Burn Our Bodies Down(67)

“Thanks.”

Down the walkway, past rooms behind weathered blue doors. Finally I reach the last one. The door stands slightly ajar, so I just barge right in.

I stop. I must have the wrong room. This place is empty. No bags, no stuff. The sheets stripped from the bed and piled in the corner like somebody was about to change the linens.

But I’m in the right place, because it’s there, in the middle of the mattress. The Bible. The one I left in our apartment in Calhoun. The matching one to Katherine’s, back at Fairhaven.

Mom was here. And now she’s not.

Panic rising in my throat, choking off the air. Her stuff must still be here. She can’t have left. It’s fine. It has to be fine.

I run to the dresser, yank open the drawers. Empty, empty, empty. Okay, Margot. Deep breaths now. She wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t make you the first promise she’s ever made and then break it just like that.

I check the bathroom. The shelves are bare, the towels dumped in the bathtub. They’re damp. The shampoo is balanced on the side, the top still open. She was here.

“Mom?” I yell, and I know it’s ridiculous, I know she won’t answer, but I won’t let that in. “Mom!”

Just an echo as my voice bounces off the tiles. I barrel back into the bedroom. The gleam of the Bible’s gold embossing in the last of the light feels like a needle in my side. This was her room, but her stuff’s all gone. Because she packed it up. Because she didn’t wait. She left. And she took her whole life with her.

Her whole life, except me.

Every breath tearing something open in me, every second more painful than the last. She’s gone. Mom’s fucking gone. She packed up and she’s not coming back.

She promised. She promised she’d stay. And I believed her. I can’t believe I was so stupid. I really thought she’d still be here when I was ready to come back. I really thought it was different with us this time, that maybe we could finally understand each other.

For a moment I’m not sure what to do. Where to put the thrumming hive of anger living in my body. It’s a gift, I tell myself. She finally gave me what I always wanted. My own life, away from hers. Celebrate.

I’m lit up with it, a rage sizzling in my body. I pick up the nightstand. Throw it against the wall. It’s nothing, made of nothing, and it splinters into pieces. The Bible next. I hurl it at the mirror over the dresser. Shattered glass tumbles to the floor, scatters around my feet. So what if it cuts me? What’s one more way to bleed?

How could she do this to me? We’ve spent all this time tearing each other apart, but we stayed, we stayed together, and now she bails? Now, when I need answers? Now, when I need help?

She can’t have left. She can’t, she can’t. If anybody was gonna leave it was gonna be me, but it wasn’t, really, because I’d never let go of her, not as long as I had a choice. And I said I always wanted space from her, I told myself that every day in that apartment, wishing and hoping for a day without her voice in the back of my head, but I didn’t fucking mean it, because she’s my mom and I love her and I cry so hard my muscles tremble, cry so hard it sounds like a scream.

My mother, my mother, my mother who never wanted me.

“Come back,” I hear myself whispering. Come back.

When I look up it’s nearing sunset, and there’s a cool breeze sweeping in through the open door. He must’ve heard me, that boy in the office, but he hasn’t come to check. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t either.

Slowly I pull myself to my feet. Wipe the snot and tears from my face with the edge of the motel comforter. I can break all I want, but eventually the only thing left to do is get back up. Get back up and find the answers I need on my own. I’ve been doing it for years. I can do it again.

I pick the glass from the carpet. Gather up the biggest pieces of wood from the broken nightstand and drop them in the trash can by the door. Hang the towels over the shower curtain rod so they’ll dry better. Splash cold water on my cheeks to bring the redness down and tuck my curled hair behind my ears until I look closer to fine.

Back in the bedroom, I take one last look around before heading out. I should stop by the office to apologize. But something catches my eye. A square of white, sticking out from the Bible where it’s splayed facedown. It’s not the picture of Mom in front of Fairhaven—I took that with me when I left Calhoun—and it’s not the money I left for her. It’s something else.

I crouch, steady myself on the bed and pick it up. It’s an envelope. Margot, written there in her handwriting. Shaky and lopsided, so different from Gram’s.

I look around the room, the wreck I made of it, and swallow a hot rush of shame. She left me a note. Not that it makes any of this much better. But she did leave me something.

That something turns out to be a photo. Mom and Katherine, posed on the Fairhaven front porch, standing on either side of Gram. One of them in shorts and a T-shirt, hair long and loose. The other in a plain dress with wide straps. My breath catches in my throat—the face of girl in the dress is scratched out. So strong and so deep it rips all the way through.

On the opposite side of their mother, the other girl is looking at her sister, a fierceness to her face that I recognize from my own heart. That must be Mom. Mom from Katherine’s diary, who scratched out her sister’s face, who kept this photo because she cherished what she’d done.