Mothered (88)

“So Grace, where do we go from here?”

Her eyes widened and she looked frightened. “Doesn’t it make sense now? That you know the whole thing, everything that happened? I didn’t want to kill my mother.”

“And yet you admit to killing her.”

“I wanted to kill the confusion, the doubt she brought into my life. That was a really bad day . . .”

“You snapped.”

Grace nodded.

“Do you really believe that there’s some sort of physical illness that makes people obsessed with the truth?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have. But she talked about it. I still don’t know what her husband Robert died of. And I never really knew what was wrong with my mother—sometimes it seemed like everything was wrong with her, and sometimes she seemed fine. Not fine, okayish. Even when she was being really nice, it was confusing.”

“I understand. You had a really hard time with her.”

Grace nodded, more subdued than when her session had started. “I’d never felt so off balance in my life.”

“Can we talk a little about your sister? It sounds like your mother was obsessed with getting you to tell her what happened the night Hope died.”

“I really don’t think I killed my sister.”

“You don’t think?”

“She was right, that I’d blocked a lot of it out. And what I remember now are the nightmares I had, so . . .”

“You’ve hinted at . . . You think your mother had something to do with your nightmares?”

Grace nodded. Then shook her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I thought that.”

“Can you see how it would bother your mom, to leave one daughter in care of the other? And then one night the worst possible thing happened, and Jackie wasn’t there. She never knew exactly what happened.”

“I didn’t know she’d felt that way, for all those years. I thought there was a simple explanation—my fault for being negligent, but not . . .” She rested her elbows on her knees and gazed at the floor, distraught.

“Perhaps the simple explanation for your mother is she’d spent too long obsessing about the what-ifs, imagining every scenario. And no matter what she spun around in her head, she could never know the truth of what really happened that night. Does that seem possible to you?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think that explains everything.”

Now it was Silas’s turn to nod. He closed his notebook. “Why don’t we stop here for today. I think you’re making very good progress. How do you feel about everything?”

She turned her head toward the window and the slightly dystopian landscape. “I think you don’t really get it. I hope to get my life back someday. But that’s not gonna happen until you believe me.”

“Maybe not yet. But we’re getting there, okay?”

Grace wore a sad smile as she got up to leave. After Silas closed the door behind her, he sat at his desk to summarize his notes. She really was such an exciting case; every session gave him so much to digest.

On the one hand, she was so reasonable. So articulate. On the other hand . . . Soon he wanted to start working with her to recover the memories of her sister’s death. It would reveal a lot—to both of them. And, ironically, it wasn’t impossible that Grace’s mother would be proven right in the end: the truth might set Grace free. He would be quite proud of himself if someday, with his assistance, she could integrate back into society.

Silas leaned back in his chair and stretched, wishing he had time for a catnap before his next session started. As a rule, he never shared anything personal with his patients. It almost made him wince—or shudder—to imagine how Grace would react if she knew about the troubles he was having.

He hadn’t been sleeping well for a few weeks now. His nights were plagued by the strangest dreams. And his imagination, well schooled in the depraved and the macabre, was revealing things he wasn’t sure he could ever unsee.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I started writing Mothered in April 2020. We still believed in the first half of 2020 that the best parts of humanity could yet prevail and we would course correct our social and environmental wrongs. There was a golden moment of optimism when we hoped this difficult time could inspire a holistic renaissance. And then the moment passed. Selfishness and ignorance won, and at some point that positivity started to sour and then rot, and what was left was a simmering sense of doom.

It was in that decline of optimism that I wrote much of Mothered, and it became impossible to shut out the realities of the world I was living in. Unlike my previous books, Mothered was written in a start-and-stop manner where I didn’t write for weeks—sometimes months—before returning to the story. This was necessitated by the confusing mental toll of learning how to process and live in a pandemic, as well as needing time to deal with my mother’s death from COVID-19.

When it was all said and done, this was a book that I very much enjoyed writing, and the things I learned by changing up my writing process have been beneficial. Upon declaring it “finished,” I asked a few people if they’d like to read this “batshit crazy” thing I’d written, and I’m grateful to John Stage, Deborah Stage, and Brooke Dorsch for eagerly agreeing.

My agents, Stephen Barbara and Claire Friedman, have been dedicated supporters of this project, and I can’t thank them enough. And of course, this wouldn’t be a book in readers’ hands without the unwavering passion of my editor, Liz Pearsons. Immense thanks to her and the entire Thomas & Mercer team: Gracie Doyle, Sarah Shaw, Rachael Herbert, Olga Grlic, and Jarrod Taylor. And special thanks to the eagle-eyed copyeditor Alicia Lea and proofreader Elyse Lyon.