A Breath of Eyre (23 page)

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Authors: Eve Marie Mont

BOOK: A Breath of Eyre
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“Thanks.”
Then he unleashed a cocky smile. “Which song reminds you of me?”
My cheeks must have flushed bright red, especially when I recalled how often I’d been listening to the song Gray and I had danced to at the Snow Ball. The song about gravity and objects being drawn irresistibly toward one another.
“I do believe you’ve used up your five questions already, Mr. Newman.”
“No way, I only asked three.”
“One,” I said, beginning to count off on my fingers, “most embarrassing moment. Two, inanimate object. Three, favorite book. Four, do I like Coldplay?”
“That didn’t count!”
“Sure it did. Five. What other music do I like?”
“But we were just chatting.”
“They were still questions. Anyway, you need to give me a chance to win some back. Let’s play again.”
He pretended to look angry, then indulged me with another game. This time we played nighttime baseball. I was so careful not to let my face show any emotion, to maintain a stoic façade so Gray couldn’t see through me. It must have worked because I actually won. Either that, or Gray let me win. But I only got three questions out of it because I wasn’t as bold with my betting.
I was about to ask him my first question when a nurse came in and told us Gray would have to go—she obviously wasn’t as lenient as Dr. Richter. He grumbled, and we waited for her to leave so we could say good-bye.
“I thought we were going to get away with the late-night visits for one more day,” he said.
“Me too.”
He gathered up the cards and his laptop and came back over to the bed. “You really are a terrible poker player,” he said, laughing. “You have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen.” I frowned dramatically, and he came toward me. “Worst poker face,” he said, “but the best face.” He brushed a strand of hair off my forehead and leaned down very slowly, kissing my forehead so gently that his lips barely grazed the skin.
It might sound like a paternal gesture—kissing someone on the forehead like that—but it didn’t feel paternal. Not at all. I found myself reaching for my necklace but stopped myself. I didn’t want Gray knowing he made me so nervous. After he left, I let out the breath I’d been holding and fell onto my pillow, smiling a secret smile that even he couldn’t see.
C
HAPTER
23
T
he next day, I walked out of the hospital and into a different world. When I’d left Thornfield, it had been nearly summertime. All had been green and dewy, lush and blooming. Here, it was still February. The air was wet and cold, and frost glazed the edges of the lawn.
Even though I was anxious to get back to school, my dad insisted on taking me home for a few days to rest. We sat in silence for the first half of the drive until my dad could no longer restrain himself. “So, Gray Newman?” he said, a fatherly smirk on his face. “What’s going on there?”
I shifted my gaze out the window, feeling self-conscious. How could I talk to my dad about boys? I didn’t even understand them myself. “We’re just friends,” I said.
“Oh, really?” He took his eyes off the road just long enough to give me a skeptical arch of his eyebrow. “So friends come to visit you at the hospital every day?”
“Not some friends,” I said. I had been feeling very hurt that Michelle and Owen hadn’t stopped by.
“Oh, one of your friends did visit,” he said. “A guy. With shaggy brown hair.”
“Owen?”
“Yeah, that was him. He came to see you while you were unconscious. He did say to pass along the message that Michelle couldn’t make it. Something to do with the investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know. There’s a lot we haven’t talked about.”
I shifted in my seat so I was facing him. “What investigation, Dad?” I repeated.
“After the fire at the stables, your school conducted an arson investigation. They think Michelle might have been responsible for the fire.”
“Michelle?”
“Apparently, she wrote some threatening poems in her journal?”
“Oh my God,” I said. I thought back to the incriminating line in my poem:
Those who burn us soon will burn.
That must have been what he was talking about. “Dad, Michelle didn’t write those poems.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I wrote them. The journal is mine. Everyone thinks it’s Michelle’s, but it isn’t. I have to go to school and clear her name.”
“Emma, you just got out of the hospital. The last thing you need is to go to school right now. And if what you say is true, Michelle will be able to clear things up herself.”
“Dad—”
“Emma, I’m not sending you into that hornet’s nest. Dr. Overbrook said you had nothing to do with it. In fact, he was very impressed that you’d rescued all those horses. I’m sure they’ll do a thorough investigation, and if Michelle is innocent, she should have nothing to worry about.”
I wasn’t so sure. My dad didn’t know Overbrook like I did, and he didn’t know his history with Michelle. I sat silently, mulling over my options. I couldn’t let Michelle take the fall for me again. What had my mother said to me that night on the moors?
You cannot save me, but you can save your friends.
Perhaps this was what she’d meant.
It was funny, but I missed my mother. Our night together on the moors had given me a glimpse of who she was in a way that seemed far more real than any of my faded and unreliable memories. I had so many questions about her, so many questions I’d always been too afraid to ask my father. Now here he sat right beside me, a captive audience.
“Dad?” I said tentatively.
“Mmm-hmm?” I could tell he was concentrating on the road.
“Was Mom pregnant when she died?”
My dad veered off the lane slightly, then corrected his steering and cleared his throat. “What?”
“Was Mom pregnant when she died?”
He shook his head, annoyed. “Why would you ask that?”
“I’m just curious.”
My dad’s brow furrowed, and his mouth went rigid. I didn’t want to push him for fear that he’d close off completely. My dad could be like that sometimes. He sighed wearily, rubbing his eyes with his right hand, then focused on the road once more. “Emma, there’s a lot you don’t know about your mom,” he said. I kept quiet, wanting him to go on. We were pulling onto our street already.
He pulled the car into the driveway and shut off the motor. He sat there for a long time, staring at the steering wheel, then turned to me and said, “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“Everything.”
I nodded. My dad got out of the car and placed his hands on the roof. I got out, too, and stared at him from across the car. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.
The sun was shining, but there was a bitter chill in the air. I shivered and drew my coat tightly around me. We walked side by side to the end of the block, then ambled up the dune walk onto the beach and headed down toward the shoreline. We were about ten feet from the water’s edge when my father stopped and put his hands on his hips, staring out at the sea.
“I need you to know that I didn’t tell you because I thought it was best at the time. That doesn’t make it right, but I was trying my hardest to do the right thing.”
“Dad,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Didn’t tell me what?”
He escaped from my grasp and started walking up the beach, toward the curving spit of land. “How much do you remember about your mother?” he asked.
I pressed my lips together. “Not enough.”
“Do you remember her disappearing into her bedroom for days at a time?”
I thought about this. I did remember her going on reading binges when she’d take a dozen books into her room and barely come out for days. I assumed this was where I’d gotten my love of books and stories. I also had a fuzzy recollection of my mother getting headaches, of my father warning me not to bother her when she felt sick. “Did she used to get migraines?” I asked.
He nodded. “Your mother was ... sick, Emma. She ...” I could tell he was trying to choose his words carefully so as not to shock me, but I just wanted him to come out with the truth, no matter how much it hurt. “She had bipolar disorder.”
Bipolar disorder
. I had heard of this before. It conjured up images of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dual personalities, unpredictable mood swings.
“I know I should have told you sooner,” he went on. “And I would have, if that were the end of the story.” He sighed again, and there was such emotion and regret in that sigh that I got a little scared. “When we were first married, it wasn’t so bad. She had episodes every now and then, but most of the time, she was the most amazing woman in the world. She was so full of life. You remember how she was always singing or drawing or playing with you. She had this deep, deep reservoir of energy she could always draw from, and it was intoxicating to be around her. But then the depressions would hit,” he said. “And she wouldn’t want me around, and she wouldn’t want you around. It was almost like she was ashamed of herself. One time she went into her room and slept for nearly a week, only waking up when I made her eat something. She could be very cruel then. Hostile, like it was my fault that she felt that way. I finally convinced her to see a doctor.”
He was walking faster now, and I could barely keep up with him. “And what happened?”
“He diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. The doctor wanted her to go on lithium, but she didn’t want to take any medication. She was afraid it would dull her senses, make her less creative. I kept trying to get her to reconsider. I was scared for her, Emma. Eventually she agreed to try it for me, but she hated the way it made her feel. Just ... flat. She had none of that wonderful spark I’d fallen in love with, none of that boundless energy. We both agreed she should stop taking it. If I had known then, Emma ...”
I’d never seen my father this way. He had always been so stoic, so practical, never one for emotional outpourings, but I could see now that he was fighting back tears.
“Dad, what happened?” I said, stopping him with my hand. He stood still for a moment.
“She was going through a really bad depressive state. She didn’t want to do anything but sit in her room all day. She kept saying she couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t be a wife, a mother. Then she started talking nonsense, and it scared me. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she was beyond reason. Looking back, I should have called the doctor. I’d never seen her that bad. I should have known that time was different.”
“Why, Dad? Why was that time different?” The tension in my chest was ripping me apart.
He took a deep breath and stared out at the ocean again. “One night, she woke up and got out of bed. God, Emma, I heard her get up, but I just didn’t think. I listened to her pad down the stairs. I thought she was getting a glass of water or something. I must have drifted back to sleep because I didn’t hear her slip out of the house.” A feeling of dread descended on me. Somehow, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I think I had always known what my father was about to tell me. “She came here to this beach and she walked right into the ocean with her nightgown on.” He was crying now, wiping fiercely at his face with his sleeve. Seeing him cry made tears spring to my eyes. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I knew it might freeze him, and I needed him to go on. “You have to understand, she wasn’t herself. Laura would never have done that. It was the disease.”
“Are you saying she drowned herself?”
He swallowed something thick and heavy. Grief, I think. “Yes.”
Blood roared in my ears. I didn’t want to hear any of this. I didn’t want to know any of this. “How do you know, Dad? It could have been an accident. She had a bad heart. Maybe she had a heart attack. Or was that a lie, too?”
“Emma—” my father said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I fell silent because his touch was so firm and calming, but mostly because it was my father’s. “She did have a bad heart, I didn’t lie about that. It was a side effect of her disease. But that wasn’t what killed her. She left a note, Emma. It was in her journal, dated on her birthday. That’s why I got so upset ... last year, at your party ... I thought it was the same thing. I thought you were ...” My father slumped down to the sand and threw his hands to his face.
“Oh God, Dad, I’m so sorry.” I knelt down on the sand and flung my arms around him, putting my face against his cheek. It felt frozen. “That’s why you took me to a psychiatrist,” I said. “You were scared I might be sick, too. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I wanted to. I meant to,” he said. “I guess I thought I was protecting you. I didn’t want you to remember your mother like that. I thought I could handle it on my own. I guess I felt guilty, like I was to blame.”
“Dad, you weren’t,” I said. “She was sick, like you said. No one was to blame.”
He inhaled deeply and looked at me, his face streaked with tears. “I should have told you sooner. It wasn’t right of me. But I didn’t want you to hate her.”
“Hate her?” I said. “Dad, why would I hate her?”
“For leaving you, and ...”
And then I remembered the suspicion I’d had in the car, recalled the dream I’d had at Thornfield: wandering through the ruins carrying a child, one I knew I couldn’t let go of. In the dream, the walls had crumbled, and I’d lost my hold, and the baby had tumbled to the ground. Just as Bertha had catapulted to her death. Just as my mother had killed herself on this beach.
“You thought I’d hate her for taking the baby with her,” I said.
He looked at me, astonished. “How did you know?” he asked.
“I didn’t. I just ... had a feeling.”
“I never told anyone. Not even Barbara. It was just too awful. It’s haunted me all these years, the image of her walking out into the waves, knowing she had a life inside her. She’d kept the pregnancy a secret even from me.”
“But why?”
“Maybe she knew all along what she was planning to do. Maybe she felt unfit to be a mother again, given her condition. I don’t know. I only know I was shocked when Grandma Mackie told me. She was the only one who knew the truth.” He sniffled and wiped his eyes. “It was going to be a girl.”
I sat for a moment, silently staring at the ocean that had stolen my mother from my father and me. Now I understood why he worried so much for me. Now I understood why I’d always felt something missing in my life beyond the obvious fact that I was missing a mother. I was also missing a sister. In some other version of the universe, a sister walked beside me on the beach, held my hand, played hopscotch and dug for sand crabs with me.
“Dad, how have you lived all these years with this? How could you not tell me?”
“Like I said, I didn’t want you to hate your mother. For a while, I hated her. I couldn’t forgive her for doing that to us. If she’d lived, I don’t know that I would have ever been able to forgive her.”
I was crying now, too, the tears streaming down my cheeks. “You would have, Dad. She was sick. Like you said, she didn’t know what she was doing. She was sick, and you loved her. Tell me you’ve forgiven her. Tell me you forgive her now.” I didn’t know why it was so important that my father forgive my mother after all these years. It was almost as if in forgiving her, he might finally be able to look at me and not see my mother’s sickness, not feel that bitterness over what she’d done to him. “You did love her, Dad. Didn’t you?”

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