The sound of her voice cracked Andy open. She had longed for nearly a week to have her mother call, to hear the words that it was safe to come back home, but now that she was on the phone, Andy was incapable of doing anything but crying.
“Hello?” Laura repeated. Then, because she had gotten similar calls before, “Andrea?”
Andy lost what little shit she had managed to keep together. She leaned over her knees, head in her hand, trying not to wail again.
“Andrea, why are you calling me?” Laura’s tone was clipped. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Andy opened her mouth, but only to breathe.
“Andrea, please,” Laura said. “I need you to acknowledge that you can hear me.” She waited. “Andy—”
“Who are you?”
Laura did not make a sound. Seconds passed, then what felt like a full minute.
Andy looked at the screen, wondering if they had been disconnected. She pressed the phone back to her ear. She finally heard the gentle slap of waves from the beach. Laura had walked outside. She was on the back porch.
“You lied to me,” Andy said.
Nothing.
“My birthday. Where I was born. Where we lived. That fake picture of my fake grandparents. Do you even know who my father is?”
Laura still said nothing.
“You used to be somebody, Mom. I saw it online. You were on stage at-at-at Carnegie Hall. People were worshipping you. It must’ve taken years to get that good. All of your life. You were somebody, and you walked away from it.”
“You’re wrong,” Laura finally said. There was no emotion in her tone, just a cold flatness. “I’m nobody, and that’s exactly who I want to be.”
Andy pressed her fingers into her eyes. She couldn’t take any more of these fucking riddles. Her head was going to explode.
Laura asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m nowhere.”
Andy wanted to close the phone, to give Laura the biggest silent fuck you she could, but the moment was too desperate for hollow gestures.
She asked Laura, “Are you even my real mother?”
“Of course I am. I was in labor for sixteen hours. The doctors thought they were going to lose both of us. But they didn’t. We didn’t. We survived.”
Andy heard a car pulling into the driveway.
Fuck.
“An-Andrea,” Laura struggled to get out her name. “Where are you? I need to know you’re safe.”
Andy knelt on the couch and looked out the window. Edwin Van Wees with his stupid handlebar mustache. He saw Mike’s truck and practically fell out of his car as he scrambled toward the front door.
“Clara!” he yelled. “Clara, where—”
Clara answered, but Andy couldn’t make out the words.
Laura must have heard something. She asked, “Where are you?”
Andy listened to heavy boots pounding down the hallway.
“Andrea,” Laura said, her tone clipped. “This is deadly serious. You need to tell me—”