The Winter Sister(86)

“I have thought about it! I spent every day of Persephone’s childhood thinking about it. You have no idea what it was like—especially those first few years. Every time the doorbell rang, I was terrified it was Richard—that he’d found out somehow, and he’d be there on the front steps with some fancy court order in his hands. Every time a car slowed down in front of our house, I was sure it was one of Richard’s people spying on me. When Persephone was a baby, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t even take two steps from her in the grocery store for fear that Richard would pop up out of nowhere and snatch her from the cart!”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You were her mother. You had rights. This was just Will messing with your mind. You have to see that!”

She whipped her head from side to side. “My rights meant nothing. You don’t know what Richard did—what he must have done—to get Will away from me. Will would never have picked that—that woman over me, not if he’d had a choice. Richard did something—blackmailed him in some way. He—”

“You think he blackmailed his own son into marrying someone else and having a child with her? Mom, I’m sorry, but you’re just being paranoid.”

“No, I’m not. It’s what happened, Sylvie. It’s how he was. Richard took Will away from me, and if he found out the truth, he would have taken Persephone, too. Will would never lie to me about something like that.”

She took a deep, ragged breath, the air hissing in her throat. “So that’s why we kept it a secret. We weren’t just protecting Will. We were protecting Persephone.”

“Maybe you were. Because Will had you all twisted up about everything. But Will wasn’t protecting her. Protecting her would imply that he actually cared about her, but obviously he didn’t. He never even tried to have a relationship with her.”

“Goddamn it, you’re not listening. He didn’t have a relationship with her because he cared about her! Fuck, Sylvie, I barely had a relationship with her because of how much I cared about her!”

My blood seemed to stall for the briefest of moments. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

Mom shook her head, her eyes shining with fresh tears. “I loved her more than anything in this world. She had both of us in her. She was proof of how deeply we loved each other.”

When she blinked, a tear raced down her cheek. She cleared her throat, the sound like a cold car attempting to start.

“But I couldn’t get too close to her,” she continued. Then she looked up at me, her eyes wide and frantic. “I couldn’t get too close to her just to lose her someday. I’d already gone through that once with Will. I couldn’t survive it again. I had to—I had to watch her carefully, but I had to keep her at arm’s length, too. I just, I never imagined I would lose her the way I did.”

She lifted a finger to her chin, catching a tear on her knuckle. Then she wiped at her nose.

“Do you have any tissues in here?” she asked, looking around, but I was too stuck on what she’d said to answer.

I had to keep her at arm’s length. When I pictured it, I saw Mom’s hand on Persephone’s shoulder, her arm stiff as it stretched out as far as it could go between them. It was just an expression—“arm’s length”—but the image in my head felt right somehow, felt true. How many times had I burrowed into Mom on the couch, while Persephone sat alone in a chair? How many times had Persephone announced an accomplishment—that B+ on her English paper in high school, or her citizenship award in middle school—only for Mom to steamroll over it with something I had done, something I had achieved? How many times had Persephone told me we had two different mothers, or that Mom must have loved my father because of how much she clearly loved me? But now, Mom was insisting it was the opposite: it was Persephone’s father she had loved beyond reason; it was Persephone who was the daughter—and here, a lump formed in my throat—she had cherished the most. Because of what she symbolized. Because of whose she was.

My mind flashed to Persephone’s letter, the ease and candor with which she’d recounted her pain to Ben. Shitty mother, she’d written. All that stuff with my shitty mother. And I’d painted birds on her collarbones, clouds on her wrists. I’d covered up the bruises, turned them into teacups and trees and planets, and all the while, I never knew them for what they were—symptoms of the ache and loneliness no paint could ever cure.

How much of Persephone’s relationship with Mom had I missed? How many small but accumulating hurts and dismissals had I filtered out over the years, swathed, as I’d been, in Mom’s arms? How many times had Persephone watched us together and felt her skin grow cold? How much of the warmth I’d basked in had actually been real, and how much had been reallocated from love belonging to Persephone? Love Mom wouldn’t allow herself to show. Love she kept, like a dangerous animal, at arm’s length.

“Arm’s length, huh?” I said now. “How’d that work out for you?”

She looked down at the floor and shrugged. Then she closed her eyes, and a tear dripped onto her lap.

“I wonder—” She shook her head. “I don’t even know if she ever knew how much I loved her.”

I watched her face, saw how her skin looked suctioned to bone, and I thought of how all the secrets she’d kept—who she’d loved and how much—had led Persephone to the place she’d ended up.