While she fawned over the dog that I hoped would become her dog, I went through the requisite hostess motions—found my aunt a chair, refreshed her coffee, then closed the door behind us for privacy. We sat, me on the edge of the bed, her in the lone wooden chair, and Tulip on the floor in between. The conversation almost immediately sputtered out.
“Sorry you had to drive down,” I said at last, not really looking at her, but at the floor beside her chair.
I was thinking of Detective Warren’s assessment of Randi and Jackie’s attacker. It would be up close and personal. Someone I wouldn’t immediately fear. Someone I would welcome with open arms.
I couldn’t really be afraid of my aunt.
Could I?
“Have the police learned anything more?” my aunt asked.
“About Randi and Jackie’s murders?” I shook my head. “No. But I’m working with a couple of Boston detectives now. They have some fresh ideas.”
“You still think you’ll be next,” my aunt said, a statement not a question.
I nodded.
“You’ve lost weight, Charlene. You look different. Harder.”
“Probably.”
“It’s not good for you, Charlene. The way you’re living right now. It’s not good for you.”
I surprised myself. I looked up, stared my aunt in the eye, and asked, “What happened to my mother?”
My aunt’s pale blue eyes widened. I don’t think I could’ve shocked her more if I’d blurted out that I was a man trapped in a woman’s body. But she caught herself. Fussed with her hair for a second, fingering the fringe around her neck, tucking a short Brillo curl behind her ear.
Her hands were trembling. If I looked harder than she remembered, then she looked older than I remembered. Like the winter had been long and taken some of the fight out of her.
Or maybe she’d spent the past year performing her own countdown to the twenty-first. Which was more stressful, fearing for yourself or for someone you loved?
“What do you think happened to your mother?” she said at last.
“She’s dead,” I said flatly. “And it’s my fault. I think…I did something…resisted, or maybe finally got angry, lost control. I hurt her, though. Badly, and that’s why I don’t remember. I don’t want to face what I did.”
“She’s not dead, Charlene. Least, not last I knew.”
“What?”
“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” my aunt stated, and her tone was different now, testing.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to understand?”
“Why do you keep asking me questions like that!”
“Because from the first moment I arrived at the hospital, that’s what the doctors advised me to do. I was not to tell you what happened, but to give you love and support until one day, when you felt safe enough, you would remember on your own.
“I’ve waited twenty years, Charlene, never knowing if this might be the week you’d suddenly bring it up or, worse, if this might be the day she would magically show up. It’s been a lonely vigil. Stressful, too. But I did it, because that’s what the doctor said. And I don’t have kids, Charlie. I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong for an eight-year-old girl. The only attempt I had at child rearing was the years I spent trying to rein in my baby sister, and we both know how well that went.” My aunt’s voice broke off, the first tinge of bitterness I’d ever heard from her. Then I noticed a sheen in her eyes that had nothing to do with the lighting.
I’d hurt her. I’d made my aunt cry.
Immediately, I wanted to take it all back. I was sorry I’d brought up my mother. I was sorry I’d left New Hampshire. I’d do anything, say anything, return home. I just wanted my aunt to be happy. She was all I had, and I loved her.
And in the next second, I realized how warped that was. How quickly I’d fallen back into the trap—appeasement at all costs. Loving too little and holding on too tight.
Worst part was, my aunt didn’t even expect me to appease her. She simply sat there, shoulders squared, jaw set, awaiting my next question.