“Once I tripped when you blew your nose,” Mama confided, her eyes dancing. “I was walking up the stairs—you were downstairs making paper dolls—we were making them together, but we needed a better pair of scissors—and, honk!”
Darya giggled. “And you tripped?”
“Not with the scissors, I hope,” Natasha said.
“Not with the scissors,” Mama said. “And yes, I tripped right in the middle of the staircase. My little girl, my beautiful, perfect, little girl—honk!”
Darya was thrilled. A big sister teasing her younger sister, and their mother playing along. It was what she’d yearned for, and here it was. Something opened behind her ribs, and her lungs felt fragile, like wings.
She looked around the room, trying to find something to admire. Her gaze fell on a blue-and-purple quilt, made from dozens of circles, all sewn together. “Hey, I remember that! Aunt Elena made it! It used to live on the green sofa by the fireplace!”
Mama’s smile dimmed. Then it grew bright again. “Aunt Elena did make it. Do you remember what it’s called?”
“I do,” Natasha rushed to say. “It’s a yo-yo quilt.”
“That’s right,” Mama said. “Darya, you helped make it. Do you remember?”
“What about me?” asked Natasha. “Did I help?”
Darya tried her best to ignore Natasha. She looked deep into Mama’s eyes and pulled the details free. “We cut circles out of old scraps,” she said. “We sat in front of the—”
She broke off. No, don’t mention the fireplace, or the sofa, or anything from home.
“It was snowing outside. We cut circles out of whatever fabric we could find. Then we sewed a row of stitches around each circle and cinched the thread tight, which is why they’re fluffy instead of flat. We made tiny, baby pouches, kind of.”
“Yes, exactly!” Mama exclaimed, and Darya glowed. “Papa and I were dazzled by how clever you were. Mazes, puzzles, yo-yo quilts. You could do anything you set your mind to, Darya.”
“I was clever, too,” Natasha pestered. “Wasn’t I?”
“Or course,” Mama said, though she kept her focus on Darya. “You learned to read before you were three, you know. And that memory of yours! Nothing slipped by you.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Natasha laughed, but it was obviously fake. “Omigosh, Darya. Quit fishing for compliments!”
“Natasha,” Mama chided.
“Mama, I’m so glad you’re back!” Darya said impulsively. “When are you going to tell Papa? I know about Aunt Elena’s apartment or whatever. I know you’re going to live with her for a while. But how long?”
Mama’s expression changed. Mama changed. It was as if she grew harder and more brittle, and Natasha shot Darya a look.
“What?” she said. “I’m just asking.”
“It’s complicated,” Mama said. “I’m not ready.”
Complicated, complicated, complicated, Darya thought. Hard, hard, hard.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean it would be a bad idea for me to go home.”
“Um, okay, only . . .” She gulped. “I’m not trying to be rude, but why? I don’t understand.”
Mama stared at her. “Of course you don’t. You don’t have to understand things for them to be.”
Darya recoiled.
“I tried to explain,” Natasha said. “Only Darya doesn’t believe in Emily. She thinks it’s all made up.”
Mama shook her head with fast, hard movements. She patted her shirt pocket and the back pockets of her jeans. She pressed her lips together, then said, “I need a cigarette.”
Darya turned to Natasha. She was mad at her, and she knew Natasha was mad back, but they were sisters. “Mama smokes?” she mouthed.
“Sometimes,” Natasha responded. “But shhh.” Only instead of making an actual shhh sound, she put her finger to her lips.
“Well,” Mama said. “Emily.” She gave a sharp laugh. “You don’t have to believe in Emily, Darya. Some people don’t believe in souls. Some people don’t believe in evolution. Some people don’t believe in aliens!”
Mama was speaking faster and faster. Darya didn’t like it. And . . . aliens?
“When someone unpicks the stitches that hold your life together, then. Then you’ll see,” Mama said. She stood and paced the length of the room. “I hope that never happens. But are you under the impression that we get to choose?”
“Mama, calm down, please,” Natasha said nervously.
Mama jabbed her finger at them. Natasha and Darya jumped. Then Mama made a strange transformation, stretching her face into someone else’s and adopting that someone else’s voice.
“Calm downnnn, ma’am. Calm downnnn,” she said in an accent that was maybe . . . Jamaican? That was Darya’s best guess, because of the lilting syllables and elongated vowels.
It reminded her of Sebastian from The Little Mermaid, but Sebastian was funny. Mama was freaking Darya out.
“You need to re-laaax,” Mama said. “Can you do that, or shall I ring for Dr. Feinstein?”
Darya looked at Natasha with eyes that said, Dr. Feinstein?
Natasha gave the quickest shake of her head. Not now.
Mama snorted. Accent abandoned, she said, “Pop a pill, all will be well. But girls, hear me when I say this: It doesn’t work like that.”
“We know, Mama,” Natasha said. “We believe you.”
“How can you be calm when you know—you know—the truth inside you? And you tell them, but do they listen? If you weren’t crazy already, it would make you crazy, you better believe that.”
She patted her shirt pocket again and made a sound of frustration. “There was a young man. A young black man named Alan. I’d say it doesn’t matter, the fact that he was black, but . . .” She splayed her hands, palms up. “Well. People judge, don’t they?”
“What young man?” Darya asked. “Do we know him?”
“One morning Alan woke up, and he knew someone was after him.” She thumped her chest with her fist. “He knew in his heart that before the day ended, he would be shot. He also knew he wasn’t thinking straight, because that happens. Two opposing thoughts can live right next to each other in your brain—it happens all the time.”
“So Alan . . .”
“It was on the radio! Listen for yourself if you don’t believe me!”
“Mama,” Darya pleaded. She’d hoped that with Mama back, everything would fall together the way it was supposed to. All the missingness and pain and confusion would be taken out of her hands. Instead, anguish coursed through her, hot as melted wax.
“He went to the hospital. He drove himself there. Drove straight into the building, because the delusions had gotten worse. He tried to explain. He told the doctors, the nurses—he told them everything! And do you know what happened?”
Nothing good, Darya was sure. She wanted to go home.
“‘Calm down,’ they told him. ‘Relax!’ And when he wouldn’t put the hospital gown on, the nurse called for security, and a rent-a-cop came to Alan’s room and shot him.”
Mama skewered them with her gaze. Then she laughed bitterly. “So what do you make of that, girls? He knew he was delusional . . . and yet look what happened. At the end of the day, who knows where the truth lies?”
The room filled with silence.
Darya was afraid she might cry again, but not the good kind of crying.
Natasha bowed her head.
Mama drooped, too. No one looked at anyone.
“I think maybe I’ll go home,” Darya managed to say. Her throat felt terribly clogged with formality.
“Oh, darling, no,” Mama said. “Oh, baby.” She reached forward and stroked Darya’s cheek, and she was Mama again. But the other Mama, was she Mama, too?
Darya’s lower lip trembled, and Mama was up and hugging her before Darya could protest.
“Oh, sweet girl, I’m so sorry,” Mama said, disarmed by regret. Her words w
ere soft. She was soft, where before she’d been hard. “It’s too much. I’m too much. I have . . . I have mood swings, darling Darya. It’s complicated. I know it is. But it’s not for you to worry about, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She rocked Darya in her arms, and Darya filled with doubt. Beautiful, unexpected doubt, which turned into a seed of hope, which blossomed like a sunflower.
Of course Mama’s life was complicated. There was no way Darya could know the ins and outs of it all.
“It’s all right,” she said.
Mama drew back and peered at Darya. “You know what? Let’s take a walk, just the two of us. Natasha’s had time to absorb all this—we’ve had so much time together, haven’t we, Natasha? And so much more to come. But Natasha, sweetheart, would you mind terribly if I stole Darya away for a bit?”
Twin spots of color rose on Natasha’s cheeks. “No, that’s totally fine.”
Mama smiled. She stroked Darya’s cheek, and then Natasha’s. “Such good girls.”
“Ava, too,” Darya said.
A cloud passed over Mama’s face, but she was quick to make it disperse. “Of course Ava, too. But Natasha, please don’t feel like I’m kicking you out. We’ll leave. We’ll take a walk, Darya and I, and you stay as long as you’d like.”
“I’ll just go on home,” Natasha said. “I’ve got homework to do, anyway. Darya, can you find your way back?”
“I think I can manage,” Darya said. Mama’s motel was hardly in the heart of Willow Hill, but Willow Hill was hardly a booming metropolis. “We did leave a trail of breadcrumbs, didn’t we?”
Mama inhaled sharply.
“She’s kidding,” Natasha said.
“Are you?” Mama asked Darya.
“Mama. Of course.”
“You girls,” Mama said, forcing a laugh.
She’s struggling too, Darya reminded herself. It is complicated.
“A walk sounds good,” Darya said. “Moving around always helps, you know?”
Mama loosened with relief, and Darya felt proud.
“I’ll be home before it gets late,” she told Natasha. “If anyone asks where I am . . . well, they won’t. But tell them whatever you want.”
Truth, with a capital T, was elusive. But time with Mama—time alone with Mama . . .
She knew she might not get the answers she craved.
She didn’t care.
She just wanted her mother, and even the smallest breadcrumbs felt like a feast.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mama walked at a fast clip, a ball cap pulled low over her face and her thumbs hooked through the belt loops of her jeans. They headed away from town, because Mama didn’t want to risk seeing anyone.
“I’m not ready yet,” she said. “I’m just not.” She shot a sideways glance at Darya. “Do you understand?”
Yes . . . and no, Darya thought. She understood the urge to hide. She understood that sharing yourself with others, revealing yourself to others, was scary.
On the other hand, Mama was moving into a garage apartment with Aunt Elena soon. How would she hide then? Because the apartment wasn’t all that far from their house, according to Aunt Elena. That meant they’d be in town. There’d be people who could see and hear and notice, people who would love to spread the news that Klara Blok had returned from the dead.
What if Papa found out about Mama’s return from Ms. McKinley? Or from Barney, the man-child who bagged groceries at Beaver’s Market? Barney was sweet but dull-witted. If Barney saw Mama, he wouldn’t think twice about mentioning her to Papa.
Nor should he, really. Anyone who saw Mama would assume Papa knew she was back. He was her husband. They were married. So how, exactly, was Mama planning on living in this garage apartment while never showing her face?
They walked without speaking until they reached the lonely gas station that was the stepbrother of the lonely motel. There was a single pump, but no cars being refueled. Several yards away stood a ramshackle building with posters on the windows advertising Coke products, a two-for-one offer on toilet paper, and access to an ATM for all paying customers. Only there were no customers that Darya could see.
When she squinted, she made out a cash register behind a counter crammed with impulse-buy items. She saw no one manning the register. Maybe he or she was in the bathroom.
Mama dug in her front pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “Baby, pop inside and buy me a package of Camels, will you?”
Darya stared at her.
Mama waggled the bill, then made a sound of impatience when Darya didn’t take it.
“Mama . . . I’m thirteen,” Darya said.
“Of course you are! That’s why I asked Natasha to tell you about me, goose. I missed her thirteenth birthday—I wasn’t about to miss yours!”
But . . . you did, Darya thought. You did miss my birthday, and because of you, Aunt Elena missed it too.
She shook her head. “Yeah, but I’m not allowed, I’m pretty sure.”
“To buy your mother cigarettes?” Mama said, her voice hiking in disbelief. “Old Ned’s not going to care.” She wiggled the bill again. “Just . . . please. It’s a nasty habit. I’m going to quit. But I want to talk to you, Darya. Really talk to you, mother to daughter, because there’s so much to get caught up on.” She barked a laugh. “Only, my nerves! I’m shaking, see?!”
Why can’t you do it yourself? Darya wanted to ask.
But Mama’s fingers were trembling. She had fine lines spraying out from the corners of her eyes, worry lines, but they grew smoother when Darya shrugged and took the money.
“Menthols, please. Or better yet, Turkish Gold, but no one has Turkish Gold anymore.” She pushed at her hair. “Menthols. Menthols will be great. And if you want a pack of gum, you can buy that, too.”
She smiled tightly. Go on, then, her expression said, so Darya walked stiffly into the gas station and approached the dusty counter.
“Hello?” she called, scanning the store. “Um . . . I need to buy cigarettes. For my mom. Is anyone—”
“Get what you need. Leave the money on the counter,” said a grouchy male voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the cold drinks. Old Ned, Darya supposed.
“Are you sure?” Darya said. Even if it was legal for her to purchase cigarettes—and she knew it wasn’t—she surely wasn’t supposed to go behind the counter and get them herself.
“If you want them, buy them. If you don’t, leave.”
Darya started to protest, then closed her mouth. Mama wanted cigarettes. Not cool, but fine. Whatever. If Old Ned had no interest in a face-to-face exchange, all the better.
She marched behind the counter and stretched high to pull a pack of Camel Menthols from the shelf. She circled back, slapped down the ten-dollar bill, and left. The bell on the door jangled as it shut behind her.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the Camels at Mama.
Mama tore open the cellophane and shook a cigarette from the pack. She lit it and sucked at it greedily, closing her eyes as she blew out a long plume of smoke.
Darya coughed, and Mama laughed, which hurt Darya’s feelings.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” Mama said. “So many sorries. So many things to apologize for! But oh, this is good. Thank you, sweet Darya. This hits the spot.”
After three more long drags, Mama crushed the cigarette out and tossed it into the trash. She began walking again, this time with a jauntier stride. Darya fell in beside her.
“I saw a field of sunflowers once,” Mama said. “Two summers ago? Maybe three? They were so lovely. They made me think of you.” She glanced at Darya. “There was a path that cut through the field. A winding dirt path, and two big trees where the path topped a hill. Beyond the hill, I could no longer see it. Do you know what it made me think of?”
“What?”
When Mama smiled, her whole face lit up. “Possibilities. Fresh starts. Accepting the fact that life is a journey, you know?” She fisted her hands a
nd pulled them in. “But we can grab hold of it. That’s up to us. The path is there, yes, but we get to decide whether to follow it, and for how long, or if we want to veer off altogether. Don’t you think?”
“Um, sure?”
Mama’s expression was warm and kind and . . . motherly, as if she were pleased with Darya despite Darya’s totally lame reply. She seemed at ease, and glad to have Darya all to herself, and Darya figured the nicotine had worked its magic.
Don’t judge, Darya told herself. But she swore that she would never start smoking, never in a million years.
“Do you still like flowers?” Mama asked.
“I do. I love them.”
“So do I, always and forever.” Mama’s gait was loose now, more of a stroll than a stride. “And art? Are you still interested in art?”
“Um, yeah, I guess.” She was interested in art. She just wasn’t any good at it. “I’m taking art as my elective. My friend, Tally? She’s new. She lives with a foster family. Well, foster parents. I don’t know if there are other kids.”
She also didn’t know where this word vomit was coming from. She told herself to put a lid on it, buttercup, yet the words kept spewing out. “But she’s really good at art. Tally. Like, will probably end up in the Louvre good.”
Mama laughed happily. It wasn’t easy to walk, talk, and have eye contact at the same time, but Mama was making a good go of it, peppering Darya with smiles and quick, sparkly glances.
“That’s fantastic,” she said. “You and Sally can end up in the Louvre together! How about that?”
“Um, yeah,” Darya said. “Only, it’s Tally, not Sally.”
The sky was a dazzling, optimistic blue. The sun warmed her skin. It takes time for two people to get reacquainted, she reminded herself.
Mama headed off the road. “Let’s sit,” she said, making a beeline for a leafy magnolia tree. “Is this good?” She dropped to the ground and patted the spot beside her.
Darya lowered herself to the grass.
“You must have realized I came back for a reason,” Mama said.
Darya’s stomach clenched. She hadn’t, really. Not when Mama put it like that.
“It’s you, Darya. I came back because of you.”