Page 111 of The Time It Takes
I shake my head. “Keep it. I trust you. We’ll open it together,” I tell him.
He lets me go with a hesitant nod, his face falling. The electricity between us wavers. I lunge forward, wrapping both of my arms around his neck—digging my face into him. His arms don’t hesitate to hold me.
“Please don’t hate me for this, Ollie.”
I WALK INTO the house that built me into everything that I am. The house that carries so many memories that make me want to smile and laugh and cry and scream all at the same time.
I passed Frank outside without saying anything. I wasn’t in the mood for formalities. I’ve always had limited time with my mother and now is no different. I search the entire house before realizing she’s not inside it. I jog back outside to ask Frank. My adrenaline is starting to run high, and I need to tell her how I feel now, or I fear I’ll never get the chance to.
“Where is she?” I ask him.
He looks over at me from where he sits on the porch with a newspaper, his eyes squinting against the brightness of the sun. He looks grim and I ignore the instinct to sit with him. We’ve never been close enough to talk. I blame that on my mother. He points a finger in the direction of the RV, and I mumble a "thank you" before making my way toward it. I probably should have searched there first.
When I open the door, music pours softly through the radio. My mother sits at the dining table with a crossword puzzle in front of her. She peers up at me over her reading glasses and then glances back down as if I’m not here.
I slide into the seat across from her.
“You know,” I start as I drag my finger across the pattern of wood on the table. “I grew up happy. I hardly had a thing to complain about. I’ve had everything I could have needed, but the older I got I realized that it turns out I actually drew the short stick in this charade I’ve been calling a life.” I chuckle. “It didn’t matter what I wanted though. Those things were luxuries. Ben and I survived. We lived a wonderful life together here, but you never even got to see that part. I used to get so mad at him for hating you. I’d make excuses for you. I wanted a mother and it’s taken me too long to realize I’ll never have one—not in the way that most do.”
She removes the glasses from her face and sets them on the table.
I continue, “I believe you love me in the way one loves a cat. With very little care and a whole lot of absence.”
My mother shifts in her seat. “I never meant to make you and your brother feel—”
“Abandoned?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. I wave a lazy hand in the air. “I’m all grown up now. I’m no longer the little girl who couldn’t see how fucked up of a mother you were. You’ve been gone most of my life, so if you think leaving for another few years will phase me, it won’t. Your absence weighs nothing on me. I’ve grown accustomed to it. I don’t need you to forgive me for anything. In fact, you should be the one beggingmefor forgiveness.” I clasp my hands together and ignore the devastation on her face. “Dad was sick, and he died because of it. Ben was sick and he died because of it. And you know what I’m sick with?” I ask her. “I’m sick with clinging to the idea of how different my life would have been if you wouldn’t have been so fucking self-absorbed. We were your fucking children and youleftus. We were nothing to you. You are so—”
She slams her fist on the table and it cuts off my words.
“You are my daughter! How dare you speak to me this way!”
A laugh bubbles up from my throat. Unbelievable. “My point exactly. I amyour daughter, and I can’t remember the last time I felt like it.”
She works on a swallow as we stare at one another. She’s the first to back down, looking at her lap instead. “Your father was the love of my life.” Her words come out unevenly, and I tense, readying myself for impact. “We fell in love at a young age, and we had your brother young. We had no clue what we were doing, but we figured it out together. Then one day he woke up and he told me he couldn’t move.” Her eyes lift and they’re filled with tears and so much brutal pain that it makes my chest ache. “He was up on his feet two days later as if nothing had happened. His sickness…” Her words fall off. “His sickness was one of the most terrifying things I ever had to witness. It was devastating to watch him fight something that wasn’t real.”
I lean back into the seat, trying to ignore the pain it causes to talk about him. “Why are you telling me this?”
Her eyes soften. “After we had you, it got a lot worse. He went on for as long as he could. His best medicine was pretending everything was normal. Or maybe that was mine.” She sniffles. “But it’s hard to fight an illness no one can see.”
The backs of my eyes begin to sting.
“Your father didn’t get stuck in a rip current.” Her brows knit together. “Your father was a good swimmer, Willow. He knew the ocean better than anyone.”
I’m shaking my head because she’s lying.She has to be lying.
I mean, the idea sometimes crossed my mind, but I could never let myself believe it. “No,” the word forms on my lips, but no sound comes out. He couldn’t have done that. He would never leave us on purpose.
I stare at the stream of tears on my mother’s aging face. “He was in so much pain. He tried, Willow. For as long as he could. He tried for all of us.”
I reach out and grab my mother’s shaking hands. A sob shudders through her body.
She drops her voice to a whisper, pulling out the necklace that was tucked under her shirt. It’s my father’s wedding band. She presses it against her lips. “He always wanted to see the world.”
Anger rises above my sadness. I run a hand through my hair, and it gets stuck in a knot. I ball my hands into such tight fists that my nails dig into my skin. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
“Because it was no excuse.” Damn right, it wasn't. It excused nothing. “But I’ve always done what I could for both of you. I just wasn’t happy anymore. I didn’t have anything left for me here.”
My chest starts to burn as if every bruise she beat into my chest is on fire. “You hadme. You hadBenji.” My words rattle in my chest.
