A Mother's Lie by Sarah Zettel

Author:Sarah Zettel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

If this were a movie, Dana knew what would happen now.

She’d take the three steps over to Mom and hug her close. Mom would dissolve into tears, and they’d cry together. The music would rise. The camera would pan out to some significant and panoramic scene. Then it would all fade to black and the commercial break, or the credits. Whatever.

Dana realized that on some level, she was actually waiting for that fade-out. It didn’t come. Everything stayed exactly where it was—the apartment, her, Mom, the whole world. The world that had always had this thing in it. She just hadn’t known.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dana whispered, and she knew it was a stupid question the second she asked it, because Mom had so clearly hit her limit.

“When, Dana?” she demanded. “When should I have told you? When you were six? Eight? Nine and having your relapse? Or twelve and getting your period and flunking junior high at the same time?” Mom’s voice rose, the shout turning into a scream. “I know it’ll come as a big surprise, but the parenting books do not discuss the appropriate age for telling your teenager you’re a murderer!”

“I know, I’m sorry, and I mean…well, I mean, it was self-defense, right?” she said, because she had to say something. There had to be a way to make this new knowledge fit. She couldn’t leave it as it was, just this…this big, heavy thing falling through the air toward her.

A mind’s-eye flash—a bright, sick blur of memory and fantasy blinded her. She was there on the sidewalk. Her head hurt. Her hands hurt. She saw Mom…she saw Mom…felt her eyes burn as she tried to black it all out.

But she did see. She saw Mom with a shotgun, blowing the pink-hands man away.

Her knees were buckling. She was sliding down the balcony door to sit on the floor. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t stop herself. “You didn’t know if anybody was coming to help you. You didn’t know, you couldn’t know, and you were out of your head, and he was going to kill you, and I mean, what the fuck were you supposed to do!”

Slowly, Mom slid down to sit next to her. “I could have just run out the door. He wouldn’t have known until he got out of the bathroom. But I didn’t. I went in there after him instead.”

Dana leaned her head against Mom’s shoulder. Mom rested her hand on Dana’s head and kissed her. They stayed like that for a while, until Dana started to feel—well, normal was the wrong word—but at least like she might eventually be able to get back to normal one day.

She sat up, and Mom let her.

“What are you going to do?”

Mom let out a long breath. “Well, first, I’m planning to go see Todd tonight, and I’m going to try to make him go away.”

Jesus. Dana pushed her hands through her hair. This should have been the big news. But now it seemed kind of…an anticlimax or something.

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