Page 67 of Saltwater Memories
She nodded dumbly, watching as he walked off toward the greenhouse.
Amanda could’ve kicked herself. What was the matter with her? Why had she come to this stupid field? Of all the places that Will could find her having an emotional breakdown, it had to be here.
She kept telling herself to pull it together and to stop thinking about her mom, but the more she told herself not to do it, the more she felt like she was going to go over the edge. It felt like she was balancing a stack of plates in each hand, and the earth was quaking beneath her feet.
Will returned a few minutes later with a blanket and a thermos. “You look cold. I was planning to spend the day at the estate, so I’ve got all of this coffee. Would you like some?”
“Sure,” was all she managed to say.
He spread the blanket out on the ground and she took a seat. It was much more comfortable than before. She sat in silence as he poured coffee into the lid of the thermos and handed it to her.
“Thanks.”
After a moment, he asked, “I know you said your mom passed away…was it recently?”
Amanda shook her head. “No. It’s been…four years.”
She took a sip of the coffee, trying to maintain her composure, but it was no use. The harder she tried and the nicer he was, the more impossible it became. Tears slid down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, I’m just a mess today, I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“It’s okay,” he said. After a moment, he continued. “What was she like? Your mom.”
Amanda took a deep breath and smiled. “She was funny, in a goofy kind of way. She liked to sing and dance, she liked being outside, and always read to us when we were kids. And she’d go fishing with my dad, even though she hated it.” Amanda laughed. Her momreallyhated it, and her dad would always scold her for talking too much and scaring away all of the fish.
Will kept looking at her, and she kept talking. It was pouring out – the Friday nights at the deli shop after football games. The time that Amanda cut her own hair, and it looked like a disaster, and then her mom tried to fix it and only made it worse. The grounding she got after being caught sneaking out of her window. The camping trips they used to take to Posey Island. The trips to the mainland with her parents when she was little, and they’d go to the mall and she threw coins into the fountain.
Then she told him about the rest of it. The cancer. The way that her dad shut down after her mom’s death. How Amanda ran away – clear over to London, and how she stayed away as long as she could. How mean she was to Margie. The guilt. The regrets. The reality that there was no chance for her to apologize, or to have one more good day together, even if it was gardening. The fact that all of her memories from now on were all that she would have.
Will listened to all of it, quietly filling her coffee whenever it got low.
“So – yeah. That’s just a little bit about me,” Amanda said with a laugh.
Will smiled. “How long have you been holding that in?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” She shrugged. “Just a few years.”
He offered her a pained smile.
She continued. “I’m desperate to hang onto these memories of her, even the bad ones. Not that they’re bad – they were just everyday things. But I feel them all slipping away. I just can’t…I can’t live without them.”
Will was quiet for a moment. He pulled a sprig from a nearby lavender plant and picked the dried leaves off, one by one. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about the ‘bad’ memories. Your relationship with your mom evolved over the years – and it sounds like at the end, things were really good.”
Amanda shrugged. “They were. But I was so nasty as a teenager. Such a brat. It’s kind of all blurring together now.”
“I’m sure your mom didn’t see it that way. Your relationship with her is continuing to evolve. You’re not in that acute grief phase anymore. In some ways it’s bad, because the memories get further away.”
“Yeah.” Amanda nodded. Had she expressed herself better this time, or had Rupert just been dense when she tried to tell him?
“And in other ways, you’re able to see things with less pain. You were able to stop being mean to your dad’s new wife, so that’s pretty good.”
She sputtered out a laugh. “That’s true.”
“With all of the stories that you told me – it sounds like you remember what your mom taught you. Even if you didn’t like all of the lessons, like with the gardening. You grew up because of the gardening. And you’re not going to lose that, or lose her. How could you?”
Her eyes filled with tears again, and she kept her head down. He was right, of course. “I just wish things could be different.”
“Yeah. I know.”
