Page 91 of Slots & Sticks
My throat burns. “She wanted me,” I whisper.
Dad’s eyes glisten. “More than anything.”
A car horn beeps out front, snapping the moment like a brittle twig. The dogs erupt in barks, tails thumping against the walls. I kneel to soothe them, whispering nonsense just to have something to do with my hands.
But my mind won’t stop spinning. If Mom loved me, really loved me, then maybe all those years weren’t about rejection. Maybe they were about fear. Pressure. Being too much womanand not enough mother. Maybe I’ve been carrying a grudge against a ghost that didn’t deserve it.
And then I think of Camden—of the look on his face when I told him I couldn’t love him right because I’m terrified of being an inadequate mother. Maybe I just became her. Maybe I pushed him away for the same reason she pushed me.
The horn blares again.
I blink, wipe my cheeks, and force a smile for Dad. “Showtime,” I say.
My voice is steady. My hands shake.
Inside, the dress that once carried a miracle now carries a secret: that I might finally understand my mother—just in time to ruin everything she ever wanted for me.
* * *
When Dante said, “the Mona Lisa,” I pictured the ballroom from the memorial. I’m wrong. The staff usher us to the elevators and up to a level I’ve never seen. An usher opens a set of double doors and the sound swallows me whole: cables humming, mic checks, a chorus of footsteps, the hush of two thousand throats about to open.
Renee waits with Cash and Kingsley beside a scooter someone ferried over from the arena. Kingsley folds me into a hug that smells like cardamom and hairspray. “Baby girl, look at you. I remember that dress,” she whispers against my hair. “If you need anything, I’m done touring. Say the word.”
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it.
Camden should be here. The thought lands like a heel on my ribs, careful and crushing at once. I miss the weight of his hand, the way my pulse quiets when it finds his.
I chose distance.
Now I have to sit in it.
Dad motors toward the house seats on his scooter—front row, aisle, perfect sightline. Once he gets to the show floor, he parks it and walks the rest of the way. I’m so proud of how far he’s come in such a short time. The auditorium is bigger than I imagined: velvet everywhere, gold leaf like sunlight frozen mid-glitter. Over the stage hangs a halo of LED mothership screens—three massive rectangles, framed in light. I glance up and lose all train of thought.
My mother—the Delilah the world knew—flickers to life above us in a loop: laughing between takes, a makeup artist blotting her lipstick, a home video of her in a tank top and cutoff shorts, barefoot on our back patio, cymbal-bright as she claps a rhythm and sings nonsense into my baby face. I feel my knees try to fold. Dad’s hand finds mine and anchors me.
“There are twenty-five hundred seats,” Kingsley says, leaning in. “All sold out.”
Twenty-five hundred people who loved a woman I spent years resenting. Twenty-five hundred mirrors reflecting the version of her I refused to see.
By the time the house lights drop, every seat is full. A single spot cuts a path and Kingsley walks into it, all ease and electricity. “Good evening, Vegas,” she purrs, shading her eyes. “You ready to keep Delilah loud for one more night?”
The room detonates in cheers. My throat already aches.
For the next two hours, surprise guests spin through like planets in a fast orbit. A country headliner drags a fiddle break through “Rattlesnake Lace” until the crowd is on its feet. A pop diva in rhinestones turns Mom’s summer anthem into a gospel call-and-response that shakes the balcony. Mom’s old percussionist—gray now, smiling through tears—thunders out the bridge to “Hurricane,” and the screens split: stage feed on one side, grainy home camcorder on the other, my motherbanging on pots with wooden spoons in our kitchen while toddler-me giggles so hard I can’t stand.
For the first time since I learned to roll my eyes, I let myself listen like a stranger. In the music, my mother is not a hurricane; she’s a weather system with edges and eddies: flirty, wicked, gut-kind, sharp as a citrus peel. The crowd knows every word, but I’m hearing secrets I missed when I was busy walling her out.
I’m wrung out by the time Kingsley comes back with a guitar and a stack of paper. Two stagehands ghost in to set a stool and stand. She thanks them, sits, and the room quiets.
“Last one,” she says, voice thin with feeling. “New to y’all, old to me.” She looks up, finds me with impossible accuracy, and smiles. “It comes with a note.”
My spine goes rigid.
“Dear Dorothy,” she reads, and my name lands like a pebble tossed into an old well—ringing, ringing, ringing. “I know you prefer Dot, but if you’re reading this on the day you change your name, let me have the old one once more: Dorothy Shaw. When I held you in the hospital, I swore I saw your whole life mapped in your mouth and fingers. I thought I knew exactly who you’d be.” She peeks over the paper. “Turns out I had no idea.”
The audience laughs; my lungs forget how.
“Dot, my baby, my girl, you were stubborn in the cradle and magnificent by ten. I have loved every version: the quiet watcher, the horse-t-shirt phase, the teenage storm cloud, the woman who reads everything and still stops to pet every dog. And now—if you’ll ever agree to it—the bride.” The wordbridebruises my ribs from the inside. Dad tightens his grip on my hand, and I tuck into his shoulder, the way I did when scary scenes came on TV.
