“But that’s what Aires wanted to do with his life. You know it was his dream.”
“That wasn’t your brother’s dream. It was something that witch your father married planted in his mind. She was the one that filled Aires’ head with stories about her father and brothers and their careers. She didn’t care if he died. She didn’t care what happened to him.
“I told Aires not to go. I told him how much his decision would hurt me. I told him …” She paused. “I told him I’d never speak to him again if he went to Afghanistan.” Her voice broke and all of a sudden I wanted to leave, yet I couldn’t move.
A weird sort of edgy calmness took over my brain. “Those were your last words to Aires?”
“It’s your father’s fault,” she said flatly. “He brought her into our lives and now my son is dead.”
This time, I spoke as if she hadn’t said anything. “Not ‘I love you.’ Not ‘I’ll see you when you get home.’ You told him you’d never speak to him again?”
“That witch broke up my home. She stole your father.”
“This isn’t about Ashley or Dad or even Aires. This is about you and me. What the hell did you do to me?”
Wind chimes from a neighboring grave site tinkled in the breeze. My mother and I shared the same eye shape and color. Those dull and lifeless eyes stared at me. I hoped mine looked happier.
“Does he blame me for that night?” she asked. “Did your father even bother telling you how he just dropped you off? How he didn’t answer the phone when you called for help?”
“Mom.” I paused, trying to find the right words to explain. “I just want you to tell me what happened between us.”
“He didn’t tell you, did he? Of course he didn’t. He’s shoving the blame onto me. You don’t understand. I lost Aires and I couldn’t cope. I thought if I could paint, I would feel better.” She tore handfuls of grass from the ground.
“Dad’s not shoving anything onto you. He’s accepted responsibility for his part, but I don’t remember what happened with us. I fell into your stained glass and then you lay next to me while I bled.” My voice rose higher as I continued to speak. “I don’t understand. Did we fight? Did I fall? Did you push me and why didn’t you call for help and why were you telling me bedtime stories when I was bleeding?”
She tore at the grass again. “This is not my fault. He should have known better. But that’s your father for you. He never tried to understand. He wanted a cookie-cutter wife and divorced me the moment he found one.”
“Mom, you came off your meds. Dad had nothing to do with that. Tell me what happened.”
“No.” She lifted her chin and jutted it out in the stubborn style I remembered so well.
I flinched. “No?”
“No. If you don’t remember, I’m not telling you. I heard he’s got some overpriced, fancy Harvard therapist helping you.” A bitter smile curved her lips. “Did your father find something else he couldn’t fix with money and control?”
For a fleeting moment, the cemetery resembled a chessboard and my mother moved her queen. If Aires and I were pawns in our parents’ game, had she noticed that I quit playing?
“Heard?” I repeated as her answer struck me. “There’s a restraining order. How did you hear anything?”
Mom blinked several times and the color seeped from her cheeks. “I wanted to know how you were doing, so I contacted your father.”
A sickening feeling slid down my throat. “When?”
She lowered her head. “February.”
“Mom … why didn’t you call me? I gave you my numbers.” I paused, unable to keep up with the emotions and questions flying in my head. February. The word vibrated through me. That was the month my father took away my cell and my car without telling me why. He’d lied to me so he could conceal me from her. “I wanted to talk to you. I begged you back in December to call me. Why would you call Dad? I mean, you could have gone to jail. There is a restraining order!”
“No, there isn’t,” she said simply. “The order was rescinded thirty days after you turned eighteen.”
Now I felt as if someone drop-kicked me in the stomach. “What?”
“It was the terms of the order when the judge signed it over two years ago. Your father tried to have it extended until you graduated, but enough time had passed that the judge no longer saw me as a threat.”
I couldn’t breathe and my head shook back and forth. “You mean you could have contacted me since February and you didn’t?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why?” Was I that unlovable? Weren’t mothers supposed to want to see their daughters? Especially when their daughters asked them for help? Not knowing what to do with myself, I stood and wrapped my arms around my shaking body. “Why?” I screamed it this time.
“Because.” Mom stood and raised her hands out to her sides. “Because I knew this is how you’d react. I knew you’d want to know what happened between us and I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll blame me and I can’t take any more guilt. It wasn’t my fault, Echo, and I’m not going to let you make me feel that way.”
A Mack truck hit my body and my shoulders rolled with the impact. What an unbelievably selfish answer. “You don’t know that’s how I’ll react. I’m not happy you went off your meds, but I get that you didn’t understand what you were doing. I understand that you weren’t in the right frame of mind that night.”
She released a loud sigh and it echoed in the lonely cemetery. “I do know how you’ll react, Echo. I told you before, you and I share the same skin. Once we’re betrayed, we never forgive.”
The dark sludge that had inhabited my veins since I found out my father’s role in that day moved slowly in my gut, chilling me from the inside out. “I’m not like that.”