Darling Rose Gold(26)

Rose Gold studied the prosecutor, brows furrowed, debating something. In my head, I pleaded with her not to say whatever was supposed to come next in their script.

She sat back in her chair, decision made. Quietly she said to her lap, “One time I found her in the kitchen, crying that her parents never loved her.”

A lump formed in my throat. I have tried to be a cheerful person all my life, but the morning Rose Gold was referring to, I didn’t have it in me. When my ten-year-old daughter found me crying over the sink, I confided in her. I slid to the tile floor, slumped against the cabinets, and sobbed that my parents hadn’t loved me. Graduations, parent-teacher conferences, school talent shows: my dad never came to any of them. Not like you’re going to win, he’d say, while my mother sat next to him, acquiescing with her silence.

On the kitchen floor, Rose Gold had nuzzled her face into my shoulder. I love you more than all the people in the whole wide world combined, she’d said. Her love helped me pick myself up, allowed me to get breakfast on the table and finish the dishes.

I know I’ve made some awful mistakes, but I would never expose the thing she hated most about herself to everyone she knew.

In the courtroom, the prosecutor drove his point home. “Is it fair to say Patty Watts created a toxic environment for a child to grow up in?”

Rose Gold nodded. “She wouldn’t leave me alone.”

For the second time in as many minutes, I felt like I’d been slapped. Wouldn’t leave her alone? I couldn’t go to the bathroom without Rose Gold following me. She needed my opinion on everything: her outfits, her hairdos, her Barbie dolls’ names. Less than a year ago, she had asked to sleep in my bed, and now she had the nerve to act like I was the one suffocating her? If there was an unhealthy codependence between us, it went both ways. Sure, outsiders would find our relationship odd—since when had we cared about outsiders? I’d trusted her. She was my person.

Rose Gold went on. “My mom talked over me to my doctors.” You asked me to do the talking—you were shy and nervous around strangers.

“My mom picked out my outfits every day until I was seventeen.” You didn’t trust yourself to match your clothes.

“My mom chewed up the foods she thought I could tolerate before I was allowed to eat them.” You said you might not get sick if the food was ground up first.

Through my mind flicked memory after memory. Weren’t we laughing in most of them? Wasn’t she begging me for more hugs, more stories, more approval? More, more, more. Did I ever say no? Did I ever once bad-mouth her to a neighbor or a teacher or a doctor? Did I ever leave her on a Friday night to go on a date or see a friend? Did I ever ask for space from her, ever say I wanted the bed to myself, that I wanted to sleep in, that I wanted to take a bubble bath without waiting for her call for more apple juice?

Rose Gold’s chin quivered. “I knew she was controlling, but I didn’t know the medicine she gave me was making me throw up over and over and over again, until my teeth started to rot. She starved and poisoned me”—her voice shook—“and she ruined my entire childhood.” She played with the cuff of her sweater, sliding the fabric between her index and middle fingers, a method of self-soothing she’d used since childhood. She used to stroke the edges of her blankie that way as a toddler. When I remembered how small and naive she still was, my anger began to subside.

I could protest all I wanted, but the truth was, I had no one to blame but myself. If I’d kept a closer eye on my daughter, she wouldn’t have been on this witness stand testifying against her own mother. I wished I could take the past six months back, start over. Maybe we could go to family counseling.

“Thank you, Miss Watts,” the prosecutor said. He turned to the judge. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“All right,” the judge said. “Let’s take an hour recess for lunch.”

The bailiff approached the witness stand. Rose Gold’s fingers twisted in knots. She peered around the room. Her eyes found mine.

I love you, I mouthed to her, smiling.

Her expression darkened. She glanced at the jury, who were gathering their things, and leaned into the microphone. When she spoke, her voice rang out loud and confident. “My mother belongs in prison.”

The bailiff hurried Rose Gold off the witness stand. The gallery buzzed behind me.

My jaw clenched. I fought the urge to rip the tie off my dumbfounded attorney and shove it in my daughter’s mouth. All those months I thought some shadowy they had gotten to her: Alex Stone, the police, the prosecutor, reporters. I thought she was someone else’s mouthpiece, parroting back what she was supposed to say like a good girl. But she was up there—blabbing about the intimate details of our lives—of her own volition. She wanted to see me rot in a cell, even though I’d devoted my entire life to taking care of her. The shock of her betrayal zipped through me like two thousand volts. I was sure my heart would stop at any minute.

How could you? I thought, watching her. You were more than a daughter to me—you were my best friend. You were my everything.

Rose Gold turned toward me, as if I’d spoken aloud. Our eyes met again, and in hers, I saw regret, a plea for forgiveness. That was when I knew: she would come back to me someday. She would pay a price for her betrayal, of course, but we would get through this.

On that day of my trial, and for many years after, my daughter was lost. But in the end, I was right: all the vicious people in the world couldn’t keep us apart. She found her way back to me.