Page 125 of Night Songs

“She didn’t respond; she seemed out of it, and her eyes kept roving around. I tried to get her to come into the house, but she insisted on staying out on the porch.

“I told her, ‘Lou, just tell me if you’re okay. We can take you to the hospital if you’re hurt. Then you can tell me what happened.’

“She said, ‘No. No hospitals. I’m fine. I just needed to… clear my head.’

“I had been so convinced that something extraordinary had happened, that I couldn’t fathom what she was saying.

“I asked her, ‘What are you talking about? Where did you go?’

“And all she said was, ‘Nowhere special.’

“I still couldn’t grasp what was happening. I said, ‘What do you mean? Why did you leave Rhea locked in a trunk?’

“Lou’s face drained, and she asked, ‘Is she okay?’

“I said, ‘She’s fine now. Hopefully she won’t remember it. But she was so sick and scared when I found her. Do you know how dangerous that was? She could have died.’

“She glanced behind me at you napping on the couch, and I swear, this shadow passed over her features. She said, ‘It’s hard to explain.’

“Now I was furious. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, Lou, what is going on?’ I didn’t know how to talk to this person in front of me. It was like someone else had taken over her body.

“She said, ‘No matter what I say, you’re not going to believe me. So maybe it’s best if I say nothing at all.’

“I looked at her, searching for my Lou. She was so dirty and thin. She reminded me of the addicts that hung out in downtown Nashville. I thought,Oh God, she relapsed. I asked if she was on drugs, and I told her I would get her help. But then she almost smiled, and she said, ‘I’m not on drugs. I wish I was on drugs. I wish it was that easy.’

“I thought back to when she broke up with me ten years earlier, and I wondered if maybe it was happening again. She’d decided she needed her freedom, and now she was leaving us.

“When she refused to give any explanation, I told her, ‘Then we’re not coming to California with you,’ just to test her. We were about to go out there to prep for her first movie, and we’d already rented a house for the summer.

“She didn’t even fight me. She said, ‘I think that’s for the best.’ She looked upset, but not in a way that I’d ever seen her. I thought she must be feeling guilty, like she had the last time she left me, and I just couldn’t believe it was happening again, after everything.

“She said it was time for her to go, and she went over to the couch, and she hovered there for a second, watching you. Finally, she sat down and laid a hand on your back. You didn’t wake up. She closed her eyes and stroked your ear and the little wisps of hair that curled around it. She started to hum ‘Lullaby for a Demon Child,’ which I’d never seen her do before. We sang to you all the time, but never that song.

“Then she stood up, and for a moment it was like I could see her again. There was my Lou. She took both of my hands and squeezed them hard. She said, ‘I won’t tell you to take care of her, because I know you will.’ She smiled, and her eyes went glassy. ‘Thank you for saving me, and for this beautiful life, my love. I couldn’t have had it without you.’

“I thought, She’s really leaving us, isn’t she? Shocked, I said, ‘How dare you do this to us. After everything we’ve been through, you’re just going to walk away? You promised you would never leave me again.’

“She looked upset again and released my hands, then headed to her car. I kept shouting at her, but she didn’t turn around. I told her she was selfish, and a bad mother. I said I would never forgive her for this, no matter what she did.

“Then I watched her drive away, and she was gone.

“That was the last time I ever saw her.” A few tears escaped down her cheeks.

I tried to remember the feeling of my mother’s last touch. But I had been asleep.

Hess took a deep breath, wiping her eyes. “I will always regret not listening to her when she said something was wrong. For not fighting harder for her. I saw what I wanted to see.” She broke again, then righted herself. “Even if she’s still out there, in a way, she’s already gone.” She reached for my hands, and I let her take them. “But Rhea, you still have a chance. And yours is not the only life at stake here. Think of what your death will do to Micah. Or me.”

I pulled my hands back. I knew this was bigger than me. Did she think I didn’t know that? She had no idea what was at stake here.

I thought back to eight days before, to the morning before I left. I had woken up and realized my period was late, so I took a pregnancy test just to be sure.

When the double lines appeared, I threw up in the sink.

All I could think was,Why now? Why now when I’m so close to the end?

I imagined the life the baby would have led, if only I had figured out how to save us both.

They would have been different from every person who’d come before them. They would have been blameless, untainted,uncursed.