“I don’t want to go through this. I can’t right now. Again, I’m sorry. But I was eight, Mom.”
“Again? You’re sorry? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Amelia . . . I came to apologize twenty years ago and you yelled at me. You sent me away and never said anything about any of it ever again.”
I was no longer sitting in the London House’s lovely study. I was hiding behind a doorway. I was eight and trembling, and we had just buried my sister two weeks before.
School had gotten out early that day for a teacher planning conference and I’d let myself in the back door. A crash had brought me to the kitchen and a second shattering of glass kept me hiding behind the swinging door, peeking through the crack.
Plates flew and shattered against the refrigerator. Mom fired water glasses one by one onto the marble floor. Glass shot up and her hands were bleeding. More plates. Crystal. It was mesmerizing in its terror. Everything within her sight was grabbed and smashed in a nightmare of sound and shards. But it wasn’t her actions that kept me hidden. It was the screaming.
I drew myself back to the present. “You were yelling, swearing. Words I’d never heard before. That she was to blame, that you hated her, me. Then you fell into all that glass . . . And I stepped out to come to you . . .”
My words ran out, unable to describe what came next. She hadn’t crouched to the floor and cried, or sobbed, or moaned. She had dropped like a rag doll with a sound I’ve never found words for, a keening that ripped open my heart even in memory. But the second she saw me, she leapt to her feet in fury, arms stiff and stretched toward me, screaming. “Get out. Don’t you dare take a single step into here. Go upstairs. Now. Go!”
Mom pressed her hand to her mouth. “You were there? I yelled? I . . . You saw me?”
“Don’t you remember?”
In a flash, she was on the floor clutching my knees, reaching for my face. “No, I don’t. But it wasn’t you. It was never you.” Her eyes moved quickly back and forth as if seeking the memory. “Socks. You were wearing socks, right? Blue ones . . . There was so much glass . . . I was talking about the driver . . . She’d been typing on her BlackBerry. She never saw the light. She never saw your sister. And I was so angry. I was so angry with her. With God. With me. But never with you. I promise, never with you.”
“But you said just the other day that sometimes someone else is to blame.” Eight-year-old Caroline was talking now. I could feel her within me. The child who hadn’t understood. The woman who still didn’t.
“Sometimes someone does do something like that and it causes pain . . . But after all these years, I don’t even think about that woman anymore. I’m the one I’ve hated. I’m the one I was talking about.” Mom swiped at her eyes. It wasn’t delicate. It was as snuffly and aggressive as I had done the day before. I almost laughed at the feeling of connection such a small gesture wrought.
She reached for my hand again. “I caused pain. I was to blame because I wasn’t there for Amelia. I missed being with her when she needed me most. Then I caused you more pain . . . You needed me and I . . . I’m so sorry, my darling. I am so very sorry.”
“You told me to get out, then you left me.”
“I know . . .”
“No.” I cut her off as tears built and spilled. “You don’t know. You weren’t there, but I was. I was the one rushing home. I was the one who darted when the light turned, and I couldn’t pull her away. I still feel it. I was that close to the car, Mom, and you . . . you never said it wasn’t my fault. You never came after me and said it.”
“Darling . . .” She lifted onto her knees and pulled me into a hug. “It was never your fault. This is late in coming, but I’m saying it now. Do you hear me? It was never your fault. Never . . . I got lost. I’m so sorry I got lost and I couldn’t find my way back to tell you that. I pretended you were fine because I couldn’t bear to believe your world was as dark as mine. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
She repeated her words again and again, as if repetition would lay them into my heart. And it did. After several minutes, I felt my tears subside and every tense muscle soften within her arms.
At my first sniffle, Mom tilted back onto her heels and reached for a tissue from the small table beside my chair. She dabbed at my eyes.
I reached for it with a blubbery laugh. “I’m old enough to do that.”
“Yes.” She offered an equally wavering smile. “You are, aren’t you?” She tipped into a sitting position on the floor in front of me. She watched me for a long moment before speaking, her hands still wrapped around mine. “I want to say it again, Caroline. Now that we aren’t crying . . . I fell into someplace very dark when Amelia died. I was drowning and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t come out until I came here to help your grandmother. I should’ve reached out then. I should have flown home when I recognized it and begged your forgiveness. I’ve been a coward.” She pinched her nose. I handed her a tissue.
“What happened here?”
“Your grandmother saved me by showing me I wasn’t alone in all my pain, regrets, and loneliness, but that I would be . . . I was headed to where she had been.” Mom closed her eyes in memory for a beat before continuing. “She loved your dad, but never knew how to show him. She could never break through her own black hole, I guess. That’s why she left me the house, so he wouldn’t sell it and be done with it, be done with her.”
Mom squeezed my hands tighter. They felt warm within her grasp. “And refinishing it brought me back to life . . . I nailed boards, cleaned out generations of junk, sanded floors, oiled that huge kitchen table. By the time I hired a crew, I knew almost as much about construction and restoration as they did, and even more about myself and letting go.”
She gave me a small eager smile. “I tiled your bathroom floor. It’s a little crooked around the toilet.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” I sniffled.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. At my expression, she giggled. “Not about the toilet . . . I’m sorry because you are right. I chose my pain over you. I left you alone. I left your father alone when he needed me as well. I can’t undo any of that. I can only ask you to forgive me.”
“I thought you hated me.” Kleenex soaked, I dragged the back of my hand across my cheeks. “Not hated, but blamed me, and that felt pretty close.”
“Never.” She was up on her knees again, pulling me into another hug. This time I cooperated and hugged her back tightly, breathing in that fresh scent of jasmine and lily I’d caught before.
We pushed out sputtery laughs a little longer, more as a way to stop the tears and catch our breaths than anything else. It filled the spaces within and between us. I had been alone, and so had she, right next to me. But we weren’t anymore.