“Cora. You were only eighteen.”
“I know. But I also knew Mom was unstable, even then. And things only got worse,” she said. “I shouldn’t have trusted her to let you get in touch with me, either. There were steps I could have taken, things I could have done. I mean, now, at work, I deal every day with these kids from messed-up families, and I’m so much better equipped to handle it. To handle taking care of you, too. But if I’d only known then—”
“Stop,” I said. “It’s over. Done. It doesn’t matter now.”
She bit her lip. “I want to believe that,” she said. “I really do.”
I looked at my sister, remembering how I’d always followed her around so much as a kid, clinging to her more and more as my mom pulled away. What a weird feeling to find myself back here, dependent on her again. Just as I thought this, something occurred to me. “Cora?”
“Yeah? ”
“Do you remember that day you left for school?”
She nodded.
“Before you left, you went back in and spoke to Mom. What did you say to her?”
She exhaled, sitting back in her chair. “Wow,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”
I wasn’t sure why I’d asked her this, or if it was even important. “She never mentioned it,” I said. “I just always wondered.”
Cora was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if she was even going to answer me at all. But then she said, “I told her that if I found out she ever hit you, I would call the police. And that I was coming back for you as soon as I could, to get you out of there.” She reached up, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I believed that, Ruby. I really did. I wanted to take care of you.”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
“It’s not,” she continued, over me. “But now, here, I have the chance to make up for it. Late, yes, but I do. I know you don’t want to be here, and that it’s far from ideal, but . . . I want to help you. But you have to let me. Okay?”
This sounded so passive, so easy, although I knew it wasn’t. As I thought this, though, I had a flash of Peyton again, standing at the bottom of that stairway. Why are you surprised? she’d said, and for all the wrongness of the situation, I knew she was right. You get what you give, but also what you’re willing to take. The night before, I’d offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to receive in return.
For a moment we just sat there, the quiet of the kitchen all around us. Finally I said, “Do you think Mom’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. And then, more softly, “I hope so.”
Maybe to anyone else, her saying this would have seemed strange. But to me, it made perfect sense, as this was the pull of my mother: then, now, always. For all the coldness, her bad behavior, the slights and outright abuse, we were still tied to her. It was like those songs I’d heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When I got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn’t make me love them any less. By then, they were already part of me, woven into my consciousness and memory. I couldn’t cut them away any more easily than I could my mother herself. And neither could Cora. This was what we had in common—what made us this us.
After outlining the last few terms of my punishment (mandatory checking-in after school, agreeing to therapy, at least for a little while), Cora squeezed my shoulder, then left the room, Roscoe rousing himself from where he’d been planted in the doorway to follow her upstairs. I sat in the quiet of the kitchen for a moment, then I went out to the pond.
The fish were down deep, but after crouching over the water for a few minutes, I could make out my white one, circling by some moss-covered rocks. I’d just pushed myself to my feet when I heard the bang of a door slamming. When I turned, expecting to see Cora, no one was there, and I realized the sound had come from Nate’s house. Sure enough, a moment later I saw a blond head bob past on the other side of the fence, then disappear.
Like the night before, when I’d been poised with Roscoe at the top of the walk, my first instinct was to go back inside. Avoid, deny, at least while it was still an option. But Nate had taken me out of those woods. For my own twisted reasons, I might not have wanted to believe this made us friends. But now, if nothing else, we were something.
I went inside, picked up his sweatshirt from the counter, then took in a breath and started across the grass to the fence. The gate was slightly ajar, and I could see Nate through the open door to the nearby pool house, leaning over a table. I slid through the gate, then walked around the pool to come up behind him. He was opening up a stack of small bags, then lining them up one by one.
“Let me guess,” I said. “They’re for cupcakes.”
He jumped, startled, then turned around. “You’re not far off, actually,” he said when he saw me. “They’re gift bags.”
I stepped in behind him, then walked around to the other side of the table. The room itself, meant to be some kind of cabana, was mostly empty and clearly used for the business; a rack on wheels held a bunch of dry-cleaning, and I recognized some of Harriet’s milk-crate storage system piled against a wall. There was also a full box of WE WORRY SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO air fresheners by the door, giving the room a piney scent that bordered on medicinal.
I watched quietly as Nate continued to open bags until the entire table was covered. Then he reached beneath it for a box and began pulling plastic-wrapped objects out of it, dropping one in each bag. Clunk, clunk, clunk.