At the cabin, Jude parked and helped Grace out of her car seat.
She took hold of Grace’s small hand. “How about if I read you a story?”
Grace looked suspicious. Finally, she said, “Okay,” slowly, as if she expected Jude to rescind the offer and maybe start laughing.
They walked silently into the cabin and Grace headed straight for her bedroom. She grabbed the silvery white princess doll that was her favorite and climbed up onto the white spindle bed, wiggling under the colorful Wall-E comforter. “I’m sucking my thumb,” she said defiantly.
Jude couldn’t help smiling. “Maybe I will, too.” She popped her thumb into her mouth.
Grace smiled. “You’re too old.”
Laughing at that, Jude went to the bookcase.
A thin white-jacketed book caught her eye. Slowly, she picked it out from among the others and sat next to Grace. Opening the book, she began to read: “The day Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another and his mother called him ‘Wild Thing’…” The words took Jude back to a room that was full of action figures and plastic dinosaurs, to a little boy who laughed all the time and wouldn’t listen to stories unless his sister was beside him. The memories were close enough to inhale. For a second, she was a young mother again, sitting in the middle of a big king-sized bed with a baby tucked under each arm and a book open in her lap …
“It’s not sad, Nana. Why are you crying?”
“I forgot how much I loved this book. It reminds me of my … children.” It was the first time in years she’d said the tender word aloud. Children. She’d had two.
“I like it, too,” Grace said earnestly, moving closer to Jude, almost snuggling up against her. For a long time, they sat there, connected as Jude read the story. When she closed the book and looked down, Grace was asleep.
She kissed Grace’s soft pink cheek and left the room, closing the door behind her.
In the living room, she found the letters waiting for her, sitting on the coffee table where she’d left them.
They weren’t hers to open.
Still, she stared down at the accordionlike array of letters. The envelopes were unsealed; she could see that. Maybe Lexi had wanted to reread what she’d written over the years.
She finally picked up the whole box and sat down with them in her lap. She stared at them a long time, knowing it was wrong to read them.
Just one. To see if this will break Zach’s heart …
She pulled out the first envelope in the box and opened it. The letter inside was written on cheap white paper. Gray splotches marred the surface. Tears.
This letter was dated November 2005. It had taken Lexi a long time to write this first letter.
With a tightening in her chest that felt a little like the start of a panic attack, Jude began to read. She had read only the first few paragraphs when the front door opened and Zach walked in. He looked nervous, upset.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, tossing his backpack onto the floor. It skidded across the hardwood and thunked against the wall. He shoved the hair out of his eyes impatiently. “How did it go with Lexi today?”
Had it always been that way, she wondered suddenly? Had he always had Lexi on the forefront of his mind? And if so, how hard had it been to shut those feelings off?
“Listen to this,” Jude said.
“Can I listen later? I want to know—”
“It’s a letter Lexi wrote to Grace in prison.”
“Oh, man…” Zach collapsed onto the La-Z-Boy chair by the fireplace.
Jude saw how afraid he was to hear these words, and she understood. It was easier to suppress heartache than to overcome it. At least that was the road they’d both chosen. She cleared her throat and began to read:
Dear Grace,
I was eighteen years old when I had you. It seems sort of dumb to say since I’m only nineteen now, but I figured it would be something you’d want to know about me.
I wish I could forget about you. That’s a terrible thing to say, but if you were old enough to read this letter you’d already know where I am and what I did. Why I can’t be your mother.
So, I wish I could forget you.
But I can’t.
I wake up in this place and the first thing I think of is you. I wonder if your eyes turned green like your dad’s or if they are blue like mine. I wonder if you sleep through the night yet. If I could, I’d sing you to sleep every night. Not that I know any lullabies.
I fell in love with you before I ever even saw you. How is that possible? But I did, and then I held you, and then I handed you to Zach.
What was I supposed to do? Have you visit me in this place, have you see me through bars? I know how bad that is.
I read somewhere that grief can be like breaking a bone. You have to set it right or it can ache forever. I pray that someday you’ll understand that and forgive me.
I won’t send you this letter, but maybe someday when you’re grown up, you’ll come looking for me and I’ll have this box of letters and I’ll give them to you. I’ll say See? I loved you. Maybe you’ll even believe me.
Until then, at least, I know you’re safe. I used to dream I was a Farraday. You’re so lucky to have the family you do. If you’re sad, go to Miles. He can always make you laugh. Or ask Jude for a hug—no one hugs better than your grandma.
And then there’s your dad. If you let him, he’ll show you all the stars in the sky and he’ll make you feel like you can fly.
So I won’t worry about you, Gracie.
I’m going to try to forget you. I’m sorry, but I have to.
It hurts so much to love you.
Jude looked up at her son, whose eyes were bright with tears. He looked like her boy again, her golden Zach, and in that moment, she remembered the young Lexi, the girl who’d worn her heart on her sleeve and been the best friend Mia had ever had. She remembered the girl from the trailer park who had never known a mother’s love and yet always had a smile on her face. “It didn’t go well today with Lexi and Grace. Lexi screwed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“She went too quickly, pushed Grace before she was ready.”
“She doesn’t know how to be a mom. How could she?”
“No one does,” Jude said quietly. “I remember how overwhelmed I felt by you and … Mia.”
“You were a great mom.”
Jude couldn’t look at him. “Once, maybe. Not anymore, though. I haven’t acted like your mom in a long time, and we both know it. I … lost that. I thought…” She paused and forced herself to look at him again. “I blamed you. I did, even though I know I shouldn’t. And I blamed Lexi. And myself.”
“It wasn’t your fault. We knew better … that night,” he said.
Jude felt a searing pain in her heart at the reminder. It was the kind of pain that had always been a barrier before, something from which to retreat. Now she pushed through it.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have drunk that night, but Lexi shouldn’t have driven, and I shouldn’t have let you go. I knew there was going to be drinking there. What was I thinking to trust drunk eighteen-year-olds to make wise decisions? Why did I just assume that we couldn’t stop you from drinking? And … Mia should have had her seatbelt on. There’s blame enough to go around.”
“It’s my fault,” he said, and although Jude had heard him say it before, she felt the weight of his burden for the first time. It shamed her that she’d been so focused on her own grief that she’d let her son carry his alone.
She went to him, took him by the hand, and pulled him to his feet. “We all carry this, Zach. We’ve carried it for so long it’s reshaped our spines, bent us. We have to stand up again. We have to forgive ourselves.”
“How?” he asked simply. In his green eyes, she saw Mia, too. She’d forgotten that somehow, in her grief; her babies were twins, and Mia would always be alive in Zach. And now there was Grace, too.
She put a hand on his face, seeing the faint scar along his jawline. “She’s there … in you,” she said gently. “How did I forget that?”
Twenty-six
“Come on,” Lexi-Mommy says, holding out her hand. “You want to live with me, don’t you?”
The hand turns black and long yellow nails grow out from the fingers like hooks, and Grace screams—
“I’m right here, Princess.”
She heard her daddy’s voice and threw her arms around him. He smelled like he was supposed to, and the nightmare faded away until she remembered that she was in her own bed, in her own room, just where she belonged. There were no wild things here.
Her dad held her close and stroked her hair. “You okay?”
She felt like a baby. “Sorry, Daddy,” she mumbled.
“Everyone has bad dreams sometimes.”
She knew that was true, because when she was little, she used to hear him screaming in his sleep, and she’d go to him and climb into his bed. He never woke up, but he stopped yelling when she was with him. In the morning, he’d smile tiredly at her and say something about how she really should be a big girl and learn to sleep in her own bed.
“Don’t make me go away, Daddy. I won’t lie anymore. I promise. And I won’t sock Jacob in the nose, ever. I’ll be good.”
“Ah, Princess,” he said, sighing. “I should have known your mom would come back for you. I should have prepared us both. It’s just … I tried not to think about her.”
“Cuz she’s mean?”
“No,” Daddy said, and it scared her, how sad he sounded. “She’s the opposite of mean.”
“Maybe she got mean when she was a spy.”
“She’s not a spy, Princess.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
Grace bit her lower lip nervously. “What’s she like?”
Daddy shook his head. For a long time, he was quiet. Grace was about to ask something else when he said, “I met your mom in high school.” His voice was weird; it sounded like he had something stuck in his throat. “I would have asked her out on that first day, but she was already Mia’s friend. So … I tried not to love her … until one night … she almost kissed me. That changed everything. I couldn’t stay away from her after that.”
“Girls aren’t supposed to do that,” Grace mumbled around her thumb.
“Your grandmother would tell you that girls can do anything. That’s what she told my sister, anyway.”
Grace frowned. Daddy seemed all … gooey, and his eyes were shiny. He was acting like he loved Mommy, but that was stupid because he said she didn’t like him. None of this made sense. “But she didn’t want me,” Grace said. “She left me.”
“Sometimes people don’t have a choice about what they do.”
“Is she gonna visit me again?”
Dad looked down at Grace. “Your mom is really special, Princess, and I know she loves you. That’s what matters now. The reason she’s been gone is … well, really it was my fault, too. I let her be the one who was wrong. But I was wrong, too.”
