Page 51 of Bay of Plenty

“If only I’d opened it,” Mum said. “They might have investigated, found this man, and arrested him. It was such a small thing to do.”

I struggled to hold back my frustration. She’d admitted it herself, which was brave.

Bevan and Kui rushed to Mum’s side to comfort her. “You didn’t know,” Kui said to her.

“I can see why you didn’t,” Bevan said, but faintly.

“Let’s meet tomorrow,” Mum said. “Right now, I need to talk to Isla.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

After they left,I felt so exhausted I could have gone straight to sleep—but we needed to have this talk, even though I was dreading it. We grabbed Fred and crossed the road to the beach in a nervous silence. It was past eight o’clock, and we hadn’t had dinner, but I wasn’t hungry. The diary was safe in my new backpack from CeeCee’s boutique, and we paced along the shore, lit by the sea and moon.

Mum touched my arm.

“I want to say so many things, but I know they’ll come out jumbled.” She took a deep breath. “I wish I could be brave like you, Isla, but I’m not. We were always proud of you, but now I see we didn’t show it. I’ve thought about why we didn’t. We didn’t know how, and… well, we didn’t understand you. Kui told me yesterday that you said you were bullied at school. She heard mutterings at the time, and she feels ghastly that she didn’t look into it. I feel dreadful about it too.”

“I suppose I never told you.” I slumped with the weight of all the wrong that hovered over me. “So how could you have known?”

“If I’d kept you close, I would’ve seen the signs.” Shestopped me for a minute. “I want to know. Tell me what happened.”

As we paced, something creaked inside me, an iron door to a grisly secret room. I loosened the clutch of hated memories I’d compacted. Out they came—the savage taunts, all day, every day for one year. After Snow left school, less often, but I was always vigilant. I talked about how I tried to avoid the other kids by taking the caretaker’s back path and getting to class late or early. How I clutched the sides of the halls, head bowed, desperate to seem smaller. How I’d felt so ashamed and alone.

By this time, we’d reached the park, and it was almost complete darkness. But the lights around the swings and climbing structure allowed me to see Mum. The hollowed-out look on her face said that what I’d endured was as bad as it felt.

“Do you resent me and Dad for not knowing or intervening?”

“I did and, honestly, I still do.” My voice sounded rough and dragging. I didn’t want it to be true any longer. “It stopped us from getting closer.”

She sighed, and there was such deep sorrow in that sigh.

“I can’t ever forgive myself for not doing something about this.” She pressed a hand over her face. “For a start, I never recognized that you were so devastated by Janey’s death. It seems so obvious now that you would be, since you were such good friends at primary school. But I suppose I thought the friendship had run its course by high school. I didn’t realize Janey had peeled off into another group, and you were left behind.”

I started to protest that Janey hadn’t left me behind, but of course she had. I was in limbo that year until Bevan and I became friends.

Mum stared at the few stars between the clouds.

“You spent a lot of time reading in your room. I suppose I fooled myself that you were an introverted, bookish sort of person. Sometimes parenting is about accepting the child and not wanting or wishing they were someone else.”

“You thought I was a weird kid?” I scrubbed at my eye.

“No, no. We were astounded by you. We were in awe of how much you read and wrote and created, and how much you thirsted for adventure. We loved living in a small town, having our routine, knowing most days would be the same as the last. I suppose we’re scaredy-cats, not wanting to venture out.”

She made it sound like her life wasn’t complicated, but coming back, I’d seen the challenges. I had judged her in the way I’d judged and defined everyone, because I thought it was part of my job. I thought of Mum as passive. But not taking action over everything that came her way didn’t make her a weak person. It took a strong person to stay in one town and deal with the same people and maintain friendships for decades.

“You have the tolerance I lack,” I said to Mum. “You make a commitment to people and stick with them through thick and thin.” I raised my eyebrows and smiled. “In Rosemary’s case, through annoying chatter and a smorgasbord of careers.”

A small laugh escaped her. She slapped a hand over her mouth, maybe feeling disloyal.

Leaning down, I picked up a small gray stone that had been smoothed by the sea and warmed by the sun. It was comforting in my palm, and I moved to put it in my pocket.

But I already carried a stone around with me. This stone was pocked and sharp, and it hurt the palm of my hand, a constant reminder of my resentment and pain. I’d put so much time into trying to hone it. I’d suffered, and I deserved to have some memento of that.

But had that stone shaped me, instead of the other way around? Turning my heart into a fortress, forcing me to judge other people before they judged me?

It was time to open my fist and let go.

*

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