Now You See Her Page 0,101

truly awful mother looks like?

She tried her best, Marcy argued silently.

So did you.

My son hates me. My daughter is …

Is what? her sister asked, as clearly as if she were standing right beside her. Your daughter is what, Marcy?

What have I done? Marcy wondered. What am I doing?

Slowly, as if her feet were encased in cement, Marcy walked to the desk across from the bed and retrieved her purse. Then she sank to the carpet and opened it, pulling out the by-now-tattered envelope inside and placing the pictures of Devon in a semicircle around the lone picture of her mother, running her fingers lovingly across their cheeks.

Then she withdrew the second envelope, unfolded the letter inside it, and began to read.

My beautiful Mommy, she began, then stopped. Could she really do this? Did she have any choice?

Marcy began again, hearing Devon’s voice filtering through each word. My beautiful Mommy, I don’t expect you to understand what I’m about to do. Please don’t be mad, and understand that this is not a decision I’ve made lightly. I know how much pain I’ve caused you. Believe me when I say I have no desire to cause you any more.

Marcy pictured herself racing down the hall to Devon’s bedroom right after the police had left, finding the letter addressed to her that her daughter had placed carefully on her pillow, and quickly pocketing it before Peter could arrive and demand to see what it was. “No note?” he’d asked, standing ashen-faced in the doorway moments later.

“No note,” she’d lied, waiting until later when she was alone to open it again. Those first awful lines, lines that seemed to suggest …

“No,” Marcy told herself now, as she’d told herself then, returning the letter to its envelope, then pulling it out again with her next breath, forcing herself to continue.

These last few years have been a mix of heartache, pain, and despair. I wish with all my heart it was otherwise. I know how hard it’s been for you. I hope you know how hard it’s been for me, too. Sometimes it has taken every ounce of strength I have just to put one foot in front of the other, to make it through each endless day. It’s gotten to the point where even saying good morning hurts because I see the hope in your eyes that simple greeting elicits. Then I have to watch that hope die as the day drags on and on and on. One day bleeds its poison into the next. Each day is worse than the day before. Nights are the worst time of all.

I feel as if I’ve descended into a bottomless pit of sadness, and there’s no way I can climb out, no matter how far down your hands reach, no matter how desperately they try to pull me up. The well is too deep, the water too cold. I feel myself sinking farther and farther below the surface. I now realize that giving in is the only way out.

I can honestly say I feel better, lighter, more energized, than I have in years. I’m actually happy, strange as that must sound. Knowing what I have to do has freed me to remember all the good times we shared: the mornings we spent drawing at the kitchen table, the nights you spent patiently sitting beside my bed, waiting until I fell asleep, the afternoons we spent curled up together on the sofa watching Sesame Street, and then later, The Young and the Restless. How grown-up that made me feel! I remember the time you took me to the ballet when I was barely four years old and let me dance in the aisle as the Sugar Plum Fairy danced on the stage, and how you clapped so proudly when I was done. I remember shopping for shoes when I was fifteen and you bought me a pair of boots that were more expensive than the ones you bought for yourself because you saw how much I loved them. I remember you sitting in the audience of every painful high school play I was in, cheering me on at each and every swim competition, the pride I saw in your face whether I won or placed a distant fourth.

Most of all, I remember our wonderful summers at the cottage, the days spent canoeing and lying in the sun, the long walks through the woods, the barbecues at sunset, the mother-daughter confidences we shared before the darkness in my soul