Pieces of Hope (54 page)

I was
intrigued. “You know Ethan?”

“I know
of him. I know how much you love him.”

“I love
them both,” I reminded her.

“Yes, I
know that, too.” She stood and took my hand. “Walk with me a little. I’d like
some fresh air and a little peace and quiet.”

We left
the noisy fairgrounds, finding a quiet path through the woods. Without the
sparkling lights of the fair, the path was dark, but with every step the sun
rose higher in the sky. Fewer than a dozen steps down the path, the sky was a
blaze of fire. The end of the path opened onto a wide grassy meadow. There was
a fair-sized lake in the distance where several swans, their graceful necks
arched, paddled about in wide circles.

“I know
this place,” I said, a little surprised. “This was where Grandpa George and
Gigi used to keep their horses.” A dim light bulb went off in my head. It as
also the lake I’d seen in Ethan’s mind, the one Quinn and Lucy swam across. I
shook my head. What a small world it was. Back in the moment, I watched the
swans on the lake turn a glow-in-the-dark shade of pink. As they morphed to midnight
blue, I pointed and laughed, “But
those
,
I don’t remember!” She laughed in that way that tickled my ears. “Nice touch,
Mom. You’re pretty good at this stuff.”

“This is
also where I first realized your father was the one—my one.” We continued walking
toward the lake as she reminisced. “This is where he kissed me for the first
time. We were young and idealistic and”—she faked a stern look—“we weren’t
married yet so we
only
kissed—”

“Very
funny, Mom. We both know you’re no Angel.”

“Well,
now
you know!” She looked behind her as
if searching for her wings.

“Seriously,
you knew dad was the right one from a kiss? Must have been some kiss.”

“That
kiss touched my heart. Difficult to explain, but I could feel how much he loved
me. That’s how I knew he was the one . . .” When she made the swans change
colors again, I imagined her reaching into her personal stash of crayons,
coloring and re-coloring them at will.

I studied
her for a long moment. She was, of course, beautiful—so like and unlike my
mother at the same time. “Mom, could I ask a huge favor?”

“Anything,
Katydid.”

I didn’t
have her full attention (Mom was distracted by the swans), but I pressed on. “It’s
not that I can’t appreciate how beautiful you were . . . um,
are
. . . at my age.” I was unsure of
the timeline, unsure of how things worked here. “But you’re really sort of freaking
me out. It’s weird to see my mother the same age as me.”

“Oh!”
she giggled, instantly transforming into her just as beautiful forty-two year
old self, and morphing into a yellow sundress. Her feet were bare. “Better?”

It took
a few seconds to answer. Too many words. Too many thoughts.

“Much,”
I finally said.

We fed
the swans from a bag of bread Mom conveniently acquired. I couldn’t take my
eyes off the little ones—imagining their tiny webbed feet paddling like mad beneath
the water, desperately clinging to their mothers—doing everything in their
power to delay that painful moment of separation as long as they possibly
could. I knew how they felt. Ever so subtly, I squeezed her hand. And ever so
tightly, she squeezed back.

After we
ran out of bread, we watched them do their water dance for a while. The swans
were now an assortment of colors, but they had finally stopped changing. It
seemed that Mom had used up every crayon in her sixty-four color crayon
box.
 

“Mom, can
I ask another question?”
 

“Anything,”
she repeated patiently.

“Why are
you here? I mean, why are you
really
here?”

“You
needed to know I was all right, didn’t you?” She was still looking out at the lake.
“You asked me many times and I wanted you to know. There’s no need to worry
about me. In fact, there’s no need to worry about anything. I’m well-loved and
well taken care of.” Her eyes rested on my face. I heard the gentleness in her
tone. “You needed to hear that from me, didn’t you?”

I was on
the verge of tears again. Mom pulled me down onto a green plaid blanket that
appeared out of nowhere, and laid my head in her lap. She stroked my hair the
way she used to do when I was a child too tired or too cranky to sleep. The
memory was so vivid that it stilled my swiftly-beating heart and dissolved the
lump in my throat. Here was my moment to tell her everything I wanted her to
know. There might never be another.
 

The
words came out in a jumbled rush. It was the only way I’d ever get them said.

“It’s
all my fault! I never should have left you alone that day. If only I’d been
there. If only I’d done what I was supposed to do—I’d—I’d still have you with
me!” I broke off into another round of sobs.

She
cradled me in her arms. “
Shhh
. . . it’s all right. Don’t
cry. Don’t cry, Katydid. It isn’t true. You have to stop blaming yourself. What
you did or didn’t do wouldn’t have made any difference. I promise you that.”

“Yes, it
would have!” I said fiercely between the sobs. “I could have saved you! At the
very least, you wouldn’t have been alone!”

“Oh, but
I wasn’t alone,” she said as she rocked me. “I wasn’t.”

My
breath caught in my throat. “What?”

“I
wasn’t alone.” Mom leaned back, gently raised my chin. “Someone was with me.” I
scrambled to sit up, feeling wet tears drip onto my collar.

“You’re
speaking metaphorically, right? God or something?”

The
sound of her laughter teased my ears. She thought this was genuinely funny.

“Well,
yes, that too,” she said, seeming to appreciate my perspective of it. “But I
meant it literally . . . as in, a living human being was there beside me.”

I was so
taken aback that my mouth froze open. I imagined the giant
Mola-Mola
with their mouths in a perfectly shaped O. Finally, I said, “Living—
Hu
—What the heck are you talking about?”

“He
wasn’t easy to find,” she admitted, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear that
had fallen across my eye. “That’s why I was late getting here. Late,” she
laughed. “Takes on a whole new meaning now, doesn’t it?”

I
frowned. Evidently, dead jokes were limited in number.

“He
needed to know he did the right thing that day—despite appearances—after all,
what happened to me wasn’t his fault . . . Had it not been for
Gavriel
, I might never have found him. Who would have
thought to look in a wild African elephant? But that’s where the boy was!” She
looked astonished.

It was
Daniel. That was an easy guess. And the elephant part—not so surprising. But
Gavriel
intefering
? And what else
was she talking about?
  

“Doesn’t
that break the rules or something?”
We
cannot intercede
played in my head, the words
Camael
uttered when Ethan was tumbling over the side of the cliff. So the black-winged
Angels would help Daniel, but not Ethan? What the—?
 

Mom
jumped in. “
Camael
said you’d say that. He said to
tell you there are always
exceptions
.
Something to do with the ‘greater good.’”

“Exceptions?”
I frowned. “
Camael
used that ordinary three-syllable
word?”

“He had
a fancier way of saying it, but that’s what he meant.” She giggled a youthful
giggle. “But getting back to Daniel . . . Promise me that when you see him
again you won’t be too hard on him. He loves you, you know.”

He loved
me. What an understatement that was—followed me through two lifetimes, told me
I was dead when I wasn’t, planned to spend his eternity with me even after I
told him I loved someone else—yeah, I guess he loved me . . .

“I admit
he wasn’t there with the best of intentions . . .” Mom had that ‘forgive him’
tone in her voice, the one I’d often heard after an argument with my father.
“Robbing us—imagine that!” She laughed as though this were hysterical. But I
scowled, thinking that my final act wouldn’t be one of forgiveness. “But I
guess he changed his mind once he got there, and then he couldn’t get out!” she
rambled. “He had no idea, you see, that anyone was home, that
I
was home, and terribly ill that day—”

“No, you
were fine!” I insisted, furiously pushing away all the bad memories of the
chemo and the cancer and the hair loss and the nausea. It hadn’t been that long
ago. I was jumping to conclusions, but she’d made it sound like this was
something
new.
“You were cured!” I
reminded her in a rush. “Your cancer was gone!”

“That
was
true.” She touched my cheek the way
she used to do when I was little and couldn’t understand grown-up things. “But the
cancer returned with a vengeance. We ought to have told you sooner. Your father
and Claire kept telling me that I—”

“Claire
knew?” I was angry, but trying to hide it. I was doing a lousy job. “I’m the
responsible one, not Claire. You should have told me.”

She
brushed my cheek again, willing me to understand. It took a moment before she
could speak. “Katydid, you worry so much when it comes to me. I watched what
you went through the first time and, right or wrong, I never wanted that for
you.” Tears filled her eyes. I felt like the worst daughter on the planet. How
could I make my own mother cry?

“Mom,
don’t . . . please don’t . . .” And then I was crying, too.

“But it
was wrong, I see that now. Secrets are a terrible thing even if they’re kept
for the best of reasons. Because you didn’t know the truth, you blamed yourself
for my death, didn’t you?”

“I’m
okay now.” It was true, mostly, but she looked unconvinced. “I am, really.” But
I still had too many questions left unanswered. Too many troubling ones. “Tell
me more about that last day, Mom. You said Daniel was there?”

She let
out a small laugh, and suddenly I had the clearest memory from another time
when he used to crack her up this same way. “Daniel’s a lousy, terrible
thief—the worst you can imagine! That day, I heard him rummaging in my jewelry
chest while I was in the bathroom across the hall—throwing up for the fourth
time that morning, worried that at any moment you’d walk in the back door to
meet me for lunch, and praying like a mad woman that I didn’t look sick when
you arrived . . .”

I didn’t
want to believe it, but it was starting to sink in. On the last day my mother
was alive, Daniel
Hartlein
—the thief, the rat, the
dirty lying ex-boyfriend—planned to rob us! The whole spectacle was appalling
to me. Mom ill, but not wanting to seem so for my sake? And Daniel? What would
ever make him think that stealing was a good idea? In the history of his very
bad ideas, this was a top contender for worst ever.
 

“Were
you scared?” I asked, thinking she had no idea that Daniel was the thief.

“No.” She
thought a second, then said, “I could smell him.”

“You
smelled him?” I couldn’t hide my shock.

“He
always smelled like Patchouli to me,” she explained with a shrug.

“I never
noticed,” I admitted, sniffing around in my memories of him.

“I think
it’s his soul. He’s got a hippie’s soul.”

She
laughed once again, and I wondered if my mother hadn’t lost it a little in the
afterlife. Then again, it was entirely possible I was looking at this thing too
seriously. It was evident that Mom didn’t think it was serious. Not even
slightly so.

Just an afternoon
robbery . . . with my ex-boyfriend as the thief . . . and my mother nauseous
and sick and trying not to disturb my limited scope of reality by letting on
that her cancer had returned . . .

Nope.
Nothing serious going on here.

“You
should have seen him.” Mom chuckled at the memory. “He nearly jumped right out
of his skin. I wondered at the time how he could have missed hearing me in the
bathroom, but I guess he was so nervous and caught up in his escape that wasn’t
paying much of anything else. I was already standing on the top step when I
said, ‘Hello, Daniel
Hartlein
. How the heck have you
been?’”

“You
didn’t!” I suddenly saw the hilarity in this and roared with my mother.

“I did.”

“And
what did he say to you?” I asked.

“Oh, he
was very cool. You know Daniel.”

Either I
snatched it from her thoughts or I was simply able to picture his face in that
exact moment. The skulking—yet very chill—ex-boyfriend/robber.

“He
replied, cool as a cucumber . . . ‘To tell you the truth, Vivienne, I’ve had
better days.’ And I laughed as he said it, but I must have been slightly disoriented,
though at that moment I thought I was fine. Like I said, I felt woozy all
morning so maybe my perception was off slightly more than I knew—”

The
chuckle that had been in my throat died soundlessly. I tried hard not to
listen, imagining my hands covering my ears like I did when I was little.

“But
when the ball of my foot touched that top step and I felt it slip, I knew I was
in real trouble. I’d slipped on that same step before, but this one was a real
doozy
.”

It was
too easy to imagine the terror she must have felt—my heart pounding as if I
were sharing that fall with her. But my mother didn’t look scared or sad as she
thought back on the moment of her death. In fact, she didn’t even sound put out
by it. I got the impression that, had she been telling this story to a random
stranger—rather than her own daughter—she would have laughed at her
clumsiness.
   

“And
Daniel . . . Oh, poor kid! He was so scared, but he’s got fabulous reflexes. I
somehow twisted my left foot and started to fall down the stairs backwards when
he grabbed the front of my shirt. My shirt ripped as he struggled to hold
me—I’m sure this is why the police suspected foul play, but really there was no
such thing—”