Don't Let Go(58)

The silence rang in my ears as I sank to my knees on the steps and let it rip me apart.

? ? ?

I woke to the sound of the dead bolt clicking into place and opened my eyes. Or tried to. They were so swollen and glued together that it took prying one open with my fingers to do the job. I rubbed it to focus better and hit the button to light up my phone.
Ten minutes after midnight.
“Becca?” I called out, my voice hoarse to my ears.
A hazy form stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Mom? Why are you on the couch?”
I struggled to sit up as my feet were tangled under the afghan, another blanket, and Harley’s back end. Becca’s voice got her attention, however, and she jumped off the couch still groggy, nearly face-planting into the floor. I guessed that as long as a burglar was quiet and didn’t talk, Harley would sleep through it.
“I must have fallen asleep,” I said, pushing myself upright. The side table lamp was on, illuminating the stacks of photos and letters I’d been looking through all evening. Five Dr. Pepper cans were lined up next to them, as well as a bag of chips and a nearly empty package of Oreos I hadn’t even known we had.
“Well, I’m home,” she said, turning back to the stairs.
“I thought you were spending the night at Lizzy’s,” I said, trying to rub both eyes open.
Actually, I didn’t know what she was going to do. My fear of her never coming back home after that escapade had me breathing a sigh of relief that she was standing in the living room.
“Didn’t feel like it,” she said.
Her voice sounded down.
“Come sit down?” I asked.
I heard the sigh I couldn’t really see. “Mom, I’m tired.”
“Just come sit,” I said. She couldn’t possibly be more tired than me. I felt like I’d been to New Zealand and back. By paddleboat. “Please?”
Becca trudged around the couch and landed next to me with a long exhale. She looked my way for what was probably intended to be just a quick glance, but then she did a double take.
“Jesus, Mom, what happened to your eyes?”
“Told you, it was a bitch of a day,” I said. “This is why I don’t cry.”
Her eyes fell on the stack of Seth’s photos next to me, then down to her lap and back at the stack. “Any Oreos left?”
I reached back for the package and shook it. “A few.” I handed it to her and she shoved her hand inside.
“You really just see all that today?” she asked, nodding her chin at the photos.
“Yep.”
“How’d that happen?”
There was still snark in her voice, but a little remorse, too. That was her way of fixing things. Talking around them.
I rubbed at my face, too exhausted to start up the fight again. “Do you want the long version or the summary?”
She met my eyes and then looked away. There was still hurt in her eyes, and my stomach tightened.
“CliffsNotes is fine.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was put up for adoption the second he was born, my fiancé left town, and my parents pretended it never happened. Now the guy is back, I found out he had photographs—today. He said they came from his dad. I approached the dad and he told me they came from my mother.” Becca’s eyebrows rose at my rambling summary, and I gestured toward the pictures on the table. “Hence my raid on Mom’s part of the bookshelf.”
In the dim light, I watched her eyes glisten and she blinked it back, averting her gaze to stare straight ahead.
“Why did you keep all this from me?” she whispered, but I could hear the shake.
I opened my mouth to tell her that it was to protect her, but I realized we were past the point of either one of us believing that.
“It was so before your time, Bec,” I said, the pain and guilt and rawness wrapping around my throat, choking the words as they came out. “A really, really difficult time for me. Something I don’t talk about—with anyone. I guess I hoped you’d never have to know that—”
“That you weren’t perfect?” she said.
“That I made horrible choices,” I said, tears rising in my throat. “You called me a hypocrite and you’re right. I did the very thing I’m begging you not to do, and I was in love and thought it was all okay, and then I had to choose between—” I shut my eyes tight against the words that nearly came out. I was about to say choose between my mother and my love. Oh, holy f*ck, no wonder Noah had left me. What I’d convinced myself to be a responsible decision, he’d seen as betrayal. I sucked in a shaky breath. “I had to make choices that I couldn’t take back. Like never knowing my son.”
I felt her eyes on the side of my face, but it was my turn to stare straight ahead. I couldn’t look at my daughter and say these things aloud.
“I never want you to have to make choices like that, Bec,” I said. “Things you can’t undo. Like painting over a mistake—it doesn’t change the mistake underneath.”
“I’m not a painting, Mom,” she said. “And I’m not your personal do-over experiment.”
“I know that.”
“Then quit trying so hard to fix me before I’m broken,” she said, whisking tears off her cheeks. “Okay, so you screwed up and you don’t want me to, I get it, but I’m not you. Let me figure things out for myself.”
I looked at her, trying to be so grown up, trying to process so much information at once.
“That’s really hard to do, baby.”