The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(12)

But was he there because he wanted to be? I didn’t know yet, and part of me was afraid to find out.

“I’m nervous,” my mother continued. “With all of the pressure you’re already under—I’d like to speak to Noah about your . . . situation.”

My face flushed with color. Couldn’t be helped.

“I wanted to ask your permission.”

A conundrum. If I said no, she might not let me see him. He was the only person on the planet who knew the truth, so being cut off from that—from him—was not an uplifting prospect. And if she didn’t let me see him, and he still wanted to see me after we had the chance to actually talk, sneaking around would be tough.

But my mother talking to Noah? About my precarious mental health? I could almost feel myself shrinking.

My fingers curled into my fluffy white quilt but I don’t think she noticed. “I guess,” I finally said.

My mother nodded. “We all like him, Mara. I just want to set some parameters for you both.”

“Sure . . .” My voice trailed off as my mother left and I waited in near-agony. Words like “schizotypal disorder” and “antipsychotics” would surely come up. Any sane boy would surely run.

But after a few minutes, I realized that I could still hear my mother’s voice—were they talking in Joseph’s room? It was only two rooms away. . . .

I stood, and leaned out of my doorway and into the hall to listen.

“Are you sure about this?”

Not my mother’s voice. My father’s.

“I’d rather them both be here where we can watch them; his parents are in and out all next week, and there’s no supervision there anyway—”

My mother wasn’t talking to Noah—she was talking to my father, about Noah. I edged out farther into the hall and slipped into my brothers’ bathroom—right next door to Joseph’s room—so I could eavesdrop properly.

“What if they break up, Indi?”

“We have bigger problems,” my mother said bitterly.

“I just don’t like thinking about what something like that would do to her. Mara’s really—she scares me sometimes,” Dad finished.

“You think she doesn’t scare me?”

Maybe I didn’t want to hear this conversation after all. In fact, I was becoming rather certain that I didn’t, but I appeared to be rooted to the spot.

My mother raised her voice. “After watching what my mother went through? This scares the hell out of me. I am terrified for her. My mother was mostly functional, thank God, but if we knew then what we know about mental illness now? Maybe I would’ve realized it was more serious before it was too late—”

“Indi—”

“Maybe I could have gotten her the help she needed and she could have had a more fulfilling life—she was so alone, Marcus. I mostly thought she was eccentric, not delusional.”

“You couldn’t know,” my father said softly. “You were just a kid.”

“Not always. I wasn’t always a kid. I—” My mother’s voice cracked. “I was too close to see it—that there was something really wrong. And the one time I said something to her about talking to someone? She just—she just shifted. She was so much more careful around me after that; I wanted to think—I wanted to think she was getting better but I was too preoccupied with my own—in college, sometimes I went months without hearing from her, and I didn’t—”

A long pause. My mom was crying. My insides curled up.

After a minute, she spoke again. “Anyway,” she said, quieter now, “this is about Mara. And it’s scary, yes, but we can’t act like she’s an ordinary teenager anymore. The same rules don’t apply. I didn’t—I didn’t see the Jude thing coming.”

My shoulder was pressed against the bathroom wall and it began to hurt, but I found I couldn’t move.

“She’s a complicated—she’s complicated,” my mother finally said.

She’s a complicated case was what she almost said.

“And you really think Noah being here, you think that’s helpful?”

“I don’t know.” My mother’s voice was stretched and thin. “But I think trying to keep them apart will only create a unit: them versus us. She’ll run in the opposite direction.”

True.

“And if Noah’s here, then Mara will want to be here, and that will make her easier to watch.”

Also true, unfortunately.

“She’s not in school anymore, she doesn’t have any friends here that I’ve met—it’s not normal, Marcus. But it is normal for a teenage girl to want a boyfriend. Which means that right now, Noah’s the most normal thing in her life.”

Little did they know.

“She’s comfortable around him. He pulled her right out of that depression on her birthday—I think he helps keep her in the here and now, and we need her to stay there. My mother was so isolated.” Her voice cracked on the word, and there was another long pause. “I don’t want that for her. It’s good for her to have someone her own age who she can talk to about things.”

“I wish she had someone female,” my father mumbled.

“He won’t take advantage.”