Chương 10
Snow began to fall outside.
Emily watched it.
Lauren noticed her fingers tighten around the paper cup.
“You okay?”
Emily nodded.
Then shook her head.
“I remember.”
Lauren waited.
“The railing.”
“I know.”
Emily looked at her.
“Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Enough.”
Emily stirred the whipped cream with a wooden stick.
“Grandma said sorry.”
Lauren went still.
Dr. Singh had helped arrange one written therapeutic communication several months earlier. Lauren had read it first. Margaret’s letter contained no excuses.
I frightened you.
I was wrong.
You did not deserve it.
I am sorry.
Emily had chosen not to answer.
Now she said, “I don’t forgive her yet.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What if I do later?”
“That’s yours.”
“Will you be mad?”
Lauren looked out at the snow.
This was the question she had not wanted.
She could protect Emily from Margaret.
She could not own what Emily eventually felt about her.
“No,” Lauren said.
It took effort to make the answer true.
Emily watched her carefully.
Lauren added, “I might have feelings about it.”
“What kind?”
“Complicated ones.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Emily rolled her eyes.
For one instant, Lauren saw Margaret’s face from a year earlier.
Respect.
Obedience.
The old temptation to correct.
Instead Lauren drank her coffee.
“You just rolled your eyes at me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I watched you.”
“My eyes were stretching.”
Lauren laughed so hard coffee went up her nose.
Emily looked delighted.
Outside, the snow thickened.
Lauren did not love snow anymore.
She had once.
Then Daniel died in winter.
Then Margaret chained Emily to a railing during a storm.
The season had accumulated too many things.
Still, snow kept being snow.
Children pressed gloves against windows.
Teenagers crashed into one another near the lift line.
A man in a red jacket dropped a tray of fries and stood staring at them with exhausted disbelief.
Life had an insulting habit of continuing.
Lauren had begun to depend on that.
In March, a letter arrived from Margaret.
Not for Emily.
For Lauren.
It came through Nina, properly, without violating any order.
Lauren left it unopened on the kitchen counter for three days.
On the fourth, she opened it.
Margaret’s handwriting was smaller than she remembered.
Lauren,
I have rewritten this seven times. My therapist says that is avoidance disguised as precision. I dislike that she is probably correct.
There are things I want to explain. I understand that explanation has often been how I avoid responsibility, so I will try not to do that.
When Daniel died, I became convinced that losing control meant losing people.
I had spent years believing I was the person in our family who did not fall apart. You fell apart. Daniel had fallen apart long before the crash in ways I did not want to see. I responded by becoming useful. Then necessary. Then controlling.
I told myself Emily needed consistency.
What I meant was that I needed obedience because obedience made me feel that catastrophe could be prevented.
It cannot.
I frightened her.
I hurt you.
I used money and help to give my opinions more authority than they deserved.
You were right to stop me.
You were wrong to hit me.
Both statements can be true.
I do not know whether you will ever permit me to have a relationship with Emily again. I understand that decision is not mine.
There is one thing I want you to know.
I blamed you for Daniel’s death.
Not publicly. Perhaps not even consciously at first.
I blamed you because blaming him meant admitting that my son made the decision that killed him.
You asked him not to drive.
I knew that.
I have always known that.
I am sorry.
Margaret
Lauren stopped reading.
She put the letter down.
Then she walked outside without a coat.
It was cold but not unbearable.
A neighbor was using a leaf blower for reasons Lauren could not understand.
Someone had left a bicycle in the middle of the sidewalk.
Lauren stood beside her car.
For three years she had carried one memory from the night Daniel died.
His last call.
He was angry.
Lauren had refused to come get him because Emily had a fever and was asleep.
She told him to call a ride.
Daniel said she was controlling.
She hung up.
For years afterward, Margaret never directly accused Lauren.
She had done something more effective.
She had asked small questions.
Why didn’t you call him back?
Did you know how much he had been drinking?
Was he upset when he left?
Had you two been arguing?
Each question had given Lauren another place to put guilt.
She had let Margaret help raise Emily while secretly believing she owed her something.
Not money.
A son.
Lauren sat on the curb.
She cried.
Quietly at first.
Then badly.
She covered her face and cried until her nose ran and her chest hurt.
A delivery driver parked across the street, saw her, and very deliberately pretended not to.
Lauren appreciated him more than he would ever know.
When she went inside, she washed her face.
Emily came home from school twenty minutes later and immediately complained that somebody named Grace had cheated during four-square.
Lauren listened to the entire story.
Grace had apparently committed crimes against humanity involving a playground ball.
When Emily finished, she noticed the letter.
“Is that from Grandma?”
Lauren could have lied.
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
“Some things she needed to say to me.”
“About me?”
“A little.”
“Can I read it?”
Lauren considered.
“Not yet.”
Emily groaned.
“Everything is not yet.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“When?”
“When I talk to Dr. Singh.”
Emily dropped her backpack.
“I hate responsible adults.”
Lauren smiled.
“That seems reasonable.”
Months later, after discussions with Dr. Singh, Carla, Nina, and the professionals involved in the case, the question of supervised contact returned.
Nobody forced it.
That mattered.
Emily asked first.
May you like
Not because of the pancakes.
Not because of Daniel’s bracelet.
