Page 106 of Our Crooked Hearts
“Ivy-girl.” Aunt Fee’s voice was a balm over my heart. “How are youhere? Dana, it’s her. Can’t you feel it’s her?”
My mom’s face stained with a complicated hope. “Ivy,” she whispered.
We didn’t have time for anything but getting ourselves out, but I was too angry to stop myself. “I know everything,” I told her. “The golden box and Billy and—everything.”
“Everything.” Her face was a study in contrasts. Twisted mouth and glistening eyes and cheeks red as a slap. “Everything?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”The word was a cry, pressed into her palm. Eyes squeezed shut for a beat, then she looked at me. “Do you remember… that day in the forest preserve, with the deer and her fawn?”
I gritted my teeth. “Yes.”
The dream shifted, shaping itself into something new. We stood together on gray grass beneath a nothing-colored sky. Aunt Fee pulled up a few blades and held them to her nose, watching us like an edgy referee.
“The bounce house,” my mom said. “Remember that?”
“Don’t try to manipulate me.”
“That rash you got brewing a luck charm. And, oh, my god, Ivy. Do you remember the hazel tree?”
Lips mashed together, I nodded.
She looked like a political prisoner. Radiant with purpose, circles around her exhausted eyes. “Writing your first—yourfirst cantrip. Staying up all night at midsummer, drinking coffee milk.” She laughed, wet and brief. “Finding your fairy stone.”
“Forgetting Billy,” I said. “Lying to Hank. Losing half my mind.”
Her radiance dimmed. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“If you know everything, you know why.” Her voice not challenging but hopeless. Then her eyes widened. “Oh, god. She put you here. Marion.”
“I put myselfhere. I found her, and I found you, too. For god’s sake.” I stamped my foot before I could stop myself. “When will you ever stop underestimating me?”
The sky broke open over our heads. The raindrops that pelted us felt like cottony hail, and dried on our skin like rubbing alcohol.
“Protecting you,” she said, eyes huge. “Badly, foolishly. Getting it all wrong. But never… never without love.”
“Does love count if you can’t feel it?”
“I messed up. But I always loved you. Always.”
“Lovedme,” I said harshly. “You took half of me away from myself and stuffed it in ashoe box,then you didn’t even like what was left.”
Her chin trembled. “That can’t be what you think.”
“Five years, Mom. Five years of trying to get you to look at me.”
“I was ashamed, Ivy! I amashamed.I—maimed you. But I was gonna fix it. Eighteen, your dad and I agreed. When you turned eighteen, we were gonna tell you everything, open the box—”
“Marion fixed it. And everything’s still broken.”
“I’m so sorry. For all of it.”
She was crying. My mom, who never cried, not even when Hank accidentally slammed the car door on her fingers. And it was what I needed to hear. It was what she owed me. But it was solittle,so late, I couldn’t bear it.
“Just stop,” I said angrily. “We don’t have time for this.”
