Burn Our Bodies Down(52)

“You mean you got her,” Mom says, and there, there, that’s the weak spot I have to keep aiming at. “It’s not worth it. I know you think you understand, but she can’t ever give you enough to make up for what she takes.”

“Oh, I understand that,” I say. “I learned it from you.”

“Fuck,” Mom says quietly. She’s desperate now, not angry. That’s so much better. “This is— I can’t do this, Margot. Do you understand what it’s costing me to be here?”

“No,” I say, “because you never told me a thing. You never let me in, Mom.” She won’t bring it up on her own, will she? Not even after I asked her about it in my voice mail. Fine—I’ll do it. Maybe this will get her to crack open. “Like Katherine,” I say, and she flinches, full and sudden, like I hit her. “Why didn’t you tell me about Katherine?”

“We can’t waste time with this,” Mom says, pleading, her gaze flicking to Fairhaven and back. “Okay? I tried to get us out of here and I can do it again, but we have to go, and we have to do it right now.”

I stand my ground. “It’s now or never, Mom. Why wouldn’t you want me to know my family?”

“Because it’s not any family at all. It’s not real.” My disappointment must be obvious, because Mom comes toward me, takes my face in her hands. Her thumb insistent on that spot under my left eye, where her scar marks her own skin. “I know,” she says, soft and on the edge of crying. “I know it’s not what you wanted. If I could change it, I would. But we have to go. You have to get in the car.”

I bat her hands away. That’s not loving me. Loving me is giving me what you owe me. “What happened to her? I am not going anywhere until you tell me the truth.”

“Margot—”

“Do you think I don’t mean it?” I step toward her and she staggers back, and I hate feeling like this, like I’m about to break her, but it’s the only way I ever get anything I’m after. And sure, maybe I can’t make her want me. Maybe I can’t make her love me the way mothers are supposed to love their children. But I can make her give me this. “Do you think I’m kidding? You had a sister and I had an aunt and you kept her from me,” I say, my voice louder and louder. “You took her away, and I want to know why.”

“Because I—” Mom’s voice fails, and she covers her mouth with her hands, her eyes squeezed shut. “I’m what happened to her,” I hear her say. Muffled, thick with tears.

I stand there. Mom at my feet. Sun in my eyes.

I’m what happened.

“What does that mean?”

But do I really want to know? I remember what Katherine wrote in her Bible. She was afraid, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Afraid of Mom.

The fires, the boxes of files. The trouble that people say comes with being a Nielsen girl. How does that make Katherine a secret worth keeping? And not from everybody. Just from me.

I don’t have a chance to wonder. Mom straightens, swiping at the tear tracks left on her cheeks. “I don’t owe you that,” she says. And it’s bullshit, it’s such a mess, both of us standing there with our scales, trying to reckon with something that will never balance.

One day, I think, in a bolt of clarity I cannot stand, I will have to stop counting. For better or worse, I will have to let it go.

I don’t want to. My whole life, it’s been pushing against my mother that’s kept me on my feet. If I let go there’ll be nothing left.

“Yes,” I insist, “you do.” That’s what I do. That’s what I will always do.

“Katherine’s dead,” she says, with some difficulty, “and that’s what you need to know.”

“And the other girl?” I wasn’t planning to bring her up, not when it’s such an easy way for Mom to hurt me, but it slips out. I grit my teeth, keep on. “What do I need to know about her?”

Mom’s brow furrows. “Who?”

Another lie. Another. Like I haven’t heard enough. “Nothing, right?” I say, like she never responded. “You and Gram keep deciding what I need to know, and it’s always nothing, and how the hell is that fair? Why wouldn’t you ever tell me about her?”

“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about,” Mom says. And the thing is, I know how she sounds when she’s lying. I’ve heard it for years, felt swallowed by that rush of rage it calls to the surface. And she’s not lying this time. But I’m sure that Gram is.

I don’t understand. Her and Gram—I thought they were keeping the same secrets. Where does it leave me if they aren’t?

In the quiet, Mom reaches out and rests her hand on the roof of the car. “Now will you please get in? So we can go?”

I twist to look over my shoulder. Gram’s there on the porch, leaning against the support post, watching us.

“Margot?” Mom says.

Those scales again, flickering in my mind’s eye. Mom on one side, years and years stacking high. On the other, Gram.

And there, a shadow behind them both, Katherine and the body in the field, both of them waiting for me. Waiting for me to find out how they died.

“No,” I say, turning back to Mom. “I can’t leave right now.”