I could see myself behind her in the mirror. My eyes were puffy. She didn’t even ask what was wrong. It didn’t even occur to her to see why I’d been crying. It didn’t occur to her that today was my birthday and she’d forgotten, again. But now that seemed perfectly natural. Of course she’d forgotten.
Now I knew what I was worth to her. I truly, truly did. I’d been operating on the belief that I should be the most important thing in her life. How could I not be? I was her baby. I was all she had. So if she mistreated me, it was never for lack of love, because of course she loved me. How could she not? I spent my life excusing the very real evidence that I was nothing to her. I was a gerbil she kept in a too-small cage. A fish in a cup of water. Something to look at and entertain her when she was bored and wanted to play house.
“I met Daniel today,” I said.
She didn’t look at me. She kept scrubbing the shirt in the sink.
“Did you hear me? I said I met my brother.”
“I’m fighting with Neil, I’ve got a headache, I don’t have time for this.”
My nostrils flared. “You will make time.”
“Emma—”
“NOW!”
She tossed the shirt into the sink with a slap and turned to me. “I gave up a baby, Emma. I was fifteen.”
“You said I had no family,” I said, trying to contain my fury. “You lied to me my whole life.”
She went back to the sink.
“You left me,” I said. “You abandoned me. You let me go to strangers.”
She didn’t turn around. “You had a good family. Maddy’s parents wanted to adopt you, but you didn’t want it—”
“I wanted you! I was waiting for you to come back for me!”
She brushed a loose hair off her cheek with the back of her hand. “Well, I wasn’t in a good place. You were better off there. You have a brother. Now you know. He’s nice, you’ll like him.”
I stared at her back in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
She ignored me.
“My grandparents died before I ever got to meet them. I lost decades with people who would have loved me. Do you know what I lived through? The things that happened to me in foster care?”
“You think I was in any better place when you were in there?” she said.
I laughed incredulously. “Yeah, I do. I think you were in Wakan, sleeping it off.”
Nothing.
“What other lies did you tell?” I demanded. “Was my dad really married? Do you even know who he is at all or was it just your mission in life to keep me from anyone who would have actually taken care of me.”
She just focused on her washing. Didn’t even look up.
And then I knew that’s what it was. The truth roiled in my stomach. “Your parents would have wanted me, wouldn’t they?” I said. “Like they wanted Daniel.”
She whipped around. “You weren’t theirs,” she snapped. “They had no legal right to you—”
I burst into manic laughter. It was so fucked up, it was funny. She was the architect of the shattered life I’d lived. Of the life I still lived.
And she wasn’t even sorry. That was the worst betrayal of all.
It was the death of the last innocent, naive version of myself. That Emma no longer existed. I was snuffed out like one of her candles.
And I was done.
That broken and damaged part of me that she made turned on her. The part of me that could leave anyone and any place behind and never look back activated just for her. My heart shut off. All attachments I had to her, every bond she’d ever been given was pulled from the root. My defenses wrapped around me like an impenetrable protective shield, and I felt myself go eerily calm. I knew this was the last time I’d ever see her. I wouldn’t miss her. I wouldn’t grieve her. I would never look for her. This is what I was capable of.
This was my gift.
This was my curse.
Not the silly thing I was trying to undo once with Justin. It was my ability to not love.
“I’m going to give you one chance to tell me why,” I said steadily. “And then I’m never going to speak to you again.”
She looked at me. For the first time since I walked in here, I saw something like fear flash across her face. But she didn’t reply.
I turned and started for the door.
“Emma!”
I kept walking.
“Emma! Please!”
