Page 87 of Promise Me Forever

“No, that can’t be right,” she muttered, her veined hands fluttering in the air. “I wouldn’t do that. I love Amber too. Why are you making things up about me, Drake? Why are you trying to make me feel bad, mi hijo? Why do you want to hurt me?”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m telling you what happened. Just because you’re sick…” I stopped talking then, because her being sick changed everything, and it made her say shit she didn’t mean. But the damage was already done.

She fell back onto her pillow then, tiny and gray, an alien who had taken over my mother’s mind and body. “Go away, Drake,” she said. “Leave me in peace.”

So I left. I turned around and took Amber with me.

“She doesn’t mean it, Amber,” I said, comforting her as she wept before me. “It’s the pain talking. Or the drugs, or?—”

“Or maybe she does mean it. Maybe it’s what she thought all along, and the drugs have taken away her inhibitions and let her actually say it. Is it true, Drake? Do you all hate me? And do you think Elijah will resent me one day? I didn’t know when we got married, I swear I didn’t!”

I held her in my arms and patted her back awkwardly. I was only twenty-three, not mature enough to really know what to do. I knew my mom didn’t mean those cruel things, that it wasn’t the real her, but I was still angry.

“Nobody hates you. And I meant what I said. Elijah loves you, you know that, right?” She nodded, but there was something in her eyes that told me she wasn’t convinced. My mom had planted a seed of doubt in her mind, but I had no idea how much it would continue to grow.

Present-day Amber is older and colder, and I truly believe something inside her snapped that night. Those harsh words from a drug-addled dying woman broke something precious,and my sister-in-law has never quite been the same since. That’s when she started retreating from us, avoiding family brunches, not returning calls. It was like she started to freeze us out before we got the chance to do it to her, and that caused a huge amount of friction between her and Elijah.

A few days later, Mom was gone. I saw her after that night, of course, but she was never totally lucid again. A combination of the drugs and the illness taking its terrible course, shutting down her organs and closing down her life. She was like an animal at the end, dominated by pain and fury, not even recognizing us anymore. I suppose that process had already started when she was so brutal to Amber, but we didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know how close we were to losing her forever, and to my own dying day, I will regret the fact that I never got to make it up to her. That I never got to talk to my real mom again. How the very last words we shared were ones of anger and reprimand. My mom—my wonderful, kind, giving mother—died believing that I was trying to hurt her.

Amelia doesn’t know it yet, but in some ways, she’s lucky. Her mom died peacefully, with her daughter at her side and nothing but love between them.

Amber puts her hand over mine on the table. “You’ll be okay, Drake.”

“You think? I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever get over it, you know? I’ve lived with it for all these years, that guilt. I wonder if maybe it’s just part of me now.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” She sips her wine. “You’re in love. That changes everything.”

“Does it, Amber? Is being in love enough? You and Elijah were in love.”

“True,” she says, letting out a bitter laugh. “And look at us now. Happily in hate.”

“He doesn’t hate you, and I’m sure you don’t hate him. Why don’t you tell him? Tell him about that night. At least let him get a glimpse of why things started to change between you. Maybe it’s not too late to change them back.”

“Ah, darling. What a lovely thought. If only we had a time machine.”

If I had a time machine, the first thing I’d do is go back to this morning and not let Amelia out of my sight.

Chapter

Forty-Three

AMELIA

Seeing my mother’s casket lowered into her grave is one of the most surreal moments of my life. How can someone that important, that precious, be contained in a wooden box? How can someone so full of life so suddenly be gone? How can the final page of the story of her life have been turned? I stare at the flower-draped pine, struggling to believe that she is actually inside it.

It didn’t feel real until today. But seeing this, seeing her disappear into the ground, is starting to make it so, and that reality is brutal. It’s like my emotional tendons and ligaments are being stretched and torn, and my mind might never recover. I will never be the same shape again.

The service was beautiful in its own way. So many people came to say goodbye to her. People she used to work with in her many jobs, friends from the neighborhood, the men and women who lived near her. Nurse Jenny. My mom touched a lot of lives, and it was moving to see them all there, paying tribute.

I cried as I delivered the eulogy, my hands trembling on the folded notes that I could barely see. I spoke of her beautiful spirit, her generosity, her wicked sense of humor. Of her love of the finer things in life, like pistachio cannoli and Harrison Ford.The gathered mourners listened to me talk about how much she meant to me and how she made me feel like the world was at my feet, mine for the taking. I spoke of everything and nothing, and even if I’d spoken for a month straight, I couldn’t possibly have said enough.

Drake’s eyes were on mine throughout, and I took comfort in that. My friends were all there, and Chad came with his parents too. Whatever our present, our past tied us all together.

Now, standing at the graveside in the drizzling rain as Drake shields me with a black umbrella, I wonder how I will move on from this. I wonder how people survive this pain, how they don’t simply throw themselves on top of the casket as it slides into the earth, begging to stay with those they love.

I am not the first person to lose a parent, I know. But it is the first time it has happened to me, and I don’t know what to do with all this pain. It’s filling me, suffocating me, choking me. I know Drake is worried, but I don’t seem able to tell him to stop. Last night, he cooked me a dinner that I couldn’t eat and held me in his arms while neither of us slept. We were physically together, but emotionally, I felt a distance between us that added to my sadness.

He loves me, I know he does, but I’m still concerned that this is all too much for him. That his own grief is lurking directly beneath the surface, waiting to be triggered by my own. There isn’t enough room in the world for all our suffering, and I feel like it’s starting to define us.

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