The Sunflower Forest (39 page)

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

There was a pause. It drew out into the semi-darkness to become a soft silence.

‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to feel. Nothing got answered for me in Wales. Nothing got clearer. I went all the way over there and, if anything, it’s made me understand less.’

He reached his hand out and took mine.

‘Before all this happened, back before, I always thought that if only you and me and Meggie could just love Mama enough, we’d be able to make up for everything. I thought if we loved her enough, she would be able to let go of her past and it wouldn’t matter so much. But that didn’t happen. Maybe she was trying to see flowers instead of wolves in Wales, but the truth is, Dad, she didn’t succeed, and she ended up seeing wolves where there were really flowers.’

I sighed. ‘And I don’t know what to make of it. All I can see now are Mama’s faults. I want to keep loving her, I really do, but all I can think of is how so much of this whole disaster was of her own making.’

He tipped his head away and looked down at the floor. Thoughtful silence surrounded him. Megan and Alison had become quiet at whatever they were doing, so the silence grew rich and deep around us.

‘Yes, maybe so,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know. But what I do know is that we don’t love people because they are perfect. If that were so, we’d never love anyone.’

‘But what’s the point of it? All it does is hurt you in the end. If love doesn’t make up for things, if love doesn’t change people’s faults and make them better, if they still go on suffering and you just get hurt, why bother?’

‘Because we have that choice. That’s what life’s really about, Lesley: what you do with your choices. You can choose to love your mother instead of hate her. Just like your mother chose to see sunflowers instead of wolves. That’s how she survived. That’s how she kept from being destroyed by what happened to her, and no, it wasn’t perfect, but neither is the world. The choice of how we see it is the only real power we have.’

The tears, still in my eyes, swelled, and I turned my face away from him to keep them from falling. ‘That isn’t very much,’ I said.

‘No, I know it doesn’t seem like it right now,’ he said quietly. ‘But in the end, it’s enough.’

He continued to hold my hand, and with his fingers he gently traced the topography of my knuckles. I turned back to look at him. He was watching me, his features soft and vague in the darkness. He smiled very faintly.

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First published in Great Britain
by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1984

This edition published by
HarperCollins 2008

© Torey Hayden 2008

Torey Hayden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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