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It’s the strangest, longest, hardest moment of my life. Seconds stretch on as we stare at each other. And I have the sense she’s thinking the exact same things I am.
Why did it have to be like this?
What if we had been allowed to know each other?
What will happen now?
Tears well in her eyes, but she sniffs them back, raising her chin primly. “She liked things that could fly,” Remi points out. “I wonder why.”
I think I know. Because I get it—being rooted to a life that’s all wrong, wishing you had wings to spread and soar away. “Maybe she felt trapped.”
Remi sniffles again, wiping at her nose with her wrist this time. “By us?”
“No.”
I’m surprised how easily my answer comes. Ordinarily, I don’t think of myself as someone who struggled or went through something traumatic. But I did. And if I’d found out I was pregnant while living under Wally’s roof? Well, I would have felt trapped, too.
But not because of the life inside me.
Because of the life around me.
“I think she loved us,” I murmur, looking up into the leafy canopy swaying overhead, tapping into the little oasis inside me for strength. “Whatever was going wrong in her life that made her an unfit mother, she still carried us. And kept us safe while she could.”
Remi fingers her clip, considering. “I suppose you’re right. She probably wouldn’t have left us pieces of herself if she didn’t care.”
A necklace and a clip.
I remember the night I wandered into the police station, off the street, with only that red rubber bodysuit and the thin gold charm strung around my neck.
Was it the same way for our mom at the hospital? Did she come with just the clothes on her back? Were these trinkets the only ones she had to give?
“Do you think—” Remi starts and then has to pause to swallow. A tear tracks down her cheek, but she just lets it fall.
And I decide I like her.
Even before she finishes.
“—do you think she did it? Do you think she flew away? To freedom?”
And I decide I really like her.
My sister, I think.
It suddenly occurs to me—maybe our mother never meant for us to be alone. Maybe we were always supposed to do this together. Have one another. Maybe that’s why she felt like we would be okay without her.
Maybe, now that I know that, I can finally forgive her.
“I hope so,” I say, smiling up at the sky, letting my own tears fall. Feeling happy and sad, but mostly just hopeful. “I really do.”
sixty-nine
two years later
What the fuck am I doing here?
I know I said I was past all that shit, but seriously.
How did I end up with this tight end’s hairy ass in my face?
