She tipped her face up to his, “I actually believe you are, which is why Im here rather than burning you in effigy. But you see, it hurt, all over again. And I have the right, I have the responsibility to myself, to step back from that. Im not willing to let my heart spill at your feet again, and I cant be with you and keep it intact. Maybe we can be friends, maybe we cant. But we cant be lovers. I just needed to explain that to you.”
When she stepped back, he laid a hand on her arm. “Would you walk with me?”
“Jordan—”
“Just walk with me for a few minutes. You said what you had to say. Im asking you to listen.” “All right.” She put her hands in her pockets to warm them, and to avoid contact with his.
“I didnt handle it well when my mother died.”
“I dont know that youre supposed to handle things like that well. My mothers buried over there.” She lifted a hand to gesture. “I dont really remember her. I dont remember losing her. But I miss her, and sometimes still I feel cheated. I have some of her things—a blouse my father saved that was her favorite, some of her jewelry, and photographs.
I like having them. The fact that I dont remember her, that I was too young to remember losing her, doesnt mean I dont understand what it was like for you. You wouldnt let me help.“
“Youre right. I wouldnt let you help. I didnt know how.” He took her arm briefly to steady her over the uneven ground, then let her go as they walked toward the trees.
“I loved her so much, Dana. Its not the sort of thing you think about every day when things are normal. I mean I didnt wake up every morning thinking, boy, I sure love my mother. But we were a unit.”
“I know.”
“When my father left us… well, I dont remember him very well either. But I remember that she was a rock. Not cold, not hard, just sturdy. She worked like a fucking dog, two jobs until we were out of the debt pit hed put her in.” Even now, he could almost taste the bitterness of it. “She mustve been so tired, but she always had time for me. Not just putting a meal on the table or handing me a clean shirt, but for me.”
“I know. She was so interested in everything you did, without breathing down your neck over it. I used to pretend she was my mother.”
He glanced down. “You did?”
“Yeah. You didnt think I was hanging around your house when I was a kid just to annoy you and Flynn and Brad, did you? I liked being around her. She smelled like a mother, and she laughed a lot. Shed look at you—sometimes shed just look over at you, and there was such love in her face, such pride. I wanted a mother who would look at me that way.”
It moved him to hear her say it, and the faint tang of bitterness washed away. “She never let me down. Not once. Not ever. She read everything I wrote, even when I was a kid. She saved a lot of it, and she would tell me that one day, when I was a famous writer, people would get a big kick out of reading my early stories. I dont know if I would be a writer today if it wasnt for her. Her steady, constant faith in me.”
“Shed be thrilled with what youve done.”
“She didnt live to see me published, not with a book. She wanted me to go to college. I wanted it, too, but I figured on putting it off a year or two, earning more money first. She laid down the law—and she was damn good at that when it was important to her. So I went.”
He was silent for a moment, and a cloud slipped over the sun, deadening the light. “I sent some money home, but not much. Wasnt that much to spare. I didnt come home as much as I should have. I got caught up. There was so much out there. Then I went to grad school. There were a lot of years I wasnt there for her.”
“Youre being too hard on yourself.”
“Am I? She put me first, every time. I couldve come back here sooner, earned a good living at the garage and taken some of the weight off her.”
She put a hand on his shoulder so he would turn and face her. “Thats not what she wanted for you. You know it wasnt. She was over the moon about what you were doing. When you had those stories published in magazines, she was thrilled.”
“I couldve written them here. I did write when I finally came home. I got my teeth into a book, wrote like a crazy man at night after work. When I wasnt being crazy over you, that is. I was going to do it all, have it all. Money, fame, the works.”
He spoke quickly now, as if the words had been dammed up too long. “I was going to move her out of that broken-down house, buy her someplace beautiful, up in the hills. She would never have to work again. She could garden or read, or whatever she wanted to do. I was going to take care of her. But I didnt. I couldnt.”
“Oh, Jordan. Youre not to blame for that.”
“Its not a matter of blame. She got sick. Id spent all that time away, now I was back, going to make it right. And she got sick. Just a little tired, shed say. Just a little achy. Getting old. And shed laugh. So she didnt go to the doctor in time. Money was tight, time off work was tough to get, so she didnt go until it was too late.”
Unable to hold out against it, she took his hand in hers. “It was terrible. What both of you went through was terrible.”
“I didnt pay attention, Dana. I was wrapped up in my own life, in what I wanted, what I needed. I didnt see that she was sick until she… Jesus, she sat me down and told me what theyd found inside her.”
“Its stupid to blame yourself for that. Stupid, Jordan, and shed tell you exactly that.”
“She probably would, and Ive come around to that since. But during it, after… It happened so fast. I know it took months, but it seemed so fast. The doctors, the hospital, the surgery, the chemo. Christ, she was so sick through that. I didnt know how to take care of her—”
“Wait. Just wait. You did take care of her. You stayed with her, you read to her. God, Jordan, you fed her when she couldnt feed herself. You were her rock then, Jordan. I saw it.”
“Dana, I was terrified, and I was angry, and I couldnt tell her. I locked it in because I didnt know what else to do.”
“You were barely in your twenties, and your world was crashing down around you.”
Even as she said it, she knew she hadnt understood that at the time, not completely.
“She was fading away in front of me, and I couldnt stop it. When we knew she was dying, when there wasnt much time—she was in such pain—she told me she was sorry she had to go, that she had to leave me. She said there wasnt a single day of my life she hadnt been proud of me, and grateful for me.
“I fell apart. I just lost it. Then she was gone. I dont know if I said good-bye, or told her Iloved her. I dont even know what I said or did.”
He turned back, walking once more toward the stones that bloomed out of the patchy grass. “Shed made all the arrangements already, so all I had to do was follow through. One foot in front of the other. The memorial service—the dress she wanted to wear, the music she wanted played. She had some insurance. Shed scraped money together for that every month. Christ knows how. There was enough to pay off most of the debts that had built up and give me some breathing room.”
“You were her child. She wanted to provide for you.”
“She did, in every possible way. I couldnt stay here, Dana. Not then. I couldnt live in that house and grieve for her every time I took a breath. I couldnt stay in this town, where I would see people I knew everywhere I went.
“Youd think it would be a comfort, the familiar. But for me it was constant pain. One minute Id feel like I was suffocating, the next like I was going to explode. I had to get away from it. I had to bury some of that pain the way. Id buried her.”
“You wouldnt talk to me about it.”
“I couldnt. If Id had the words, Id have choked on them. Im not saying it was right. It wasnt. But its the truth. I had to make something of myself, and I couldnt do it here. Or I believed I couldnt, so whats the difference?”