felt, but it didn’t capture the extremes. I didn’t think a person could feel so full and so empty at the same time.
The door opened, then closed. Had it not been for the click of her cane, my mother’s faltering gait would have been lost in the carpet. She eased herself down on the edge of the bed. I tried to stop crying, but her nearness only made it worse.
“I’m not good at this,” she said in a shaky voice. “You were always so strong.”
That got me crying again, all the more when I felt her hand on my shoulder. She didn’t tell me to stop, just sat with me until I finally quieted, sniffed, and brushed at my tears with the back of my hands. She left the bed then. I heard three pulls from the tissue box on the dresser—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—then she returned and pressed them into my hand. I put them to my eyes, knowing they would come away mascara black, but what could I do?
I held my breath. No, she wasn’t good at this. Would she leave?
The pillow-top shifted lightly as she sat again.
I exhaled a shuddering breath. “For months and months I couldn’t cry. Now I can’t stop. I’m not strong. I’m weak.”
“You’re wrong about that, Margaret Mackenzie. People don’t cry because they’re weak. They cry because they’ve been strong for too long.” She touched my hair lightly, then caressed my whole head before pulling out a hairpin that must have been dislodged from the knot at the nape. “I’m sorry you had to be so strong.”
I shifted the tissues to my running nose and said a nasal, “Not your fault.”
“But it is. I wish I’d been a better mother. Softer,” she said as her hand again moved in my hair. “I wish I were softer.” She removed another pin and set it aside.
“You couldn’t be.” My father … expected. “I understand that now.”
“But I want to be softer,” she said with such paradoxical harshness that I almost laughed. Instead, absurdly, I cried. Again. She opened her whole hand on my head, then carefully, soothingly removed a few more pins before finger-combing my hair out of its knot.
“Is it too late to change?” she asked so quietly I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or herself. When I didn’t answer, she said, “There are two reasons people change. One is if they’ve opened their minds, the other if their hearts have been broken.”
“Heart,” I said.
“Mind,” she said, then added, “So we have that covered. Tell me about your broken heart.”
With a shaky sigh, I rolled to my back. “Oh God. Where to start? Lily. Always Lily.”
“Yes,” she said. Her silence urged me on.
“Lily, Dad, you, Liam, and Edward.”
“Not five years ago. Now.”
“You, Liam, and Edward. I like having you in my life.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“But Shanahan will file a report, I’ll get a probation surrender notice, and everything I’ve found again will be gone.”
“Why gone?”
“Because I can’t put you all through that again.”
“Is it your decision to make?” she asked. In the old days, the question would have scolded with more than a little indignation. Hearing only calm now, I really looked at her. Her skin was pale with just a hint of natural color. Her hair, a darker auburn than it used to be, waved gently behind her ears. She seemed confident, like she knew exactly what she was talking about.
Then she smiled. “Do me a favor, sweetheart? Take off that makeup? It’s made a mess of your eyes.”
It was also irritating my eyes. So I went into the bathroom, removed it, rinsed, and moisturized. When I returned to the bedroom, my mother was sitting on the bench at the foot of the bed. She patted the free space beside her. Hungry for her touch, even for just a little longer, I sat close.
“Better,” she said as she studied my face. Her eyes first, then her un-casted hand went to my scar. “Better.”
“Will it ever be over?” The nightmare of Lily’s death.
“It’ll fade more each year.”
“But if a judge overturns my probation, and the press and the gawkers and the Mackenzie Cooper Law—”
“It’s a good law,” she broke in. “It’s probably saved more than a life or two. And it has your name. Isn’t that a good thing?” When I eyed her in disbelief, she moved right on. “No matter what happens, it won’t be like it was. This time you’ll have all of us behind you.”