CHAPTER 8 — THE WOMAN IN THE SIDE ROOM
They moved Sophie and me into a small chapel side room that smelled like beeswax, lilies, and old wood.
It had two chairs, one small table, a framed print of a saint looking patiently disappointed, and a window facing the parking lot where news vans had begun multiplying like mushrooms after rain.
Sophie sat in one chair.
I stayed standing.
Old habits.
Mothers sit near their children. Strangers wait to be invited.
Sophie noticed.
“Sit down.”
I did.
We looked at each other.
Eighteen years sat between us like a third person.
She wiped her face with both hands and took a breath.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”
“That makes sense.”
“I’m angry.”
“That also makes sense.”
“At you too.”
My chest tightened.
“I know.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Do you? Because everyone out there is acting like you’re some saint who suffered in silence, but I was a child. You were my mother. You were supposed to come get me.”
There it was.
The sentence no confession could soften.
The one I had said to myself in crueler forms for years.
I folded my hands in my lap so she would not see them shake.
“You’re right.”
She blinked.
I kept going.
“I tried. Then I got tired. Then scared. Then poor. Then ashamed. Then I told myself staying away was safer for you because every time I came near, they used it to tighten the wall. Some of that was true.”
I swallowed.
“Some of it was me giving up because I did not know how to keep losing you in public.”
Sophie’s anger faltered, but did not vanish.
Good.
It deserved room.
“You should have kept trying.”
“Yes.”
“I needed you.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
Her voice broke.
“You don’t know what it was like being told my mother didn’t want me and still feeling like something was missing every day.”
I did not defend myself.
There was no defense large enough.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I know what it was like from my side. Not yours.”
She stared at me.
That answer seemed to matter.
Maybe because no one in the Vale family had ever allowed her separate pain. Everything had been interpreted for her. Managed. Explained. Named.
I would not steal even her anger from her.
She leaned back.
“What did you do on my birthday?”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
So I told her.
First birthday: I sat outside the courthouse because I thought there might be a hearing. There wasn’t.
Second: I baked a cake and threw it away because I couldn’t eat it.
Third: I mailed a card with a ladybug on it.
Fourth: I got it returned.
Fifth: I went to the zoo because Eleanor’s newsletter said your preschool class was going. You wore a purple jacket.
Sixth: I was sick and watched cartoons you might have liked.
Seventh: Aquarium.
Eighth: I sent the scarf.
Ninth: I got a second job.
Tenth: I wrote a letter I never mailed because I was afraid Celeste would show it to you with parts underlined.
Eleventh: I found a photo of you online holding a violin.
Sophie looked up.
“I hated violin.”
“I could tell.”
That startled a laugh out of her.
Small.
Involuntary.
Painful.
Alive.
We sat with it.
Then she asked, “Did you have other children?”
“No.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes and no.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one. I was your mother. I never stopped being that. But I also stopped believing I had the right to become anyone else’s mother when I had failed to remain yours.”
Her face crumpled.
“I hate that.”
“Me too.”
She looked toward the door.
“I don’t want to go back out there.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I live with them.”
“You don’t have to decide everything today.”
She looked at me sharply.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Be calm. It makes me feel like I’m being unreasonable.”
I almost smiled.
“I was a waitress for six years, then a hotel manager, then a catering supervisor. Calm is how I paid rent.”
That did it.
She smiled for half a second.
Then the door opened without a knock.
Celeste stood there.
Her eyes were red.
May you like
Her face was perfect.
“Sophie,” she said. “Come with me now.”
