believe about her... She couldn’t have raised you girls. She was too flawed. She... I...”
Her throat worked and she closed her eyes. Then she seemed to gather herself and spoke again. “It’s me. I can’t let myself off the hook. Not anymore. I can’t distance myself from what I did. I want to. I fell in love and it made me do things that I never believed I was capable of. When I went back home... I was pregnant with you. My mother already thought that I was a sinner beyond redemption, Anna. And when she found out that I’d let him back into bed with me... When she found out I was pregnant again... The things she called me. Well, they were things I had already called myself, believe me. She said it would be better if you didn’t know. Or if I gave you—both of you—up for adoption. Because that kind of shame would follow you. She said my mother loved me enough to give me up. She said I should be brave enough to do that for you and for Rachel because I was unfit.”
“Mom,” Rachel said. “She didn’t say that to you. She couldn’t have.”
“Of course she could have. Why do you think you’ve never seen her?”
“I knew she wasn’t supportive,” Rachel said.
“Well, she wasn’t wrong. About the way people would see me. What would have happened if we would have come here and people had known that I’d had an affair with a married man that spanned years? That I had two children with him? Do you think they would have been kind to me? They would’ve locked their doors and never let me anywhere near them. They would’ve been afraid that I would steal their husbands. They would never have let you play with their kids. It would have followed you. It would have followed Emma. We would have been outcasts up here on the hill instead of being part of the community.”
“So it was up to me to make us outcasts, then?”
“No,” her mom said. “Of course I don’t mean that.”
“But it’s the outcome. I’m the one that ruined things. And you’re all just good. Good people, who have to deal with me.”
“Was telling Hannah not enough? Do you want me to get a billboard and put it up in the middle of town, Anna? Because I will. I’ll expose myself—my reputation doesn’t mean anything to me in light of what this has done to you.”
“Why? Why bother?” Anna said. “You can just go ahead and keep defending me on the street when people come up to shout at me because they’re so angry about what I did to my husband. And you all are, too,” Anna said, looking around the room.
“I’m not,” Emma said. “I never was.”
Some of the anger drained from Anna. “No, Emma. I’m sorry. I don’t mean you.”
“I didn’t understand at first,” Rachel said. “I understand now. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to be supportive of you at first. I am.”
Suddenly Anna felt gross and mean. And she remembered Rachel saying something similar to her only a few weeks ago.
Don’t you ever just feel mean?
She felt mean now. Mean and unforgiving, and she just didn’t want to see her mom’s point of view. She was hurt. Wounded. Destroyed by this lie and how it had shaped her life.
“We lived to make you happy,” Anna said. “Because of what you did for us. Because you made us feel like... Like your life was harder because you had us.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was something that Anna had always been somewhat aware of. That her mother had it harder because she was single. And that she was single because of the two of them. “Everything that I thought about being married, it’s because of you. Because of the sanctity that you bestowed on it. And you didn’t even believe in it. You used to tell me that the secret to a happy marriage was love, but how would you know? You’ve never even been married. And I stayed married so much longer than I would have because of you. You didn’t keep me from becoming that other woman, Mom. You turned me into her, because I didn’t know how else to escape. And I’m not sure that I can ever forgive you for that.”
Anna turned and fled the room, went out the front door and down the steps, into the darkness.
She looked up at the lighthouse, cutting great