Page 86 of Chasing Your Ghost

Riley stared at her egg donor, wondering if she even realized how hurtful her words were.

“You know, the kids at school used to bully me because they’d seen me talking to people that weren’t there. They called me a freak,” she told the woman who was meant to love her even if no one else could.

Riley’s father had always loved her unconditionally, but Edith’s judgment had always seemed to outweigh his acceptance. After all, Riley’s dad had the same ability she did. So, how much could his unconditional love really mean in the face of her mother’s fear?

“My dad would tell me that kids can be cruel and that they didn’t know what they were talking about,” she continued. “And for a while, I believed him. But then I found out the truth about why you’d left. I would think that if my own mother was afraid of me, maybe the kids were right. Maybe I was a freak. Maybe everything they were saying was true.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Edith insisted, a disgusting mix of sympathy and pity in her ice-blue eyes. “I just meant that it shouldn’t be on your shoulders to help people like him. You just graduated high school, Riley. You shouldn’t have to deal with death at this age, and I wish with everything in me that you hadn't had to deal with it when you were younger.”

“Forget it,” Riley snapped. “I should have known this was how you’d react.”

“Wait,” Edith said, grabbing her wrist before Riley could leave. “Can you do something for me? Just think about having your own children one day. Would you want your baby girl to be able to see and hear the kind of things that you were exposed to as a child?”

Riley shook herself out of the woman’s grip but didn’t move to leave the room. Something about what Edith was saying kept her from making her escape.

“Would you be okay knowing that someone who has been through something terrifyingly traumatic and didn’t survive it would approach her for help?” the woman asked. “Would you be okay with knowing that someone potentially dangerous and sick could go up to her when she’s at school, and nobody would be able to keep that person away from her because they can’t even see him?”

Riley wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that she had no idea what she was talking about. But that would be a lie. There had been times she’d been petrified when certain ghosts had approached her when her dad wasn’t around, and it had been all the more scary because she’d known nobody would be able to help her. The person she’d been terrified of was invisible to everyone else, and no one could protect her from them.

“What you can do is incredible when it allows you to help the people who need and want it, but what about the other times?” Edith asked. “Your father was only ever honest with me once he’d revealed what he could do, but with that honesty came fear. He would tell me about the angry and bitter ghosts he interacted with, and all I could think of when he was talking was that these were the same people you would be exposed to.”

“Not all ghosts are like that,” Riley argued.

Edith nodded. “I know, and yes, there were instances that made him feel good because he’d helped someone find peace. But there were also instances that had him coming home and drowning his sorrow in whiskey.”

Riley knew all about that. She’d watched her dad do the same countless times, and she’d had her own cases that left her wishing she didn’t have her abilities. Still, the way Edith was speaking about her dad didn’t sit right with her.

“You make him sound like a neglectful alcoholic, but he was the one who stayed. He was the best dad in the world, and it wasn’t his fault that you were scared of your child.”

“I was never afraid of you,” Edith explained, her voice breaking as tears ran down her cheeks, leaving mascara stains in their wake. “I was only ever afraid of how your ability would affect you because I knew how badly it affected your father. He was a strong and experienced grown man, who’d been dealing with it his entire life, but you were just an innocent child.”

Riley didn’t want to admit that what Edith was saying made sense. She didn’t want to admit that Edith’s reaction to her gift had some merit. She didn’t want to admit that Edith’s reasons for taking her to that priest were a lot more complicated and better justified than she’d always believed. So, Riley gritted her teeth together and glared at the woman.

“Is that why you left?” she asked. “You were so worried about me that you thought leaving was the only option?” She scoffed. “Yeah, that makes perfect sense.”

“I was sick,” Edith corrected her. “I never would have left otherwise. I regret leaving, but I had to get help. I was barely sleeping. I was having panic attacks. I wasn’t able to take care of myself, let alone you.”

Riley knew a lot about postpartum depression—she’d read up about it after she’d found out the truth—so she knew that Edith had needed help. But she also knew that moving to Virginia for over a month wasn’t the required treatment. Yes, she’d done it to be with her parents, but it had meant moving far away from Riley. From her daughter.

“I hate myself for it, but I couldn’t handle being around you and your father, constantly wondering if you two were distracted because there was a ghost in the room with us. Always questioning if you were staring over my shoulder because you saw someone I couldn’t. It was making me worse, and when I finally saw a therapist, she recommended that I stay in a facility for at least a week.”

“You were gone for more than a month,” Riley reminded her.

“And during that month, I was barely functioning,” Edith admitted. “I was a complete mess, but I got through it because I knew you were waiting for me. You were the only thing that kept me going.”

“Then why didn’t you come back?” she asked in a shout, not caring if Hugh and Olivia could hear her.

“I did,” Edith choked out. “I came back as soon as I was stable, but your dad had already decided that I didn’t deserve to be in your lives anymore. He decided that I needed to prove that I could handle it, and only once he was sure would he allow me to have unsupervised visits with you.”

She was openly sobbing now, her words stained and warbled by tears, and Riley could only listen as years of hurt spilled from the woman’s lips in the most brutally honest string of sentences that Edith had ever said to her.

“He decided that I wasn’t fit to be your mom anymore,” she whispered, and the brokenness that Riley saw in her eyes and heard in her words was enough to have her own heart cracking down the middle. “I just wanted to see you again, to hold you, but he didn’t think I was strong enough to handle what came with being your mom.”

Riley swallowed the painful lump in her throat. There were so many awful things she’d wanted to say to her mother over the years, but she couldn’t say any of them then. Maybe it made her weak, or maybe it just made her human, but she couldn’t say anything cruel after everything Edith had just told her.

For the first time, Riley felt guilty for throwing away all the letters and cards Edith had sent her over the years, unopened and unread. For the first time, she thought she understood why Edith had left, and more than that, she thought she might actually be able to forgive the woman for it.

“I loved you so much, Riley,” Edith said, her shoulders rising as she drew in a shaky breath. “I still do.”

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