Pushing the Limits (33 page)

Her muscles stiffened when her mind caught up. I held her tighter to me, refusing to let her leave so easily again. Echo pulled her lips away, but was unable to step back from my body. “We can’t, Noah.”

“Why not?” I shook her without meaning to, but if it snapped something into place, I’d shake her again.

“Because everything has changed. Because nothing has changed. You have a family to save. I …” She looked away, shaking her head. “I can’t live here anymore. When I leave town, I can sleep. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I did. I understood all too well, as much as I hated it. This was why we ignored each other. When she walked away the first time, my damn heart ruptured and I swore I’d never let it happen again. Like an idiot, here I was setting off explosives.

Both of my hands wove into her hair again and clutched at the soft curls. No matter how I tightened my grip, the strands kept falling from my fingers, a shower of water from the sky. I rested my forehead against hers. “I want you to be happy.”

“You, too,” she whispered. I let go of her and left the main office. When I first connected with Echo, I’d promised her I would help her find her answers. I was a man of my word and Echo would soon know that.

Echo

Nerves took dominion over my body and I concentrated on not peeing my pants. My bladder shrank to twelve sizes smaller than normal and sweat soaked the armpits of my cotton short-sleeved shirt. I was sure I looked excellent.

A slimy cold boa constrictor wrapped around my heart and squeezed—the scars. I wore short sleeves most of the time now and was getting better at not obsessing about my arms … until someone stared, anyway. Sure, she knew about them, but seeing them could be difficult. I sighed heavily as I parked under the large oak trees. Too late to head home and change clothes now.

She stood by Aires’ grave. I kept my eyes to the ground and counted each step from the car. Somewhere between steps three and five, adrenaline began tickling my bloodstream, making me feel like a balloon floating away. The April Saturday was warm, but my skin felt clammy.

I’d asked to see her, proving I’d officially lost my freaking
mind. Tucking my hair behind my ear, I stopped. Aires’ grave lay between us. My mother on one side and me on the other.

“Echo,” she whispered. Tears glistened in her green eyes and she took a step toward me.

My heart rammed through my rib cage and I took an immediate step back. For a second, I considered running and struggled hard to remain where I stood.

Mom retreated and put her palms in the air in a gesture of peace. “I just want to hug you.”

I considered her request for a brief moment. Hugging my mom should be natural, an automatic reaction. I swallowed, shoving my hands in my back pockets. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

She nodded weakly and glanced at Aires’ tombstone. “I miss him.”

“I do, too.”

All of my memories of my mother didn’t fit the woman before me. I remembered her as a youthful beauty. Now she rivaled my father. Crow’s-feet were embedded around her eyes and lines framed the sides of her mouth. Instead of the naturally wild, curly red hair I remembered, she wore it flat-iron straight.

During her highs, my mother had appeared to walk on air. In her lows, she clung to the ground of the earth. Standing in front of me, she was neither high nor low. She just was.

She seemed almost normal. Like any other aging woman grieving at a cemetery. In this moment my mom wasn’t some out-of-control superwoman or a dangerous foe. She was just a woman, human, almost relatable.

Relatable or not, every instinct inside of me screamed to run. My throat swelled and I fought the compulsion to dry heave. My options were faint or sit. “Do you mind sitting down? Because I need to.”

My mother gave a brief smile and nodded while she sat. “Do you remember when I taught you and Aires to make bracelets and necklaces out of clover?” She picked a few of the small white flowers and knotted them together. “You used to love wearing them as tiaras in your hair.”

“Yeah,” was my only answer. Mom enjoyed the feel of the grass on her bare feet so she never forced Aires or me to wear shoes. The three of us loved being outside. She continued to weave the clover into a single strand as the awkwardness grew.

“Thanks for texting me back. Which letter did you get?” I’d purposely visited art galleries where my mother had once sold her paintings, leaving a letter for her at each one.

“All of them. It was Bridget, though, who convinced me to come.”

A quick spark of pain pricked my stomach. My letter hadn’t been enough to convince her?

“Do you come to visit Aires often?” I asked.

Her hands stilled. “No. I don’t like the thought of my baby in the ground.”

I hadn’t meant to upset her, but Resthaven had seemed safe. If someone spotted us together then we could say we just happened to stop by at the same time. No one could accuse her of breaking the restraining order.

I should just ask her about that night and leave, but watching her, seeing her … I realized I had so many more questions. “Why didn’t you call me back over Christmas?”

Last December, the grief of losing Aires became so unbearable that I called her. I’d left a message, giving her the number to my cell, to the landline. I’d told her what times to call. I never heard back. Then of course, in January, Dad changed the number to the landline, then my cell in February.

“I was having a rough time, Echo. I needed to focus on myself,” she said simply and without apology.

“But I needed you. I told you that, right?” At least I thought I had left it in the message.

“You did.” She continued to link one clover to another. “You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman.”

“Except for the scars.” I bit my tongue the moment the comment slid out. Mom stayed silent and my foot rocked back and forth. I yanked a large blade of grass from the ground and methodically peeled it apart. “I don’t know much about the restraining order. Surely it’s gotta end soon.”

Maybe the hole in my heart wouldn’t feel so huge if I could see Mom every now and then.

“Bridget showed me your artwork,” Mom said, ignoring me again. “You’re extremely talented. What art schools did you apply to?”

I paused, waiting for Mom to lift her head so I could look into her eyes. Was she evading me? A warm breeze blew through the cemetery. The length of Aires’ coffin separated us, yet it felt like the Grand Canyon. “None. Dad didn’t allow me to paint after what happened. Mom, did you read any of the letters I left for you?”

The ones that begged her to meet with me so I could finally understand what happened between us. The ones that said I missed having a mom. The ones that told her how broken I was because in a span of six months, I lost both her and Aires.

“Yes,” she said, so softly I almost missed it. Then she sat up straighter and spoke in her professional gallery curator voice. “Stop trying to change the subject, Echo. We’re talking about your future. Your father never understood us and our need to
create art. I’m sure he jumped at the opportunity to cleanse you of anything that had to do with me.

“Good for you for sticking it to him and continuing to paint. Though I wish you would have stood up for yourself more and applied to a decent school. I guess you could try for spring admission. I have significant pull in the art community. I wouldn’t mind writing you a recommendation.”

Writing me a recommendation? My mind became a blank canvas as I tried to follow her train of thought. I’d asked about the restraining order out loud, right? “I don’t want to go to art school.”

My mother’s face reddened and an undercurrent of irritation leaked into her movements and words. “Echo, you aren’t business school material. You never have been. Don’t let your father bully you into a life you don’t want.”

I’d forgotten how much I hated the constant tug-of-war. Ironically, I spent my entire life trying to make them both happy—my mother with art, my father with knowledge—yet in the end, they both threw me away. “I take business classes at school and I’ve aced every single course.”

She shrugged. “I cook, but that doesn’t make me a chef.”

“What?”

Mom looked me square in the eye. “It means you’re just like me.”

No, I’m not
, cried a small voice inside my head. “I paint,” I said aloud as if to prove that was our only link.

“You’re an artist. Just like me. Your father never understood me, so I can’t imagine he understands you.”

No, Dad didn’t understand me.

“Let me guess,” she continued. “He’s on you all the time. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not good enough. Or not to his standards
and he just keeps on you until you feel like you’re going to explode.”

“Yes,” I whispered and felt my head sway to the right. I didn’t remember this about her. Yeah, she’d taken the occasional verbal punch at my father and she’d always wanted me to choose the path she envisioned for my life over Dad’s, but this felt different. This felt personal.

“I can’t say I’m surprised. He was a failure as a husband, and he completed his failure by being a terrible father.”

“Daddy’s not that bad,” I mumbled, feeling suddenly protective of him and wary of the woman sitting across from me. Never did I think this meeting would be easy, but neither did I imagine it would be so strange. “What happened between us that night?”

She dropped the clover strand and once again avoided my question. “I went away for a while. At first not voluntarily, but then once I understood what happened, what I did … I, um … I stayed. The doctors and staff were very nice, nonjudgmental. I’ve been faithfully on my medication ever since.”

A low, dull throb pulsed near my temples. Goody for stinking her. She took her meds and all was right with the world. “I didn’t ask that. Tell me what happened to me.”

My mother rubbed a hand to her forehead. “Your father always checked on me before he let you visit. I depended upon that. Owen was supposed to take care of me, you and Aires and he messed it up for all of us.”

What the hell? “How did he mess it up for Aires?”

Her eyes narrowed. “He allowed Aires to join the military.”

“But that’s what Aires wanted to do with his life. You know it was his dream.”

“That wasn’t your brother’s dream. It was something that
witch your father married planted in his mind. She was the one that filled Aires’ head with stories about her father and brothers and their careers. She didn’t care if he died. She didn’t care
what
happened to him.

“I told Aires not to go. I told him how much his decision would hurt me. I told him …” She paused. “I told him I’d never speak to him again if he went to Afghanistan.” Her voice broke and all of a sudden I wanted to leave, yet I couldn’t move.

A weird sort of edgy calmness took over my brain. “Those were your last words to Aires?”

“It’s your father’s fault,” she said flatly. “He brought her into our lives and now my son is dead.”

This time,
I
spoke as if she hadn’t said anything. “Not ‘I love you.’ Not ‘I’ll see you when you get home.’ You told him you’d never speak to him again?”

“That witch broke up my home. She stole your father.”

“This isn’t about Ashley or Dad or even Aires. This is about you and me. What the hell did you do to me?”

Wind chimes from a neighboring grave site tinkled in the breeze. My mother and I shared the same eye shape and color. Those dull and lifeless eyes stared at me. I hoped mine looked happier.

“Does he blame me for that night?” she asked. “Did your father even bother telling you how he just dropped you off? How he didn’t answer the phone when you called for help?”

“Mom.” I paused, trying to find the right words to explain. “I just want you to tell me what happened between us.”

“He didn’t tell you, did he? Of course he didn’t. He’s shoving the blame onto me. You don’t understand. I lost Aires and I couldn’t cope. I thought if I could paint, I would feel better.” She tore handfuls of grass from the ground.

“Dad’s not shoving anything onto you. He’s accepted responsibility for his part, but I don’t remember what happened with us. I fell into your stained glass and then you lay next to me while I bled.” My voice rose higher as I continued to speak. “I don’t understand. Did we fight? Did I fall? Did you push me and why didn’t you call for help and why were you telling me bedtime stories when I was bleeding?”

She tore at the grass again. “This is not my fault. He should have known better. But that’s your father for you. He never tried to understand. He wanted a cookie-cutter wife and divorced me the moment he found one.”

“Mom, you came off your meds. Dad had nothing to do with that. Tell me what happened.”

“No.” She lifted her chin and jutted it out in the stubborn style I remembered so well.

I flinched. “No?”

“No. If you don’t remember, I’m not telling you. I heard he’s got some overpriced, fancy Harvard therapist helping you.” A bitter smile curved her lips. “Did your father find something else he couldn’t fix with money and control?”

For a fleeting moment, the cemetery resembled a chessboard and my mother moved her queen. If Aires and I were pawns in our parents’ game, had she noticed that I quit playing?

“Heard?” I repeated as her answer struck me. “There’s a restraining order. How did you hear anything?”

Mom blinked several times and the color seeped from her cheeks. “I wanted to know how you were doing, so I contacted your father.”

A sickening feeling slid down my throat. “When?”

She lowered her head. “February.”

“Mom … why didn’t you call me? I gave you my numbers.” I
paused, unable to keep up with the emotions and questions flying in my head.
February
. The word vibrated through me. That was the month my father took away my cell and my car without telling me why. He’d lied to me so he could conceal me from her. “I wanted to talk to you. I begged you back in December to call me. Why would you call Dad? I mean, you could have gone to jail. There is a restraining order!”

“No, there isn’t,” she said simply. “The order was rescinded thirty days after you turned eighteen.”