My mother squeezes me harder today than she did back then and the tickle in the back of my throat grows impatient as I hold my breath and squeeze her back just as tight.
I don’t cry until her body wracks with sobs against mine. “Sorry,” she tells me. “I’m so sorry,” is all she can say over and over.
As if she chose this. As if she wanted to forget the life she had and let the memories fade and die. That’s what forgetting is, it’s the death of the life you had. It doesn’t just kill you though. It kills everyone else as well.
I only pull away from her for a moment, just to tell her there’s nothing to be sorry for, but the words are lost when she looks into my eyes. Her own are gray and clouded with a gaze of sorrow.
“Mom?”
Her expression changes in an instant. Confusion clouds her face, where just minutes ago there was clarity.
My mother is in there, or she was, but the moment is gone.
“Who are you?”
“Mom, come back,” I beg her, feeling my chest hollow and then fill with agony. “Where’d you go?” I ask her, not giving into the fear this time, only the loss. “Mom!” Hope is undeniable. “I’m here, Mom; I’m here!”
Her hand tightens on my forearm, too tight.
“Mom,” I gasp, trying to pry her hands off of me as she refuses to look away, refuses to react to anything at all. She’s merely a statue and the realization frightens me. I turn to look over my shoulder just as I hear the front door shut from the hall. My heartbeat races. Where’d Nurse Judy go?
“Mom,” I protest, writhing out of her grasp. “Help!” I finally call out, the fear winning.
“Everyone I loved has died,” my mother says, and her voice is ragged. Despair and loss morph her features into one of pain and her grip on me loosens.
Staring into my eyes with sincerity, she tells me, “Everyone you love will die before you do.” As if she’s talking to a stranger she only intends to bring pain, they’re the last words she speaks before her slender body relaxes into the chair. Her gaze wanders aimlessly as I stand there breathless from both fear and despair, knowing I was too late. That’s when I hear the quickened footsteps of my sister running into the room.
Running to see her mother. Who’s already gone.
Seconds pass, and I can’t look at Jenny. I brush the tears away as Nurse Judy pushes past us both, aiding my mother, whose consciousness has drifted to another place and another time.
“Mom,” my sister cries. And I don’t blame her.
That was the last time my sister cried for our mother. She didn’t even cry at her funeral nearly a year later. Jenny always held it against her that our mother didn’t wait for her. She held it against me too, knowing I at least got to hear Mom tell me she was sorry.
I never told her what else our mother said. I tried to forget it. I did everything I could to kill that memory.
It’s come back though. It refuses to die, unlike other things in my life.
Bethany
The clock doesn’t stop ticking.
It’s one of those simple round clocks. There’s nothing special about the white backing and thick black frame. Tick, tick, tick. It’s loud and unforgiving. The torture of it is all I can focus on to bring me sanity as the last hours of my life fall like dominoes in my memory.
The money in the trunk.
“You still haven’t explained where you got the three hundred thousand dollars.” Officer Walsh’s voice is hard.
The blood on Jase’s clothes and the look in his eyes when I came into his bathroom.
“Or why you were covered in blood. Whose blood is it, Miss Fawn? You need to tell us.”
Fear is what motivated me to run from him. Fear is the cause of all of this. It’s left me now, though. In its place is something more resigned.
One long, deep breath falls from me as I stare at the painted white bricks of the interrogation room’s walls and listen to the tick, tick, tick.
My piss-poor decisions have led to this point in my life.
The point of waiting. I’ve fucked it up enough; I may as well just let it all fall. When Alice fell, she landed in Wonderland. I’m thinking that’s not where I’ll land, but I’m ready to feel the weightlessness of what’s to come. I’m simply tired of fighting it.
There’s another officer in the room. He’s younger. When I first listened to their demands for me to answer their questions, I sat here hours ago with my shoulders tense and feeling the need to curl up into a ball and hide. The young cop sat across from me, his arms crossed and his gaze never wandering from me.