“I know. I’m so sorry.”
I reach out and touch her, just two fingers pressed against her cheek. I’m relieved as hell that she lets me, that she’s warm and soft. “It doesn’t mean what happened to you, to your mom, sucks any less.”
She nods, her tears building and spilling over, a beautiful sort of release. Like always, she doesn’t fight it. She just lets it all wash, run, stomp through her.
She is like Maggie in that way, I guess. In a good way.
“I missed you,” she says through a shaky breath.
“You did?”
In answer, her hand slides around the back of my neck. My eyes flutter closed as she pulls gently, moves forward gently, until our foreheads touch. Then our noses. Then our lips. We fit together like two puzzle pieces. She sighs into my mouth. Or maybe I sigh into hers. Either way, we get all mixed up, and it’s perfect and wild, a desperate holding on.
“I don’t want this to be all we are,” she says against my mouth.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Me, the girl whose mom died when she should’ve lived. You, the girl whose mom can’t seem to be a mom. We can’t be like that Hattie girl, the one who jumped off the lighthouse a hundred years ago and now that’s all she’s known for. We have to be more than that.”
“We will be. We are.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Anything.”
She inhales deeply. “I’m . . . I’m still a dancer.”
The smile on my face is immediate and huge, even through my leftover tears. “You are.”
“And you’re a pianist.”
“I am. Always.”
“And we’re more than that.”
“You and me,” I whisper, “we’re sandy spoons and fireworks, lighthouses and wishes and peanut butter.”
She smiles and kisses me again.
And I know it’s all true. I know we’ll be okay. I know we’ll be more, for ourselves and together.
Even after loss.
Even after saying goodbye.
Eva and me, two motherless girls finding a new home.
Chapter Thirty-Two
HERE’S THE THING ABOUT WISHES: THEY’RE ALWAYS changing on you. They’re either dying out or they’re realized, and then they’re not wishes anymore. They’re only truly alive in their anticipation. When I was a wide-eyed little girl, I used to kiss my fingertips and wish I was as beautiful and spirited as my mother. A few years after that, I wished for quick and graceful fingers over the piano keys. Those wishes turned into silent tears at night when my mother brought home some strange guy and all I wanted was for the two of us to go away somewhere together and never talk to another living soul.
I wanted us to run away.
Then, years later, I wished for freedom. I wished for my own life. I wished for the courage to really mean that wish for my own life. I wished for normal days and family dinners and New York City concert halls.
I wished for a sad and beautiful girl to smile at me.
To love me.
I wished against all other wishes to become someone who could love her well.
So many of those wishes have come true. Are coming true. It’s such a strange feeling, standing on Luca’s porch right now, watching him load our overnight bags into his truck, bound for New York so I can audition for Manhattan School of Music tomorrow morning.
So I can play Fantasie and bring a wish to life.
Eva comes up behind me and circles both of her arms around my waist, her cheek pressed against mine.
“You ready?”
I don’t answer at first because, honestly, I don’t know. I never thought I’d get here. And in those moments when I allowed myself to believe New York was a real possibility, I never imagined I’d be doing this without Mom.
But I am.
Because she’s not with me.
It’s been a little over two weeks since I left her in Portland, since the night I made my wish and said goodbye. The morning after, I called her phone no less than a hundred times, but it always went to her voicemail, and because her box is always full, there was nothing else to do but hang up.
Since then, I’ve spent most of my time with Eva. I’ve cried a lot, which pissed me off because I’m not used to crying, but dammit if it didn’t feel good. Eva cried a lot too. We’d climb to the top of the lighthouse in the middle of the night, the key Pete gave me when I went by to apologize for everything that happened and get the rest of my stuff safe in my pocket, and we’d trade stories. Good stories. Happy stories of happy mothers during happier times.
Still, I wasn’t unhappy.
A weird thing I’m learning about grief—?grief in all its forms—?is that you can feel almost everything once. You’d think all those tears, all that laughter, all that deep sadness and even deeper hope would still the lungs and stop the heart.
But no. It’s sort of the opposite.
And that’s the funny thing about wishes—?only when one comes true do you realize the full scope of that wish. What you really wanted. The beauty of it. The complexity.
The cost.
I cover Eva’s hands with mine. “Yeah. I think I’m ready.”
She presses a kiss to my temple, and I turn, resting my fingers on her slim hips. “Are you ready?” I ask.
Her eyes dim a little, but she smiles. Eva’s coming with me to New York. In a few months, we’ll all pile in Luca’s truck again for her audition at NYU. About a week ago, I sat with her on the floor of Macon’s old room while she got out her pointe shoes for the first time since her mom died. They were ripped and dirty and smelled like resin.
“Wow, those are so old,” I had said, and she laughed.
“They’re actually pretty new. We have to break them in when we first get them. Run razors over the bottoms, rip the satin, burn the tips.” She ran a finger along a shiny ribbon, a sad smile on her face.
“I want to see you dance again.”
She lifted her eyes to mine. For a few seconds she just looked at me, but then she leaned forward and kissed me. A few days later, I went with her to her first dance class at the studio in Sugar Lake, and I watched her come alive again.
“I’m ready for more,” she says now, her voice a soft whisper.
I run my hand down her face and cup her jaw. “Something more than a sad little swan.”
She leans into my touch, a single tear blooming and spilling over. We both let it fall. “Yeah. Something more than that.”
Luca slams the bed cover on his truck closed and takes out his phone. I know he’s texting Kimber that we’re about to leave to pick her up. She’s coming with us, much to my chagrin, but she makes Luca happy, so I know she and I will find a middle ground somewhere.
Emmy comes out the front door, Macon and a waddling Janelle behind her. They all hug me, wish me luck, say all the right things a family should say. Still, it’s not the same, and a knot forms in my throat so huge, I’m not sure I’ll ever swallow again. Emmy must read something in my expression, because she cups my face in her hands and kisses my forehead.