: Chapter 42

Fuck. Why is she hugging him? Why is she letting him touch her?

More to the point, why am I skulking here across the street, hiding behind an old SUV and watching it happen? Why aren’t I striding over there and punching the asshat in the face?

Because, I tell myself, that would make me the asshat. I left work early, knowing how hard this was going to be for her. Going through Mom’s things was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life—divvying them up between us as keepsakes, the unexpected kick in the nuts that came from the smell of her perfume lingering on her clothes. Things are just things, stuff is just stuff, until they become more. Until they are memories, precious reminders of what you’ve lost. Amelia said she wanted to do this alone, but I knew better. Or at least I thought I did.

Turns out she’s not alone anyway. She’s standing there on the front step, wrapped up in Chad and accompanied by Emily Gregor and a woman I assume is the famous Kimmy Park. All three of them knew Edith a lot better than I did. All three of them have been in Amelia’s life a lot longer than I have. She doesn’t need me at all, and I was stupid to think I was going to be some knight in shining Armani, riding to her emotional rescue.

I could still go over there. I don’t have to punch Chad in the face, no matter how much I want to. Instead, I could do something normal, like introduce myself properly to the women and kiss my girlfriend and help them sort out the house.

Hey, maybe we could all go out to dinner and talk about the old times. Except my old times with Edith, even my old times with Amelia, only go back a few months. I’m the new kid on the block, and I don’t like the feeling. It’s selfish and fucked up and wrong, but I like having her all to myself.

An ancient crone of a woman gives me the evil eye from a few doors down, and I suspect that must be Mrs. Katzberg. Before she can give the game away, I turn on my heel and stride away. Constantine dropped me a couple blocks from here, and I went to Wanda’s to get Amelia some cannoli, thinking the familiar food she always talked about might bring her some comfort. Now, the box hangs from my fingers, and I can’t imagine wanting to eat it alone.

If she can find some solace and comfort with Emily and Kimmy, or even with Chad, so be it. She deserves it. I get out my phone to call Constantine back, but Amber’s name flashes on the screen. She’s pretty much as fucked up as I am, which makes her one of the few people I could tolerate being around right now.

“Darling,” she purrs when I answer. “Can I talk to you about clowns?”

“No,” I reply. “But you can talk to me about what a shit I am. Are you free for a drink?”

“I remember that day so clearly.” I gaze off over her shoulder, clinking the ice in my Scotch glass. “I kind of wish I didn’t.”

“I know, Drake. I feel the same. I’ve gone over it so many times, spent so many hours wishing it had played out differently. That I hadn’t gone into her room to check on her. That she hadn’t been on so many head-fuck drugs. Most of all, that you hadn’t overheard it all.”

I stare at my Scotch, losing myself in the memory. It was about three nights before Mom died. With hindsight, I now know that she was on a lot of pain meds, doped up to the eyeballs to help her tolerate those final days. Days that counted down to hours, to minutes, to nothing, the pain getting worse and worse, her mind getting more and more messed up. As Amber puts it, head-fuck drugs. I think my parents hid a few home truths from us—like how long she actually had left and how much it was going to suck. Maybe they were protecting us, maybe they didn’t even know themselves. Maddox was only sixteen at the time, and I’m pretty sure they still saw all of us as babies anyway, no matter how old we were.

Elijah was already married to Amber, and they’d discovered that she couldn’t have kids a few years after their wedding, once they started trying. Both of them really wanted children, and Dad was keen on the whole family name being continued thing, so it came as a blow to everyone. We’re close, the James boys, and we all felt Elijah and Amber’s pain. Back then, she hadn’t shut down, the rest of my brothers hadn’t closed off from her, and she still felt like part of the family.

I was walking past Mom’s room that night, on my way back to my room after getting a beer from the kitchen. I was in my second year of law school, still living at home, although I was considering getting a place with my girlfriend pretty soon. Her door was slightly ajar, and I couldn’t help but hear her voice coming from inside.

“You’re so beautiful, Amber,” she was saying, her voice edged with a slight slur. Some of the meds made her sound like she was drunk. “We were so pleased when you and Elijah settled down—seeing your child married is a big moment. It’s such a shame that you’ll never get to experience it.”

I heard Amber gulp and stutter out a half-assed reply. I mean, I was shocked that my mom had said that, never mind Amber herself. “You look so healthy on the outside,” Mom continued. “Nobody could have guessed that you were barren.”

Amber’s gasp was loud enough for me to hear, and I was so shocked I dropped my beer. “I’m sorry, Verona. I know how much you wanted grandkids. I … I wish I could have given them to you.”

“It doesn’t change anything, does it? We all feel like this way, you know. It’s sad that poor Elijah has to pretend he doesn’t mind. And maybe he doesn’t mind right now. But he will. One day, he’ll resent you for what he’s had to give up. You shouldn’t have married my boy, Amber, knowing that you were broken.”

Amber was sobbing, and I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I burst into the room and confronted my mom even though she was so frail, so tiny in that big bed, her eyes bruised and drowsy. “Mom! What’s wrong with you? Why are you saying these things? None of that is true. Why would you even think that?”

She looked up at me, confused and groggy, and then back at Amber, as though she was seeing her for the first time. “Amber?” she said, sounding a bit more like her true self. “Why are you crying, darling?”

“She’s crying, Mom, because you just tore her to pieces about not being able to give Elijah kids. He loves her!”

I’ll never forget the look on Mom’s face as she stared at me, her mouth open in horror. Her normally supple skin was dry and thin, stretched across the bones of her face like tissue paper. Her beautiful dark hair had never grown back properly after the last round of chemo and lay in thin strands across her head. She looked old and sick, and nothing at all like my mom. The things that I’d just heard coming out of her mouth were not things my mom would have ever said either—she was the kindest, sweetest soul, and I think that’s one of the reasons Amber and I were so shocked.

“No, that can’t be right,” she muttered, her veined hands fluttering in the air. “I wouldn’t do that. I love Amber too. Why are you making things up about me, Drake? Why are you trying to make me feel bad, mi hijo? Why do you want to hurt me?”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m telling you what happened. Just because you’re sick …” I stopped talking then, because her being sick changed everything, and it made her say shit she didn’t mean. But the damage was already done.

She fell back onto her pillow then, tiny and gray, an alien who had taken over my mother’s mind and body. “Go away, Drake,” she said. “Leave me in peace.”

So I left. I turned around and took Amber with me.

“She doesn’t mean it, Amber,” I said, comforting her as she wept before me. “It’s the pain talking. Or the drugs, or⁠—”

“Or maybe she does mean it. Maybe it’s what she thought all along, and the drugs have taken away her inhibitions and let her actually say it. Is it true, Drake? Do you all hate me? And do you think Elijah will resent me one day? I didn’t know when we got married, I swear I didn’t!”

I held her in my arms and patted her back awkwardly. I was only twenty-three, not mature enough to really know what to do. I knew my mom didn’t mean those cruel things, that it wasn’t the real her, but I was still angry.

“Nobody hates you. And I meant what I said. Elijah loves you, you know that, right?” She nodded, but there was something in her eyes that told me she wasn’t convinced. My mom had planted a seed of doubt in her mind, but I had no idea how much it would continue to grow.

Present-day Amber is older and colder, and I truly believe something inside her snapped that night. Those harsh words from a drug-addled dying woman broke something precious, and my sister-in-law has never quite been the same since. That’s when she started retreating from us, avoiding family brunches, not returning calls. It was like she started to freeze us out before we got the chance to do it to her, and that caused a huge amount of friction between her and Elijah.

A few days later, Mom was gone. I saw her after that night, of course, but she was never totally lucid again. A combination of the drugs and the illness taking its terrible course, shutting down her organs and closing down her life. She was like an animal at the end, dominated by pain and fury, not even recognizing us anymore. I suppose that process had already started when she was so brutal to Amber, but we didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know how close we were to losing her forever, and to my own dying day, I will regret the fact that I never got to make it up to her. That I never got to talk to my real mom again. How the very last words we shared were ones of anger and reprimand. My mom—my wonderful, kind, giving mother—died believing that I was trying to hurt her.

Amelia doesn’t know it yet, but in some ways, she’s lucky. Her mom died peacefully, with her daughter at her side and nothing but love between them.

Amber puts her hand over mine on the table. “You’ll be okay, Drake.”

“You think? I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever get over it, you know? I’ve lived with it for all these years, that guilt. I wonder if maybe it’s just part of me now.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” She sips her wine. “You’re in love. That changes everything.”

“Does it, Amber? Is being in love enough? You and Elijah were in love.”

“True,” she says, letting out a bitter laugh. “And look at us now. Happily in hate.”

“He doesn’t hate you, and I’m sure you don’t hate him. Why don’t you tell him? Tell him about that night. At least let him get a glimpse of why things started to change between you. Maybe it’s not too late to change them back.”

“Ah, darling. What a lovely thought. If only we had a time machine.”

If I had a time machine, the first thing I’d do is go back to this morning and not let Amelia out of my sight.