“Here we are, sitting in the dirt again,” she says. I don’t say anything. She bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Sutton. I always do this. I always find a way to mess things up.”
She looks so forlorn sitting there that I almost feel sorry for her. But I’m not ready to feel sorry for her yet, to forgive her. She did mess things up, starting when she left me behind with my grandparents, and ending with us screaming at each other in the mountains.
Becky’s eyes fall to the locket I always wear. I grip it in my hand self-consciously, half to hide it from her, half to reassure myself that it’s still there.
“You’re still wearing my locket,” she says softly.
My hackles go up again. Her locket? This is my trademark, the centerpiece of my style. My parents gave it to me when I was little, and now everyone knows that I’m never seen without it. The little silver sphere is cold in my fingers. I don’t want to believe that something of hers has been hanging around my neck all this time.
“Mom and Dad gave this to me,” I say, as snidely as I can. “If it was yours, it’s not anymore.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean—I mean, I left it for you, Sutton. I left it so you would have a piece of me. Something to remember me by.”
We’re silent for a long moment. An owl calls out overhead, on the hunt. I pick at a sticker embedded in my jean shorts from my long tumble through the woods. Finally, I speak.
“I wear it every day,” I whisper. The silver starts to get warmer in my grip.
Becky plucks a rubber band from her wrist and pulls her hair back in a low ponytail. With her hair tamed she looks calmer. She takes a deep breath.
“Maybe now you can see, a little, why I had to leave you. I’m no good with people, Sutton. I get … agitated. Easily confused. Short-tempered.”
“What made you like that?” I blurt. Her forehead crumples into a sad frown. She shrugs.
“It’s just how I am. Mom and Dad … your grandparents, I mean … they did their best for me. But some people are just damaged on the inside, no matter what their lives look like. Sometimes I get better for a little while. I think I can take care of myself, maybe even of you … but it never lasts.” She exhales loudly. “Leaving you with my parents was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You have to understand that. I didn’t want to do it—I kept trying to convince myself that I could look after you. After you and your sister both.”
I frown. “Laurel’s yours, too?” That doesn’t make any sense. Laurel is only six months younger than me. It’d be impossible.
“No, no.” She stands up and slaps the dead leaves and branches off her bottom. She stretches, then looks out over the city lights, her back to me. “Have you ever wondered what the ‘E’ in your locket stands for?”
I shrug, even though she’s not looking at me. I push myself up with my raw, tender palms. My legs are one big scrape, and there’s an ache in my lower rib cage that I know is going to be a serious bruise. My shirt is pretty much ruined, torn and covered in dirt. I sigh, moving next to her on the ledge to look down over the subdivision.
When I was little, I used to have this recurring dream that my reflection would step out of the mirror and we would play together. When I explained the dreams to Laurel, she said they sounded scary, but they never were. My reflection and I would run across a playground hand in hand while the sun rolled up into the sky. I knew, the way you know in dreams, that we were two parts of a whole, that we were each incomplete without the other. I would wake up from those dreams feeling complete in a way I never did during my waking life. I never told anyone, but I used to pretend that the E in my locket stood for my reflection.
“Mom always said the locket was vintage, and it stood for whoever owned it before me.” I take a deep breath. “But when I was little I pretended it belonged to a friend of mine.”
Becky nods slowly. She reaches into her back pocket and takes out a hard pack of cigarettes. She slides one between her lips, then fumbles with a match. Her hands are shaking, and the flame wavers for a moment before she gets the cigarette lit. She takes a long drag and exhales.
“When I got pregnant with you,” she says very quietly, “I was really excited. I mean, it wasn’t a planned pregnancy, obviously. I was young, I was constantly in trouble. I didn’t know how I was going to take care of you. But when I felt you kick for the first time, I knew I couldn’t give you up.”
I open my mouth to interrupt her, but she holds up a finger. “Please, Sutton, this is hard for me to talk about. Just wait and let me tell you the whole story. Then you can yell at me some more.”
I bite my lip, but nod. She takes another drag from her cigarette, the smoke wreathing her face. “I started getting ready for you. I scraped together enough money for a stroller and a crib. I read a bunch of books from the library about babies. I didn’t have any money for an ultrasound or any of that, but I took vitamins and ate green vegetables every day and played music for you. You loved salsa music. You’d go crazy in there.” She laughs, and for a moment she almost sounds like a normal mom.
“Then I went into labor. I’ll spare you the details—hell, I don’t remember most of the details. You weren’t positioned right, and they had to operate. They gave me so much pain medication that I didn’t really know what was going on until it was over. Then they brought you to me. You—and your sister. Your twin. Emma.”