Page 105 of Promise Me Sunshine

“I’m okay, Mom. I’m okay.”

“A few texts here and there. A voice message or two.Months,Helen. Months!”

No one but Mom calls me by my full name. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to the ground.

“You haven’t been going home,” she accuses. “I know because I did a goddamnstakeout.”

“I’ve been working uptown,” I offer. But from the way her eyes are burning I can tell that I’m going to have to give up a lot more than that. “I haven’t been able…to…”

She reads the months of misery in my expression and her own softens accordingly. “I was about half a week away from hiring a private investigator.”

“I really am okay,” I assert again. “I’m…” Alive. Surviving. Learning to wake up in the mornings like the happy people do.

These are all accurate descriptions, but it’s differentwords that bubble up inside me. I can’t make myself walk through the gate to get to Lou’s grave, but everything I came to tell her is scratching to get out.

“I’m…” I try again and the words just tumble. “I think I might be falling in love with someone, Mom.With someone who hassaved methese last few months.” I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t know where I’dbewithout him. And I mean that literally. He’s kept me earthbound, Mom. The only reason I’m standing here right now is him. And I’m feeling so much and ithurts—” I drop back into the three-point stance. “It hurts and no one ever tells you that when you want someone this hard, you riskeverythingyou built with them. And I came here to tell Lou, because I’ve never felt like this before and I had to tell her. But I couldn’t even go in.”

Mom tugs me up to a stand by the scruff of my jacket and takes me by the shoulders again. She’s got a look like she’s about to say something profound and illuminating. Then her face scrunches up like a paper ball. “What?”

I can’t help it. I laugh. “It’s really good to see you, Mom.”

“Don’t change the subject. Did you just tell me you’re in love with someone? Who is this person?”

I scrub my hands over my face again. “His name is Miles. He’s…new.”

“Miles…I heard something about him from Marzia.”

“Ah, God. Don’t get me started on that. Whatever she told you is patently false.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “He treats you well?”

“Mom, he walked into hell and dragged me back out.”

Her face cracks into alarm. The months since I’ve seen her in person splat between us. “Baby, how bad was it?”

“I wasn’t okay for a while. But I am now.” I try for a reassuring tone, but the alarm has not receded from her face.

“Well, how can I believe you? You were lying to me formonths!” She scrambles her phone out of her pocket and pulls up our text thread. I wince when I see all the lying, cheating exclamation points I’ve been sending her. The phone goes black and she shoves it away. “Not that I bought any of it.”

There are more tears in her eyes, and these ones are angry.

“You want to talk about hell, Helen?” She points up the hill toward Lou. “I feel like I’m downtwodaughters.”

Her words pierce me, but they’re also overdramatic and said with a flair for theater. Just enough to keep me from spinning off into her world. “Mom.”

“Texts arenot enough.” She steps into my space. “One call is not enough. You don’t want to live in your apartment? That’s fine. Come home and live with me and Dad.”

I hold my ground. “I’m not moving home.”

Her eyes narrow. She wants me where she can keep an eye on me. “Fine. Then I want a weekly dinner. A rain-or-shine dinner. And if you don’t come to Bay Ridge, then I’m coming uptown. Wherever you are. Once a week.”

I roll my eyes like a teenager and unlock a flood of lovely chemicals. How wonderful to be casually annoyed at my mother. How wonderful for my mother to boss me around and threaten me with her overbearing presence. How wonderful to word-vomit my thoughts and fears to her in one big gob and have her say the wrong things.

“Okay.” I agree to her terms. “Once a week.”

And then I’m back in her arms, inside her coat. She trembles as we grip each other and I realize something awful. That at some point I’m going to have to deal with the fallout of my complete disappearance from my former life.

It occurs to me for the first time that people have been…missing me.

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