Gently, slowly, Ella spread her arms and waited for the panic to pass. Lying in semidarkness, she eavesdropped on her family. This was a new experience—being on the outside, no longer being the single parent with a high-maintenance child.
Every twist and turn of Harry’s life had filtered through hers without a break and without a support system. Friends had been sympathetic, but none of them had really understood. How could they? If you didn’t have a kid with a soup of issues, you had no point of reference. Another first-grade mother, who had two boringly docile kids, had once accused her of being a helicopter parent. But how could normal parenting apply to a child who kicked holes in walls during rage attacks and had tics as violent and dangerous as seizures? The tics had improved with puberty, but she had been forever locked into a cycle of concern for Harry’s emotional and mental well-being. Since she’d been forced to step aside, to unplug from the minutiae of Harry’s daily life, she’d had the opposite fear: Could she slot back into that world now that she’d become her own worst nightmare—a person lost in self-absorption?
Right after New Year’s, when she had left to see her father, she’d been a healthy person in charge of her family. She had returned as someone else. What if she didn’t belong here in this life anymore? What if she couldn’t pick up where she left off? What if she were evaporating into the stranger in the mirror?
Everything was meant to be different when she got home. Coming home was meant to be the cure—instant and miraculous.
The quiet, contained knock on the door said Felix. It was not the musical rap-rap Harry would have been responsible for. She struggled to raise herself up out of the pillows, when all she wanted to do was sink back under the duvet and let it swallow her whole.
“Ella?” Felix opened the door, and the french toast smell wafted into the room. He put the light on, but it was dimmer than it should have been. He had reset the switch to the lowest setting. What else had he changed?
He frowned. “Ella Bella?”
“I’m fine, just woke up. Bit disoriented.”
He moved inside and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you feel up to eating in the kitchen?” He stroked back her hair. “Or should I bring you supper on a tray?”
“You’re suggesting I eat maple syrup in our bed?” She put all her effort, as much effort as lifting a barbell, into a smile.
“I was suggesting you exert as little energy as possible. And eat over a tray carefully.” He paused. “Maybe skip the maple syrup?”
“Felix,” she whispered, “I’m not up for french toast.”
“He’s worked really hard,” Felix whispered back.
“I know. But the thought of french toast . . .” The nausea never left. She had forced herself to eat in the hospital so they would let her come home, but nothing tasted right.
“Could you try?”
She nodded. “Could you sneak in a few crackers?”
Felix kissed her nose. “Our secret.”
Our secret. Such rich, comforting words filled with promise. Felix slipping back into his original role as her guardian, her gatekeeper; Felix saving her as he’d done when she had been drowning in grief, and he’d helped her find her way home.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Shift change! Katherine was giving Dad the Mom update in the kitchen, which meant Mom was actually alone. A rare event these days. Whenever Harry tried to talk with her, Dad always appeared and gave the you’re-not-to-tire-Mom-out lecture. It was freaky—like Dad had developed ESP.
Harry ran down the hall and knocked on the bedroom door. Dad used to be the closed-door person in the house, but now everything was up for grabs. How weird was that—having to relearn his parents at seventeen?
“Mom!” he whispered through the door. “Mom!”
“Come in, sweetheart.”
Mom was in the big chair, legs tucked up, with a book on her lap. But she hadn’t been reading; she’d been staring off into the forest. Never fake a faker.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”