She laughs once, but it ain’t happy. “Jeremy said I never apologized enough.”
I keep my voice even. “Jeremy sounds like a man who needed women smaller than him because he wasn’t much to begin with.”
She looks back at me then. A little shocked. A little pleased. A little scared of being pleased.
“He wasn’t always like that,” she says.
“They never are.”
Her eyes drop.
“I hate that,” she whispers.
“What?”
“That I still want to explain him. Like if I tell it right, maybe I won’t sound so stupid.”
I sit on the edge of the chair instead of the bed, giving her space. “You don’t sound stupid.”
“I married him.”
“Smart women marry cruel men every day.”
“I had his child.”
“You loved your child before you knew what it would cost to leave his father. Those are not the same thing.”
She stands very still.
Then she sits on the edge of the bed, slow, careful not to wake August who has passed out again. Her hands fold in her lap. She looks younger like this. Bare-faced, exhausted, sitting beside her sleeping son in borrowed safety.
“My mother would have hated this,” she says.
“Being here?”
“Needing anyone.” Her mouth tightens. “She hated needing Mike. Hated that she loved him. Hated that she kept anything from him. Hated that she told me his last known address on her deathbed like it was a gift when maybe it was just one more thing she couldn’t carry.”
I think of the woman in the photograph. Not her mother. But a proxy. Another woman, just like Caroline. Laughing beside Mike Welles in Oregon, one hand on his chest, young enoughto believe the damage was still in front of her instead of already happening.
“She gave you somewhere to run,” I say. “Even if it was late.”
Amelia looks at August. “I ran to a dead man.”
“You ran to his blood.”
“I don’t know if I’m his blood.”
The fear in her voice is soft and terrible.
There it is.
The question she’s been choking on. Just like Legend looked at the photo and still refused to call it proof.
“What happens if I’m not?” she asks.
I don’t answer too fast. She deserves better than comfort thrown like a blanket over a broken window.
“If you aren’t Mike’s daughter,” I say, “then you’re still a woman who came to us in trouble with a child who needs sleep and a husband who needs to learn Hell has gates for a reason.”