The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2)(7)

And then my mind replaced her face with mine.

I blinked the image away and shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“She killed herself, Mara.”

I sat there, momentarily stunned. Not only had I never known, but . . . “I thought—I thought she died in a car accident?”

“No. That’s just what we said.”

“But I thought you grew up with her?”

“I did. She died when I was an adult.”

My throat was suddenly dry. “How old were you?”

My mother’s voice was suddenly thin. “Twenty-six.”

The next few seconds felt like forever. “You had me when you were twenty-six.”

“She killed herself when you were three days old.”





5





WHY DIDN’T I KNOW THIS?

Why wasn’t I told?

Why would she do it?

Why then?

I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because my mother rushed to apologize. “I never meant to tell you like this.”

She never meant to tell me at all.

“Dr. West and Dr. Kells thought it was the right thing, since your grandmother had so many of the same preoccupations,” my mother said. “She was paranoid. Suspicious—”

“I’m not—” I was about to say that I wasn’t suspicious or paranoid, but I was. With good reason, though.

“She didn’t have any friends,” she went on.

“I have friends,” I said. Then I realized that the more appropriate words were “had” and “friend,” singular. Rachel was my best friend and, really, my only friend until we moved.

Then there was Jamie Roth, my first (and only) friend at Croyden—but I hadn’t seen or heard from him since he was expelled for something he didn’t do. My mother probably didn’t even know he existed, and since I wasn’t going back to school anytime soon, she probably never would.

Then there was Noah. Did he count?

My mom interrupted my thoughts. “When I was little, my mother would sometimes ask me if I could do magic.” A sad smile appeared on her lips. “I thought she was just playing. But as I grew older, she would ask every now and then if I could do anything ‘special.’ Especially once I was a teenager. I had no idea what she meant, of course, and when I asked her, she would tell me that I would know, and to tell her if anything changed.” My mother clenched her jaw and looked up at the ceiling.

She was trying not to cry.

“I wrote it off, telling myself that my mother was just ‘different.’ But all of the signs were there.” Her voice shifted back from wistful to professional. “The magical thinking—”

“What do you mean?”

“She would think she was responsible for things she couldn’t possibly be responsible for,” my mother said. “And she was superstitious—she was wary of certain numbers, I remember; sometimes she’d take care to point them out. And when I was around your age, she became very paranoid. Once, when we were on the way to move me into my first dorm room, we stopped to get gas. She’d been staring in the rearview mirror and looking over her shoulder for the past hour, and then when she went inside to pay, a man asked me for directions. I took out our map and told him how to get where he wanted to go. And just as he got back in his car and drove away, your grandmother ran out. She wanted to know everything—what he wanted, what he said—she was wild.” My mom paused, lost in the memory. Then she said, “Sometimes I would catch her sleepwalking. She had nightmares.”

I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say.

“It was . . . hard growing up with her, sometimes. I think it’s what made me want to be a psychologist. I wanted to help . . .” My mother’s voice trailed off, and then she seemed to remember me sitting there. Why I was sitting there. Her face flushed with color.

“Oh, sweetheart—I didn’t mean to—to make her sound that way.” She was flustered. “She was a wonderful mother and an incredible person; she was artistic and creative and so much fun. And she always made sure I was happy. She cared so much. If they knew when she was younger what they know now, I think . . . it would have turned out differently.” She swallowed hard, then looked straight at me. “But she isn’t you. You’re not the same. I only said something because—because things like that can run in families, and I just want you to know that it’s nothing you did, and everything that happened—the asylum, all of it—it is not your fault. The best therapists are here, and you’re going to get the best help.”

“What if I get better?” I asked quietly.

Her eyes brimmed with tears. “You will get better. You will. And you’ll have a normal life. I swear to God,” she said, quietly, seriously, “you’ll have a normal life.”

I saw my opening. “Do you have to send me away?”

She bit her lower lip and inhaled. “It’s the last thing I want to do, baby. But I think, if you’re in a different environment for a little while, with people who really know about this stuff, I think it’ll be better for you.”

But I could tell by the tone of her voice, and the way it wavered, that she wasn’t decided. She wasn’t sure. Which meant that I still might be able to manipulate her into letting me come home.