Now You See Her Page 0,44
“Motherfucker” in one breath, she thought, “Mommy” in the next.
“So I don’t want to finish college. What’s the big deal? It’s my life, not yours.”
“You only have a few courses left. Why not just get your degree and then at least you’ll have options?”
“Options? What kind of options do I have? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a fucking mess. And don’t you dare tell me to watch my language.”
“Are you taking your medication?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Because this sort of thing always happens when you go off your meds.”
“What sort of thing would that be exactly?”
“The swearing, the moodiness, everything. It all gets worse.”
“Worse for you, maybe. Not for me.”
“Please, Devon.”
“Please, Mommy,” Devon mimicked.
“Okay, enough. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“You never could.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Like you tried with your mother?”
“What?”
“You could have stopped her, you know,” Devon continued cruelly. “Stopped her from jumping off that building.”
“Nothing would have stopped her,” Marcy protested weakly.
“Judith told me what happened.”
Marcy nodded, acknowledging defeat with a long, deep exhalation that quivered its way into the space between them. “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
“All you’ve ever wanted is for me to be normal,” Devon shot back.
“Yes!” Marcy shouted at her daughter, feeling the reverberations of that single word even now. “Yes, I wanted you to be normal. Is that so selfish of me? Is it so awful? Does it make me some sort of monster?”
Devon coldly watched the path of her mother’s tears. “I’m the monster,” she said.
“Excuse me,” someone was saying now.
Marcy turned to see Devon’s face dissolve into that of an elderly woman with white hair. The woman was using a wooden cane to navigate the busy street.
“I can’t get around you,” the woman said, her gentle smile producing a series of wrinkles that ran up from her mouth to circle her watery blue eyes.
“Oh. Sorry.” Marcy immediately moved out of the way so that the old woman could pass. How long had she been standing in the middle of the street like that? she wondered, glancing down at her watch. Long enough for Shannon to disappear completely, she acknowledged, deciding to call it a day. In the morning she’d return to Adelaide Road. If Shannon didn’t lead her to Audrey by the end of the week, she’d bite the bullet and confront her directly. Tell her that the girl she knew as Audrey was actually her daughter, Devon. Ask for her help in locating her.
Probably she should have done that right from the beginning, she thought. What had she been thinking?
Judith would undoubtedly tell her she hadn’t been thinking at all, that she’d stopped thinking clearly the day Devon disappeared into the icy waters of Georgian Bay. “Why won’t you take the medication the doctor prescribed?” she’d pleaded weeks, even months after the event.
“Because I don’t need antidepressants.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’re not seriously depressed?”
“Of course I’m depressed. I’m seriously depressed. But I’m depressed for a reason. I should be depressed. Why mask it? It’ll only prolong the misery.”
“Take the pills. At least for a little while. To get you over the hump.”
“Okay, fine.” Marcy had finally acquiesced.
Except the pills had replaced her depression with a stupefying numbness that was far worse, and she’d eventually stopped taking them. Her mother had been right—the drugs did make you feel as if you were doing the butterfly stroke through a vat of molasses—she’d realized when she felt her head starting to clear and her senses, touch, taste, sight, gradually returning to something approaching normalcy.
For the first time she’d understood Devon’s preference for despair over indifference.
Of course, by then such understanding was of little consequence. Another unfortunate example of too little, too late.
Devon had been right, too, she acknowledged now, taking a final look up and down St. Patrick’s Street. She could have stopped her mother from leaping to her death. Judith knew it. They all knew it.
Marcy was turning around when she saw a baby carriage emerge from inside a shop near the corner. Seconds later, Shannon popped into view, one hand pushing the carriage, the other holding a bottle of soda. She maneuvered the carriage into the street, sipping her soda from a straw as she continued in the direction of Merchant’s Quay.
“Okay, you’ve wasted enough time,” Marcy said out loud, glancing around self-consciously in case someone had overheard her. But if anyone had, they’d probably assumed she was talking on her cell phone. It was much easier to be crazy in public these