or insane.”
“They aren’t really lies when he thinks they are true. For him I suppose I am quite insane.”
“But how can he be so sure you are making us up—has he ever seen a faerie?”
“No, my sweet, I think that is the point.” I wiped the flour off my hands on the apron. “People who don’t believe in faeries have usually never met one.”
“But people believe in a lot of things they have never seen, like black holes or deep water fish.”
“That is easier to prove, although I don’t think everyone believes in black holes. For many people that’s just a story, too, being so very far off as to be unreal.”
“I still don’t think it is right, though, him talking about you like this, for money.”
“The money from that book got us this house.” I bent down to check on the pie. “Dr. Martin and I agree to disagree,” I said while I rose back up. “I leave him to his convictions, he leaves me to mine.”
“But he doesn’t,” she argued. “He wanted to treat you with pills, it says so here in the book, and it says other things too, about me … and my father.”
“I think we should leave that alone.” I turned my back on her, unable to meet her eyes. I busied my hands cleaning the kitchen counter, wishing against all odds she would leave the matter be. She was all grown up by then, though. I couldn’t forbid her anything. I couldn’t protect her from going where she shouldn’t.
“But is it true, Mother?” she asked. “Did you suffer like that when you were a child? Am I a daughter of your pain…? Did you take me to the mound to bury me there?” Her voice rose behind me.
“Of course not, Mara, of course not.” I spun around and placed my arms on her shoulders, made to pull her into my embrace. She wouldn’t have it, though, and forced my arms away. “I brought you to the mound so that you could live,” I told her, standing before her. “You are a child of Faerie. You have always been a child of Faerie.”
“But Faerie is the opposite of life, isn’t it?”
“No—not quite.”
“But why would you even have me live, then?” Her voice broke, and she looked utterly crushed. My heart ached, bled salt. “If my beginning was like it says in the book? Why didn’t you just let me die? You were so young and so broken. So sad and so alone—”
“So I wouldn’t be,” I interrupted her. “I wouldn’t be sad and alone if I had you. You were always mine, you see, ever since you were the size of a finger, sleeping on an oak leaf in Harriet’s palm, and before that too, you were mine. I will never regret having you.”
“But those who hurt you so, will you ever make them pay?”
“Whatever good would come of that?”
“I don’t believe in letting the world deal its blows, I believe in fighting back.”
“For what, Mara? Fight for what?”
“For justice and pride … for your dignity.”
“Nothing good ever comes from any of those things—what is justice, anyway? What is pride or dignity? It doesn’t matter, Mara, none of it does. I survived. That is all.”
“So it is true, then, what he says?”
“Well, the ‘trauma’ in the title does come from a place, but everything is very confusing … I don’t really know what happened back then—”
“Seems from what he wrote that you deserve a lot more in this life than to merely survive.”
“Why? I have it all: a beautiful daughter, a wonderful home…” Suddenly she’d made me feel so small, like the tiniest of mice living under the floorboards. Made me feel like I should have taken up arms, not kept my head low and pretend it didn’t blow. Your children can do that, make you feel that shame. “I let him write that book,” I defended my lack of courage. “I let him tell the story there.”
“But it is his story about you, not your own.”
“Still,” I shrugged. “And remember, Mara, some of it is true, but some of it is not. There are certainly a lot of things that never happened in there, too. It’s all just so horribly mixed up.”
“But you let your family rage at you and cast you aside. You let them say that it is all lies, let them live in such denial—”
“I don’t know that they could be blamed—”
“I understand that you are hurting, Mother, maybe too much