“Sure,” Ellen nodded. “You won’t believe what Trina—”
“She was wearing Mom’s earrings,” I broke in suddenly, unable to keep my feelings bottled up, no matter how much I wanted to. “Like they were hers. Like she was entitled to them.”
Ellen’s face softened. “Mom has more of your mom’s jewelry. I’m sure she can find something special for you.”
“That’s not the point. Lanie shouldn’t have her earrings, especially her earrings. Don’t you remember when Lanie got her ears pierced?”
Ellen shook her head blankly.
“We were ten years old. You had just gotten yours done for your birthday, and we were so jealous. We begged and pleaded, but Mom wouldn’t relent. She said we weren’t allowed to pierce our ears until we were thirteen. I locked myself in the bathroom in protest, and, while Mom and Dad were unscrewing the door handle to get me out, Lanie lifted money from Mom’s purse, rode her bike to the mall, and convinced a stranger to pretend to be her guardian. She came back all smug with these perfect little cubic zirconia studs. Mom was furious. She really flipped out, and went to physically remove them from her ears. Dad finally talked her down. They told me I could pierce mine then, too, but I didn’t.” I fingered my earlobe, which hadn’t been pierced until I went off to college. “I wanted to be the good one.”
“You are the good one. You always have been.”
“It didn’t matter, though, did it? She left us both.” I gulped at my drink, attempting to drown the sudden memory of my mother wearing a crown of woven dandelions, mixing a biology lesson with one about backyard gardening. “I always thought she’d come back. I know that sounds crazy, but I did. I always thought someday she’d find what she was looking for, and then she’d . . . just come home. But now she’s dead . . . And the worst part is that she chose to die. She chose to leave us all over again. It just seems so unnecessarily selfish.”
“Oh, sweetheart.”
“I’m so angry, Ellen,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. “I’m so angry at her.”
“If you’re angry at anyone, you should be angry at Poppy Parnell. It can’t be a coincidence your mother killed herself after her podcast gained popularity.”
“Well, I’m angry at her, too. For what she did to my mother, and for what she’s doing with that podcast, making me all confused about what happened to Dad.”
Ellen looked up sharply. “What do you mean, making you confused?”
I shook my head, refusing to elaborate. “She’s manipulating the story, telling half-truths.”
“Speaking of,” Ellen said, sipping her wine carefully. “What did you tell the boyfriend?”
“Nice segue,” I said sardonically. “I did just what you suggested. I told him that your mother had died.”
Ellen made a face. “I was just talking, hon. I hadn’t really thought it through. Someday you and Caleb will want to get married—”
“Maybe. Not everyone needs a piece of paper to legitimize their relationship.”
Ellen rolled her eyes. “Allow me to rephrase: if, in the future, you and your Kiwi honey decide that the aforementioned ‘piece of paper’ is useful in achieving legal immigration status, you two might want to get married. And what then? Are you going to keep my mother from him forever? That will break her heart.”
I dropped my head on the bar, my forehead bouncing against the liquor-slicked wood. “Ellen, I don’t know. I’m doing my best, all right?”
“Sit up. I’m just trying to help.”
I righted myself with a sigh. “I need to tell Caleb the truth. I know that. But I’ve made such a mess of everything. He’ll never forgive me.”
“He will,” Ellen said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. “He loves you.”
“He loves the lie I told him about myself.”
“He loves you,” she insisted. “Remember when Peter and I visited you two in New Zealand? The way he looked at you, Josie . . . that man is smitten.”
I grimaced. “Let’s see for how much longer.”
“You and your negativity. On the way to pick you up the other day, I listened to this podcast—not that podcast, obviously, an inspirational one, and—” Ellen cut herself off to glance down at her phone buzzing its way across the scratched bar. Peter’s face filled the screen, and she frowned, waiting the call out without answering. “I told him I was going to be with you and not to bother me. He must’ve forgotten. Where was I? Right—”
Her phone interrupted us with a sharp buzz, heralding the arrival of a text message. Together, we glanced down to see Peter beckoning Ellen back to the hotel for some undefined parenting emergency with more exclamation marks than I would have thought suitable for a man of his station.
“What kind of parenting emergency can Peter possibly need you for? You’re basically the same age as his daughters. Do they really obey you?”
“Whether or not they obey me is irrelevant. They respect my opinion. I’m much cooler than Peter. Anyway, I’m sure it has something to do with Isabelle and that boyfriend of hers. That loser has been a constant source of distress.” Ellen slid off her barstool and looked at me expectantly. “I am sorry, though. Come on, we can try again later tonight. I’ll buy.”
I shook my head and wrapped my hands around my drink. “I’m not ready to go home yet. I might just stay here for a little while longer.”
Ellen pulled a face. “Don’t be that woman drinking alone in a bar, Josie. That’s just sad.”
“I won’t stay long,” I promised. “I’ll just finish this drink, and then I’ll walk home. It’ll be good for me.”
Ellen hesitated but her phone buzzed again, and she frowned and kissed me goodbye. I was left sitting alone at the bar, something I hadn’t done in years. It used to be a standard part of any given evening, back when I was in my early twenties and still wandering. Sipping liquid courage, I would flirt with the bartender, half hoping someone would approach me, half terrified someone would.
Someone always did. I would occasionally attract other single female travelers, desperate for an ally, but mostly I got young men, usually fellow Americans who had mistaken my dark hair for something more exotic than Illinoisan. They would strike up a conversation, usually Where are you from, the traveler’s version of What’s your sign, and if I liked him or if his midwestern twang made me feel nostalgic, I might follow him back to his hostel to meet his friends or listen to a CD of his mediocre garage band. In time, these guys began to seem interchangeable, and there was a comforting familiarity to my interactions with them.