“We stayed with a neighbor for a while, and then we went to a motel.” Her face warmed. “It was too expensive. To this day, I don’t know how I could have been so careless with my money.”
He slid a hand up her spine. “You were doing the best you could.”
“Well, you can guess what happened next. I ran out of money. I applied for public housing, but…” She paused and he finished the thought for her.
“Waiting list.”
“For everything. No one’s ever in a hurry to help someone when they’re poor. Maybe they figure since you don’t have anything, there’s no harm in making you wait.” Her voice cracked as she spoke, and she covered her mouth.
Nathan’s hand stilled. “Hey. If this is too much for you—”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “You asked, I want to tell you. We slept in the car because the shelters weren’t safe.” Bile rose in the back of her throat. “I would drop her off at school and take whatever work I could find. I made enough for gas and food. And then we would park on some quiet street for the night and hope no one saw us and called the police.” She could still picture Faith’s curly head bobbing beneath the blanket. Her daughter was still afraid of the dark back then. She’d prop a flashlight on her shoulder and read a worn copy of The Runaway Bunny that Peter bought for her. Rachel would stay up all night, staring at the expensive houses with their landscaped lawns and home security signs, thinking, I have to fix this. And at dawn, for a few hours between dusk and day, sometimes she’d sleep.
“I knew that if someone caught us, they’d take her away from me,” she said. It was the only thing that kept the panic attacks away. And that’s when she knew having Faith had fundamentally changed her. That it had rewritten her DNA. All that time, she’d been afraid that love would break her, but instead it made her stronger than she’d ever been.
Even during the worst of it—when people walked by peering into her car window, looking for a purse or forgotten keys, that moment when they made eye contact and she never knew if they would see her as a deterrent or an opportunity—Rachel didn’t fall apart. She’d covered the windows with newspaper and started carrying a knife. And then one day she’d found Alesha’s address in one of her father’s old books. A scrap of paper that nearly fell to the floor before she noticed.
“She found me a job waiting tables,” Rachel said. “Faith was enrolled in school. A few years later I met Matt and…”
And she got her own big house. A manicured lawn. She got the security of Matt’s bank account. She got to wake up every day next to a man she loved. Someone who had vowed in front of hundreds of people not to disappear like her mother or be stolen away like her father. She got the Abbotts, a family more flawed than she was. And she could finally tell Faith that everything would be fine and know it was true.
Rachel had signed that prenup to prove to everyone, including herself, that she married Matt for love, not money. But in reality, she was exactly like her mother, bending herself into awkward shapes to become the perfect wife, when she never really wanted any of it. She had fought for a life she didn’t want because losing it scared her more than losing herself.
And here she was, still fighting. Still afraid. Loving Nathan was a ledge, and she had no idea what was on the other side. What would happen if she jumped? Would she just keep falling?
“Does Faith have any idea how much you’ve sacrificed for her?” Nathan asked.
Rachel bristled at the idea that she’d earned her daughter’s sympathy. “She knows I didn’t finish school. But it wasn’t a sacrifice. It was doing the right thing.”
“Is that how she sees it? You never graduating, moving in with strangers, being a full-time wife and mother while your art collects dust in storage?”
She thought about the few times she’d mentioned her art to Faith, and how quickly her daughter would change the subject. Rachel had always assumed her former career aspirations were a reminder to Faith of being abandoned for something her mother thought was more important. “I put her through a lot. She has a right to be cautious when it comes to me.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t boil water when I was eighteen. You were learning to be a mom before you even knew how to be a person.”
“Being a mother was more important.”
“What does that even mean?” Nathan reached for her hands. “My mother never left the way you did. But there were times when she was so bored with her life that she might as well have been gone. I never knew her when she was passionate about something. I never learned how to fight for what I wanted. I didn’t have examples of that. But being around you these last few months has made me into a man I never knew existed. And if Faith is as brilliant and brave as you say she is, it’s because you raised her.”
Rachel could feel herself recoiling from his praise. She was a cautionary tale, not a source of inspiration. And never a good mother. But how would she even know what that meant? The only thing Ramona taught her was that good mothers didn’t leave. But now here was Nathan, someone’s son, telling her there was more to good parenting than being present. She could be a safe place. She could be a warrior. She could be the roots that her daughter craved.
Rachel felt like he’d rummaged through the truth of her and cut away the heaviest parts. Her quiet “Thank you” felt inadequate. She climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and repeated, “Thank you,” with her love woven through the words. Nathan pressed his ear to her chest. To her heart. Then he closed his eyes and listened.
Nathan woke up twice that night. The first time was on the tail end of a dream. He was in Mexico, swimming with his cousins. They called him flaco, like when he was smaller, and warned him about swimming out too far. “Come back, or you’re going to miss it,” they yelled. “You’ll be too late.”
He tried yelling back, “Too late for what?” but he couldn’t speak and swim at the same time. He’d just decided to turn back when the ocean pulled him under.
He opened his eyes expecting a blue haze of salty sea, but instead he saw Rachel’s hair splayed against the satin pillowcase he’d bought for her. He slid a hand around her waist and moved closer, until her back was against his chest. She woke like he did, with the grogginess of an interrupted dream, and he wedged against her until every inch of his body touched some part of her skin. He’d never fallen asleep seared to another person before. It was sweaty, hot, and addictively uncomfortable. He didn’t want to move away. He didn’t want it to end.
The second time he woke was to the sound of a door slamming. He reached for Rachel, but the bed was empty. His stomach did a hard flip. Then he saw her standing next to the window, staring with clear agitation.
“I think your brother is here.”