. And the guilt that tore through me was enough to make me start drinking at a rate that began to drown out the days.
When I came to Whidbey Island to see my parents, I wasn’t in good shape. I hadn’t had a sober day in a month, and hearing my mom say that my father was not my real father felt like a brick slamming against my bones. I hated her for it, hated her for the lies she had told me my entire life. And I hated her for finally telling me the truth.