Late to the Party ✔

20. Let me let you go

The night teemed with twirling stars. She saw them still, blazing hot red and fiery yellow, when she shut her eyes, drowning in a fitful slumber. She wasn't used to beer anymore; it sloshed around her stomach, tilting the world outside the dusty windshield. It seemed fitting, the sky turning on its axis. God had let a sixteen-year-old girl die in a dang car accident for no reason — the stars should've come crashing down to earth, crying for the loss.

She didn't drink anymore. The Bible forbid it, she would tell everyone. But this, this was the real reason why: her mother's hand on the wheel, the other turning up the volume of the radio, the gritty tunes of a familiar song about busted flats and dirty red bandanas tugging at her walled-off memories. Had it happened, then, a temporary slip-up, forgotten by the next morning's headache?

"Jeanie loves Janis."

Had she said it, broken the seal after so many years of biting her tongue until it bled? And had her mother raised her eyebrows and said, "Jeanie Lucas?" as if there would ever be another Jeanie, "Why you talking about Jeanie Lucas all of a sudden?"

The following day, she'd groped about for a trash can and puked until her throat burned and her eyes watered and her stomach had none to give, and Jeanie was back where she belonged, locked up and half-forgotten.

The soft blue of her daughter's eyes. The fuchsia of her mother's smirking mouth. The fleshy pink of her rose garden, enveloped in the lush greens of vines and stalks and leaves, hues ever-changing when stroked by the rays of the sun or light dapples of rain. The dark brown of Jeanie's curls brushing her freckled shoulders.

Watching the car disappear from view, she expected the brightness to dim, a flame deprived of oxygen, only fed by the occasional gust of wind. Back to normal. Time to box up that part of her, wrap it in old newspapers, and stuff it away deep down in her sock drawer.

"I'm sorry, Mary," Mandy said, like she really meant it.

Last time, she had wished above anything for someone, anyone, to acknowledge her bleeding heart. Her mother had briefly supported her and taken her out on a girl's night, but how could she have helped when she didn't even know what Jeanie had been to her? Before long, her siblings had commandeered her parents' attention again, and Mary'd started seeking solace in college bars.

Now, she was seen, and she felt like her skin was spun from glass, and all she longed to do was hide in a closet.

"Nothing to do about it," she said, with a smile she couldn't develop. "It's God's will."

The words tasted bitter, false, like they warned her to spit out the lie and rinse her mouth. She turned around, willing her hands to stop shaking, desperate to hole herself up in the garage — maybe there, she could hold onto Jeanie a little longer.

"I knew it."

The feelings hadn't left yet: Missy's tone slid ice-cold down her spine, the pierced rage of her squinting eyes knocked the wind out of her. That young girl, standing there with her arms wrapped around her shivering body, a long tear streak wetting her cheek, like a cruel echo of the past.

"Everything's just going back to the way it was now, won't it?" she asked, eyes begging for the right answer, her voice breaking with Mary's heart. She sniffled and stared at her mother, waiting.

"Why don't we go inside?" Mary said, because it was easier to wield her parental shield than to open herself to the pain.

Missy didn't move, her face contorting, her shoulders convulsing in a full-body sob. "Why couldn't we just go with her?"

Mary couldn't breathe. She never much liked the mirrors motherhood held up to her. How dare it steal her misery and reflect it upon the kid she'd created?