Burn Our Bodies Down(47)

But then I open the other drawer. And there it is. A Bible, the same white cover, the same gold embossing. Just like Mom’s.

I know what I’ll see when I open to the first page. But I do it anyway. Shaking hands, a hitch in my throat. And there it is.


For my daughter on her twelfth birthday.

—With all my love, your mother. 11/8/95



No verse about a cup, about what the Lord wills. I don’t know enough about what it meant in the first place to understand why it’s not here. But the same handwriting. The same birthday. The same.

A sob breaks out of my chest. I shut the Bible, fling it away from me and sit heavily back on my heels. Josephine and Katherine. Sisters, and twins, and one of them my mother, and here is the room they lived in. Here is where they slept, where they grew. My mother’s first and dearest secret. Gram’s too.

“It’s all right,” Gram says from behind me. So softly, and it soothes me even as I try to shrug it off. She lied to me, I think, holding on to it hard, because if I’ve got anger wrapped around my bones, that’s how I’ll get through this.

“It’s not all right.” I lean on the bed next to me as I stagger to my feet. When I turn around, Gram is still in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest.

“I would have told you,” she says, still so quietly that her voice drifts through the air like dust motes, golden and aimless. “But it should have been your mother. And she said that she hadn’t. That she didn’t want you to know.” She steps toward me. “Besides. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

My mouth falls open. “What?”

Gram’s eyes are steady on mine, and for a moment I see Mom in her so clearly. The will so strong I could throw myself against it for a hundred years and never do anything more than break my own bones.

Mom turned it in on herself. Used it to keep every door closed. Gram isn’t quite like that, but I recognize it all the same, and I feel an ache so hard I’m afraid it’ll never ease. Mom. I love her, I love her, because sometimes she’s mine.

“Katherine died before you were born,” Gram says now, one hand just barely reaching out to me. Every time she says so, it sounds more and more true. “It was all over before you even got here.” A smile, warm and open. “It doesn’t matter, Mini. It’s all right.”

“Of course it matters,” I choke out. “What the hell, Gram?”

“There’s no call for that,” she says, but I’m done with this. She’s not who I need right now.

Purpose urging me forward, through the collapse waiting for me in my body. Gram calls my name as I hurry past her, down the hallway and back out onto the landing. I pause for a moment, brace myself on the banister and try to take a deep breath. But my lungs feel heavy, feel like they did during the fire when the smoke was weaving thick. The feeling won’t break until I get hold of Mom.

The landline is in the kitchen. I rush down the stairs, Gram’s voice echoing after me. Whatever she’s saying, it doesn’t matter. Mom. I have to talk to Mom. To yell, and to cry, and to I don’t know what, but I have to hear her voice. I have to make her hear mine.

The phone nearly slips out of my hands as I snatch it off the charging dock. Palms too clammy, fingers too quick, and I misdial twice, but soon the phone is ringing and the speaker is pressed to my ear. Ring after ring, endless. Gram arrives in the kitchen doorway as I wait, and she looks so sorry for me that I can’t bear it. I push open the screen door and go out onto the back porch. She doesn’t follow.

It’s still ringing. The Miller house in the distance, afternoon spread like butter between. If I were Tess, none of this would be happening. If that were my life.

But it’s not.

The line clicks, and my heart jumps in my chest, but Mom doesn’t pick up. I don’t know that I expected her to. Instead I get her voice mail, and the sound of her voice feels like a punch to the gut.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s Jo. Leave a message.”

Sorry. Of course she starts with sorry. To everybody but me.

The beep comes more quickly than I expect, and I’m not ready.

“Hi,” I say, feeling immediately like an idiot. I take a breath in, wincing as it catches. I don’t want her to think I’ve been crying. I haven’t.

“It’s me,” I say, and the goddamn injustice of having to say that, of having to remind her of her daughter, suddenly lights me up. It’s like that with me, sitting curled in my chest, until the smallest spark and the wick catches. I left, I know it was me who left, but where is she? Where’s her concern? Why wouldn’t she come after me? “Margot. Your daughter. The one you let just disappear two days ago. Remember me?”

As fast as it lit up, it goes out. I’m too tired. Too sad. Too buried under the things she kept from me.

“I’m calling,” I say, “because I’m at Fairhaven and I found out, Mom. About Katherine. Why didn’t you tell me about that? About her? Why wouldn’t you want me to know my family?” I tip my head back, stare up at the porch light and feel a tear slide into my hairline. “I don’t understand why you’d keep that from me. Do you really hate me that much? Do you really want to punish me that badly?”

I know what her answer would be: Not everything is about you. Not even this.