Burn Our Bodies Down(59)

It should grate on me, the close observation, the almost distrustful way she watches to make sure I finish my food. But it’s a relief. All I have to do right now is sit here and take one bite after another. No questions. No confusion. No bodies with faces like mine. Just someone who might have been a mother, once. And me.

When I’m done, Gram sets my plate in the sink and then comes back to crouch in front of me, so close that I can see the small ring of hazel at the center of her dark eyes, same as me and Mom.

“I wouldn’t have told you about the clinic,” she says in a voice that wouldn’t sound gentle from anybody else, “if I didn’t think you needed to know. Your mother might have come here, and she might have said she’ll wait, but I don’t want you thinking she means it. That will only get you hurt.”

I don’t answer. I can’t. Gram is probably right. Mom came here not to save me, not to bring me home, but to score a point in the fight she is still having with her mother no matter what. If she really is still in town, it isn’t for me, is it? Gram wanted me to figure that out. That’s why she put me in that dress. To snuff out that last flare of hope. To show me how things really are.

“You know her,” Gram goes on. Softer and softer with every word. “You know what sort of games she’ll play. Don’t let her fool you. You’re too smart for that.”

I shut my eyes and try to remember the look on Mom’s face. It felt real, then. When she asked me to come with her. As real as the pride I felt in turning her down.

Gram reaches out and carefully lays her hand on my knee. I tremble, sway toward her before I can catch myself. “And I know,” she says, “that things have been complicated. But you belong here, Mini. Remember that. It’s better without her.”

Not comfort. Not a threat, either. Just the truth. I feel it settle into me, wonder if when I look in the mirror it will be written across my forehead, in the marks my blisters have started to leave behind. This is the only place for a girl like me.

“I will,” I say, and then, because I finally understand it all the way: “Nobody but you and me.”

There is nobody else who will want me. There is nobody else who will give me half of what she will.

“Exactly,” she says. When she kisses my forehead, her lips are dry. “That’s exactly right.”

She leaves me then. Disappears into the depths of the house, and I stay there in the kitchen, my heart beating too fast, my breakfast sitting horribly in my stomach, until I have to wrench open the cabinet under the sink and coil over the garbage as I dry heave. Nothing comes up, but I wait there a moment longer. Staring down at something small, tucked inside the eggshells from my breakfast. Shining and white.

A tooth.

For a moment I don’t move. I just look, and look, feel a strange, detached curiosity well up and fade again. And then I shut my eyes. Sit back on my heels. I don’t know what to do with any of this. I need someone to be here in it with me. I thought maybe that could be Tess, but I messed it all up.

And I know what I should do. Answers, I keep saying I want answers—I should be tearing this place apart. I can’t, though. Not when it’s all I have, not when I’m terrified of what I’ll find.

I wish I could. I wish I were stronger; I wish I were better.

I’m not.

I get to my feet. Climb up the stairs, back to my room, where Katherine’s Bible is sitting on my nightstand. Maybe she can reach through the years and secrets keeping us apart. Maybe she can come back.

I flip to the last entry I read and then keep going, skip past sections where the pages have been torn out, past entries about Bible study, about fights Katherine had with Gram, about the weight of summer and how much Katherine wishes Gram would go for air-conditioning. Until there. I recognize it like it’s my own face in the mirror: panic.

The other entries I read were fond. Maybe a little strained, and a little worried, but nothing like this. The handwriting is jagged. In a few places, the pen tore through the paper, and I have to press the page flat to read what it says.


i don’t know what to do i don’t fucking know what to do

something’s wrong with mini



That’s as far as I get before I have to stop. Something’s wrong with mini—something’s wrong with Mom.


i think i’ve known that for a while and god everybody in town certainly has a lot to say about it

but honestly it’s hard to tell because sometimes it’s just that she’s saying the things i want to say and doing the things i want to do and sometimes it’s that i don’t recognize her anymore

those don’t sound like the same thing do they

but they are mostly

mini’s always just been bigger and brighter and the fun one i mean she would be if we had any friends and it’s freeing or something to see her fight with mom and run out to the grove and scream and scream the way she does and i like that she does that really i do that’s not what i’m talking about

what i mean is okay i woke up and she was gone and fine fine she can go i’m not saying she has to stay by my side every minute of the day

but i went downstairs to look for her because i wanted one of those nights like we used to have when we were younger when we’d sit out on the porch until the sun came up just us and then never tell mom

that’s what i wanted