don’t exercise. I won’t discuss how I look or don’t look. I won’t discuss test results or medications. My weight, my health, and my clothing are all off-limits.”
JoAnn’s eyes were red-rimmed now, her lips parted, her head shaking in mute befuddlement or denial or some other emotion April couldn’t parse through her own grief.
“I know you worry about me, I know you want to help, but that doesn’t change what I’m telling you.” Salt was stinging her eyes, blurring her vision, and she slapped away the tears and kept standing, kept talking. “Please believe me: The next time you bring up my body, I will end our conversation. I’ll walk out the door or hang up the phone. The next time you send me links to articles about weight loss or exercise, I’ll block your messages.”
For once, she was glad of her mother’s timidity before the assurance of others. It meant April could get out this next part before the weight of her own love dragged her under and drowned the words that needed, at long last, to be said.
“If that’s not enough, if you can’t stop, I’ll cut off all contact with you.” Despite her mother’s gasp, despite her own crying, April maintained eye contact as best she could. “B-because you hurt me, Mom. You’re hurting me.”
Her mother sobbed out loud then, hands fisted at her sides. “I love you.”
At that, April had to bow her head. After swallowing back more acid, though, she raised her chin once more.
Maybe her words cracked, but they were certain. They were honest. “You l-love me, but you still hurt me. When I talk to you, when I see you, I end up half-convinced that who I am, what I am, is wrong and abhorrent and needs to be fixed.”
“You’re not abhorrent,” JoAnn whispered, face crumpled and lined. “I never, ever thought that.”
The raw truth in that declaration drove April to reach for her mother’s hand. JoAnn’s fingers were slender and cold and unsteady. So fragile, April couldn’t squeeze too hard for fear of breaking them.
Still, her mother needed to realize. “But that’s how you make me feel.”
Everything she’d scripted in her head last night, she’d said. All but the last bit. And the voices of the two men were getting louder, closer, so she needed to say it now.
“Dad will never, ever understand how he’s hurt us. Even if he did understand, he’d never acknowledge it.” April gave her mother’s hand a gentle shake. “But you’re not him. Please, Mom. Please think about whether you want to keep hurting me, now that you know you are.”
Her mother’s tears were silent now, their trails glinting in the sunlight through the window, her pain etched in lines around her pale mouth.
“I only wanted to help,” she whispered.
April pressed a kiss to the back of her mother’s hand, the skin there more papery and thin than she’d recalled. Lightly freckled, despite sunscreen and spot-reducing hand creams.
In her mind, her mother was still young and glamorous. Sheathed in slender, formfitting dresses, makeup perfect as she left on her husband’s arm for his firm’s holiday parties, calling out last instructions for the babysitter until Brent got impatient and yanked her out the door.
But she wasn’t young anymore. Neither was April, really.
They were running out of time to fix this. To fix them.
The only way forward was honesty. “It doesn’t help, Mom. It only hurts.”
Then the guest room door was opening, and the amiable, man-to-man chuckles of Marcus and her father stopped abruptly.
Brent frowned but didn’t move closer to his wife. “JoAnn? What—”
“I think we’d better go,” April said. Somehow, Marcus was right there beside her, his hand resting warm and strong on her shoulder. She instinctively stepped away from the contact. “I’m sorry to miss lunch, Mom. I left your present in the den.”
In her peripheral vision, she could see Marcus staring down at her, brows drawn, hand frozen in midair, but he didn’t matter now. Her mother was still sitting on that bed. Still hunched, narrow shoulders shaking as she wept silently, so as not to embarrass anyone with her heartbreak.
Bending down, April kissed the top of her mom’s head. Inhaled the powdery scent of flowers, maybe for the last time.
“When you’ve had a chance to think, call me.” She was wetting her mother’s hair, so she lifted her face after one last inhalation. “I love you, Mom.”
With her father blustering protests and demands, her mother crying, and Marcus trailing silently behind her, April gathered her