Page 79
“Maybe her mind is ill. She gave up her entire life for me. She moved to a secluded place, for me. She never traveled, never had a man in her life—all for me. I know the reason she didn’t have a man in her life was because she thought men were predators. Every single one of them. They were guaranteed to abuse you in one way or another and then break your heart after they’d destroyed your soul. It wasn’t entirely for me. It was those beliefs that kept her from having a relationship, but she still made me feel like she was doing all that, holding those beliefs, for me.”
“Why did she think that? It’s so…” I couldn’t find the words.
She gazed past me, her face blank. The color had returned, but her eyes looked empty for a moment. “She said I should love her with all my heart. Daughters were connected to their mothers in ways no one could understand. Good daughters, grateful daughters, gave back what they’d been given. All my life I’ve heard this. So I felt trapped. I felt so guilty.”
“Guilty for having your own life?”
“Guilty for leaving, guilty for having a man in my life, even though she knew nothing about him. Guilty for even breathing. Guilty for wanting anything she didn’t want, or that didn’t have to do with her.”
“That sounds… hard.” It did, but at the same time, I understood the power of a mother—to love and hold you close, or to push you away because she’s infatuated with your amazing sister. A mother can make you feel like the center of the universe or someone who’s not worthy of even basic attention, not to mention love.
“I literally felt guilty for wanting to be loved by a man. For wanting to start my own life in a place without her. Even a place 150 feet from her front door.” Jordan whimpered, clutching her stomach like she felt physical pain saying this.
“She said I couldn’t leave her all alone. I was her reason for living; I was the one who had healed her and helped her reclaim her own self. Getting up every morning to care for me was the thing that allowed her to exist at all.”
I wondered which was worse—being smothered with love, or not being loved at all. “It sounds oppressive. Like being strangled.” I wasn’t sure I believed this, but she seemed to need me to enter into her pain, to tell her I understood. I didn’t understand at all. Truthfully, I was a little jealous.
“It was. It is. It’s exactly like being strangled. The only thing that separates us, that belongs only to me, is my poetry. It’s the only thing she didn’t want to be part of, the only place where I could be someone else—me.”
I placed my hand on her leg and squeezed it gently. I didn’t have a clue what that was like. But maybe I did. “Are you sure she didn’t know about Todd?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know that?”
“Todd and I met for a drink every three or four days when I did the grocery shopping. Other times, we arranged to meet in the woods when I went for walks to write poetry. She didn’t know about any of that. She thought I was moody and absorbed in my work, that I was indecisive when I was shopping, so I took longer than necessary.”
“What if she did know?”
“How would she?”
“Mothers sense things. Maybe she felt that you’d changed. That you didn’t need her as much, or at all.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how she would have found out. I wasn’t any different around her.”
“You can’t be sure of that. You might have been more confident, more yourself. And she sensed that, even if she couldn’t explain it.”
“I guess that’s possible. But so what?”
“If she saw you walking with him in the woods, if she watched you and you weren’t aware—”
“I would know,” she said.
“Would you? Not if you were completely focused on him. You might be less aware. I think she knows.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I just do.”
Jordan didn’t respond. I took a deep breath, hoping I wasn’t blowing everything wide open, putting our lives at risk even more. But the thought wouldn’t leave me alone, it grew stronger. “If your mother knew about Todd, if she thought you might leave, like you wanted to, she might kill him to make sure you wouldn’t do that.”
Jordan gasped softly.
“Maybe you had it backward—being afraid to leave your house. Maybe the note was for you. And maybe, you should be afraid to stay.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
SAMANTHA
