Page 82 of Second Alarm
"Where?"
She looks at the photograph on the wall. My father. Turnout coat. A smile.
"I looked at your father with that face the day I decided not to tell him I was pregnant with Cal until I could quit my job first. I wanted to tell him on my terms. He deserved to know the moment I knew, and I took three weeks because I was deciding something else. I looked at him with that face for weeks. And my mother came into this house on day four and said, ‘Judy, you're doing a thing, and it isn't for me to know, but it's for you to name, so name it or let it go.' And I named it."
"You never told me that story."
"It wasn't a story for a child."
"I'm not a child."
"No." A beat. "You aren't."
"Mom. I don't know what to do."
"Yes you do."
"I don't."
"Hanna. You woke up this morning to tell your mother before you told your brother, because you're going to tell your brother. You aren't a woman who doesn't know what to do. You're a woman who's decided and is afraid of doing it."
"Oh."
"Yes."
"I thought I — "
"Honey. You run. It's what you do. I watched you run from fifteen on. I watched you run to Portland, to boyfriends who were specifically not Ty, away from the memory of your father,away from every man in a turnout coat who came by this house. You're a runner. It's in your blood, which is my blood, because I'm a runner too — I just never had the gas money."
"Mom."
"I have a lot of feelings about what I'd have done with the gas money."
"You'd have — "
"I didn't run, Hanna. I stayed. I married a firefighter. I had two children. I buried my husband. I stayed in this house. I planted that lilac bush you're looking at out the window. I kept his photograph on the wall. I cooked his favorite soup on the anniversary of his death for twelve years, and then I stopped because I didn't need to prove anything anymore, and now I cook it on Sundays when my daughter is sad."
I can't speak.
"I've never once wished that I had run," she says. "I've wished a thousand times that your father hadn't died. But I've never wished I hadn't loved him. I've never wished I had gone to my life's end without the children I have with him. I've never wished I had protected myself by not loving a man whose job could take him. Do you understand the difference?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Because the difference is where you've been stuck for ten years. Loving someone and losing them are two different questions, and you have been refusing to answer the first because you're afraid of the second. This is a life-sized mistake, and I'm going to be disappointed in you forever if you make it."
"Mom."
"What?"
"That was a lot."
"I know."
"You don't usually — "
