The Resurrection of Wildflowers (Wildflower #2)(36)

“Yeah.” I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear with my free hand.

“Why do you want to tell me now?”

“Because it should’ve never been a secret.” I duck my head with shame. “I was scared, and angry, and I just … I didn’t handle things the way I should have.”

“You were young, Salem. We all do stupid stuff, even when we’re older, what matters is that you learn from it.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I fell in love with someone older than me,” I start the story, “he didn’t take advantage of me, I promise you that, but it was intense. I had never felt anything like it before. I didn’t know I could feel things the way he made me feel them. I thought I knew love, but he showed me everything I thought I knew was wrong.” I take a deep breath, this is harder than I thought it would be. “I fell hard and fast. I thought I’d get over him, but I never have.” I wipe away a tear that tracks down my cheek. I make myself say it, put it out into the universe and make it real. “Thayer is her father.”

She stares at me for a long moment, never breaking my gaze.

Nothing at all could possibly prepare me for the words that come out of her mouth.

“I know.”

“You know?” I flounder to understand how she could possibly know. “How?”

She shakes her head. “Well, I couldn’t be certain he was Seda’s father, but I did notice resemblance and as far as your relationship with him … honey, I’m your mother. I know you thought you were being sneaky, but you really weren’t. I figured it out pretty quickly.”

“And you never said anything because?”

“Because you were happy. After everything, why would I try to take that away from you? I’m not saying I liked it, but I understood it.”

“And you … all these years you’ve been friends with him since I left, why?”

“Because he needed a friend.” She shrugs like it’s so simple. “And he knew that I knew, so I think he felt safe talking to me.”

My jaw drops at that. Here I thought I was the one who was going to be dropping bombs on my mom and it’s reversed. “When did he know?”

“Forrest’s birthday that year.”

I sit back in the rocker, stunned. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“I never told him about Seda or that I suspected she was his. It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“I told him. He knows now. He wants to meet her.” I run my fingers through my hair, trying to gather my breath. “I really made a clusterfuck of things, didn’t I?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, so long in fact that I think maybe she’s not going to say anything at all. But then she says, “We all make messes, Salem. It’s how we deal with them that matters.”

I lower my head. “I’m trying to make things right.”

“You’ll get there, my girl.” She rubs my hand, trying to soothe me. She’s the one dying, but she’s comforting me, because even now she can’t stop being a mother. “I believe in you.” She grows quiet after a while and I think she might doze off, so it surprises me when she speaks again. “I know we don’t talk about what your father did, but trauma like that lingers. For you, for me, for Georgia. It affects your mind and choices you make. I don’t think it’s something therapy can fully erase. That means, sometimes, you’re not going to handle things the way a normal person would. Trauma is deep-rooted and sometimes we don’t even realize how it’s influencing us.”

“I never thought about it like that.”

“Just don’t let it affect you too much. I see the way that man looks at you and you look at him. A love like that … it doesn’t come around again. You deserve to be happy. Let yourself have that—because that’s another effect of trauma.”

“What is?”

She looks down sadly and I think she might be thinking of herself. “Self-sabotage. Thinking you don’t deserve certain things because you’re dirty, tainted.”

“Mom.” My heart breaks for the woman at my side, who dealt with a bastard like my father and now sits at the end of her life much too soon.

She sniffles, her eyes watery. “Don’t worry about me, baby girl. But when I’m gone, promise me you’ll remember the things I say.”

“I promise.” My voice is soft, barely audible. It’s like my voice has fled me. I hate talking about this, the inevitably of her death. But it’s here. Staring all of us in the face.

You have to be strong, I tell myself.

I’m tired of it, though, always being the one who has to keep myself together.

Eventually, we all have to break.





CHAPTER 25





SALEM





My nerves are at an all-time high when Caleb’s Mercedes pulls into the driveway. I’ve had a whole week to prepare for this moment, even made a drive back to Boston to explain in person to Seda that she was finally going to meet her father.

“And my brother too?” She had asked me, and I promised to take her to his grave so she could say hello.

“My hands are sweating,” I whisper to my mom at my side on the front porch.