Life and Other Inconveniences(3)

I went upstairs, trying hard not to run, wondering if I should run, and if I had run that day so long ago, if everything would have been different.

I knocked once, harder than I meant to, and threw open Riley’s door.

My daughter lay on her bed, earbuds in, looking at her laptop, and the relief made my knees wobble. You never realize it until you’re pregnant, or holding your baby in your arms, but your heart, soul and peace of mind will never be yours again. The tiny hijackers take over before they draw their first breaths, and you would do anything to keep them safe. Anything.

“What?” she said, taking out one earbud.

“Hi! How was your day?” My voice was too loud, too bright.

“Fine.” Her tone indicated otherwise.

It was okay. She was here, and she was safe and alive, even if it was one of those days, then. The dark days. Normal teenage behavior, hormones, etc. She was due to get her period in about three days (yes, I kept track), so it was probably just that.

She was so beautiful, my girl—blazing red hair down to her shoulders, thick and curly, milk-white skin with freckles, and her eyes. Her blue, blue eyes, clear as a September sky.

Telling her about the Genevieve London store right now didn’t seem like a good idea (or I was a coward, or both). I sat on the edge of Riley’s bed and put my hand on her shin, unable to resist touching her. “How was lunch today?” I asked.

“Gross.” She flicked her gaze at me, then resumed watching whatever was on her screen. “Hamburgers, not French toast sticks like they said. The meat was gray.”

“That is gross. How about if I make French toast for supper?”

“You don’t have to.”

“Do you want me to?”

She shrugged.

“Are you going to Mikayla’s tonight?”

Another shrug. That wasn’t good.

“Okay. Well, French toast for supper, extra syrup for my girl.” I kissed her head, and she gave me a half smile, and I felt the painful rush of love I always did for my only child. Thank you. Thank you for that smile, for still talking to me, for being my favorite person, my greatest love.

Feeling fairly stupid, completely reactionary and tentatively happy, I went back downstairs.

My daughter was safe. She almost smiled. She wanted my French toast. I thought she was okay.

This uncertainty was new for me. Until this past year, Riley had been a sweet, happy person. As a tot, she’d played for hours in cardboard boxes, or pretended to be a waitress or a hairdresser. It wasn’t so long ago she’d still been playing with Josefina, her American Girl doll. She loved books and babysitting. While the statistics said most of her peers were having sex and trying out drugs and alcohol, Riley still read the warrior cats series and slept with Blue Bunny, her first stuffed animal. I was grateful . . . no tweeny fuming, not for my girl. Jason, her father, had been a happy teenager. Me, not so much, but I liked to think my daughter’s sunniness was at least in part due to my good parenting.

Physically, she’d been a late bloomer—athletic like her dad, thin, getting her period just before she turned fifteen, only recently needing a bra. At first, it had been okay; a little weepiness every twenty-nine days, cured by a girls’ night with just the two of us watching obscure shows on the National Geographic channel, eating brie and apricot jam on crackers.

When I myself was sixteen, I’d been so aware of my odd status in Stoningham—the ward of an important, wealthy woman but abandoned by my parents, desperate to be normal, whatever that was. Riley had always seemed better, more confident, happier than I’d ever been, thank God. She’d been content to avoid romantic drama, had the same friends since she was eight, wanted to put off learning to drive till she was older. Her social life, such as it was, consisted of sleepovers with her longtime friends. She was a happy, happy kid.

And then came winter, and everything seemed to change.

The brie and shows about life in Alaska weren’t enough. The long-suppressed terror buried deep in my gut showed its teeth, even as I used every tool and resource I had to convince myself over and over that Riley was . . . well . . . normal. Not clinically depressed. That the gods of genetics had not cursed her with the same thing that had haunted my mother.

Somehow, the things that had always seemed so good and wholesome took on a darker cast after this past winter. Why didn’t she want to go to a dance? All her friends were going, weren’t they? Was she clinging to her childhood in an unhealthy way, and if so, why? Was she afraid of growing up? Had something happened to her . . . rape, or bullying, or drugs? Was I missing something? Was it boy troubles? Girl troubles? Both? Was she gender fluid, or gay, or trans? None of those would change my love for her, but maybe she wanted to tell me. Should I just ask? Or would that be intrusive?

I analyzed her moods, trying to slip her some therapist questions without making her suspicious. Her pediatrician had pronounced her “completely normal with a side of awesome” at her annual physical, but still. When you know depression can be genetic, and when your own mother committed suicide, you watch like a hawk.

Genevieve London’s overpriced, elitist store might throw my daughter in any number of unpredictable ways. And after seventeen years of feeling free from my grandmother, seeing the new store was just too much Genevieve London for one day.

A tremor of danger hummed in my gut, warning me there was more to come.