I wish.
I shake my head. “Couldn’t sleep.” There, I didn’t lie. She still looks concerned, though. “Just one of those restless nights, I guess.” Also, not a lie.
Thankfully, the waitress interrupts to take our order and it seems to put the topic behind us.
“So, tell me how last night went,” she says as we hand over our menus. I watch the woman’s back for a moment to avoid Mom’s gaze.
She means Rowan. My heart swells beneath the memory of our time together. We laughed. We cried. We laughed until we cried. But nothing happened beyond conversation and a little hand-holding.
I’m not morally opposed to sharingsomeof the details, but something about Rowan makes me want to savor it. Savor him. Keep whatever this thing is between us just that: betweenus. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe it’s a futile effort because Mom can sniff out truth like a bloodhound. Or maybe none of it matters because he has to leave soon anyway.
Still, I can’t bring myself to offer up much. “It was fine.”
“Lies, but I’ll allow it,” she responds coolly. “How’s he doing since his grandfather passed?”
Norm was the topic of conversation for most of the night. Rowan soaked up every story, every memory his Pops and I shared like a sponge. I was the faucet turned on full blast, giving as much as I could to put his guilty conscience to rest, to take even just a shred of the grief he’s been shouldering and throw it aside.
“I think he’s doing better,” I say.
“Good. That’s good.” She fidgets with her flatware, eyes darting around me and the table. “You’re gonna see him again then?”
I sigh in exasperation. This woman can’t help herself. “If you must know?—”
“I must.”
“I’m going back over this afternoon to help him paint. Happy?”
She grins behind her coffee. “As long as you are.”
Before she can pounce on the rare sight of her only daughter blushing like teenager, I steer the conversation to something more serious.
“So…the chairman of the BCH board called yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“He thinks my—our—story is valuable to their mission and could help encourage more donations, so they’ve asked me to give the keynote speech.”
Remembering the pain, the loss we endured, carries a heaviness that feels like gravity beneath a layer of concrete beneath another layer of gravity on top. Unbearable. Unsurvivable.
But wedidsurvive. It’s the message I know Boulder Children’s wants to hear. And I think it might be time for me to share it.
Mom watches me intently, soft and warm. They weren’t related but, I swear, sometimes I look at her and all I see is Gwyn. I know she sees Maddy in me, too. She says it’s probably because the four of us spent so much time together we all morphed into the same person.
Eyes a little glassy, Mom’s crow’s feet tip up. I think she’s about to speak, but she hesitates.
“Mom, will you say something?”
“I’m just…” A pause and a hard swallow. “My beautiful Haddy girl.” She shakes her head, her words a tendril of awe floating across the table as she studies me like it might be her last chance to do it. “Look at you.” Her voice cracks on the end and she sucks in a shaky breath.
I twist my hands in my lap. She’s not even gone yet and the impending grief already feels latched on to me like a shadow. When Mom is at her brightest, it’s high noon and the grief is barely a passing thought—thin and fleeting. But then, in moments likethis, mortality dims her light a little and it’s evening. The shadow looms bigger and bigger until the night swallows it whole and darkness consumes every space where her light used to be.
Maybe it’s meant to be a mercy, the shadow. Preparing me for what’s to come. Mostly it feels like a noose I can’t escape.
“Mom,” I whisper.
“Sorry,” she sputters, swiping her cheeks. “Didn’t mean to get all sappy. I just love you is all.”
“I love you too.”