My mouth drops open in shock, not at her admittance of what she did, but the sound of glee in her voice.
“You pushed me in the lake,” I mutter through clenched teeth. “What exactly did you have to know for sure? If you had the courage to try and kill your own daughter?”
My body vibrates with rage and I want to vault over my bed, wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze and squeeze until her face turns red and every last breath leaves her body. I keep my feet firmly planted where they are because right now I want the truth more than I want to hurt her.
My mother lets out a huge, tired sigh and finally turns to look at me, carelessly waving the gun around by her head.
“I’m sorry you had to pay for my sins and my weakness,” she tells me in a robotic voice. “I just had to see. I had to know for sure that I was right. I felt bad as soon as I saw you go under, wondering if I’d made a mistake, but I didn’t. You came up and you proved me right. I ignored what was right in front of my face because I just wanted it so badly. I was blind and I was stupid, but I’m going to fix all of it now.”
She speaks so quickly that it’s hard for me to keep up, but I do, and I get the truth I’ve been waiting for. My own mother tried to drown me. I glare across my bed at her, refusing to cower when she turns the gun and aims it right at my chest.
“I’m sorry. This is the only way I know how to fix things. This is the only way I can stop the pain,” she tells me sadly.
“You are a coward,” I growl at her. “You are weak and pathetic. You can apologize all you want, but it means nothing to me. I’ve remembered things on my own, no thanks to you and Dad. I drove myself crazy with the thoughts in my head that didn’t match the lies you both told me. The only thing you accomplished by pushing me into the lake was waking me up to the person I really am. I deserve the truth, Mother.”
Her hold on the gun falters and it lowers a few inches, pointing at the bed instead of me. Knowing I have a little more time before everything ends pushes me to keep going.
“I deserve to know why all I can remember is pain and hate when this house is filled with happy memories of a loving family that obviously never existed. Tell me the truth. TELL ME THE DAMN TRUTH! ALL OF IT!” I shout in fury.
She whimpers painfully, bringing the gun back up where it was.
“It was real… all of it was real. We were happy… we were so happy. I made up for my mistakes and everything was perfect… everything was just as it should be. I should have known better. Secrets never stay hidden no matter how deep you bury them. Mistakes will always come back to haunt you and get their revenge.”
Her body is wracked with sobs, her shoulders shaking with the force of her cries, each breath out of her mouth punctuated with whimpers and mournful whines.
“My perfect, beautiful daughter. I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much. You need to find him. You need to talk to him. You’ll see him, and you’ll understand. It will all make sense then,” she cries.
“I need to find who? Dr. Thomas?” I ask, vomit rising up my throat as soon as I speak his name, the name Dr. Beall said to me, the one my mind wouldn’t let me remember just moments ago when I woke up. It flies off my tongue with ease, and I hate it. I hate the name. I hate the person. I don’t want to remember.
Go away, go away, go away!
“He only did what we asked. We thought it was right. We thought it would make everything better,” she whimpers.
My hands come up to my head and my fingers clutch tightly to my hair, yanking it as hard as I can until the pain brings tears to my eyes. I need the pain. I need the hurt. It’s the only way I can think clearly. Nothing she says makes any sense. She’s talking in circles, and I want to scream in frustration.
“I always loved the picture your father has of our family that sits on the desk in his office,” she says in a faraway voice, her crying coming to an abrupt end as an eerie smile takes over her face. “The picture tells the truth. It knows all the secrets.”
Maybe I really am crazy and I inherited it from my mother. She is out of her mind.
Her eyes meet mine across the bed, and as I stare into them, I see nothing but glazed-over emptiness. I’m not even sure if she realizes the crazy things she’s said to me or if she’s so far gone that they all make sense in her twisted mind.
“I can’t live without you. I can’t pretend anymore. I need to be wherever you are but I don’t even know where that is,” she complains, her eyes staring right through me. “He lies. He lies, and he lies, and he won’t tell me, but I deserve it. He tried to fix what I did but it didn’t work. I’m you, and you’re me. We’re so alike that no amount of lying can change that. No more pain, no more lying. Talk to the picture, and listen to what it says.”