That was true. Ladasha was my sister. If anything showed that, it was how harsh Mom was towards her—the same way Mom was harsh towards me. After Mom welcomed her as part of our family, she began to scold her about how dangerous stripping was and said Ladasha should have thought more of herself to stoop to that level. She turned to me, pointing her finger, and sassed me on the same topic. She informed Ladasha that she would, indeed, finish her college degree. She followed all the sassiness up with hugs.

It was kind of what my mom did—worried, judged, worried some more, and then hugged. I told Dasha that she would get used to it. She smiled and told me it was the most mothering she had ever received in all of her life.

Daddy walked into the room smiling at me with what looked like a toy robot in his hands. It was made of metal and stood about five feet tall with a weird looking tail. “Look at this.” His eyes glimmered through his thick-glasses that sat across his gray sideburns. All of us raised an eyebrow to Daddy’s newest creation.

“What is it?” Ladasha asked.

“It’s my automatic snow blower! I fixed it!” he squeaked with excitement. Mom’s eyebrows lowered.

“That’s nice, dear. Maybe we should wait until after lunch to test it out…” I giggled to myself when I heard the hesitant sound in my mom’s voice.

Daddy pouted when she said that. “But the snow just fell to the perfect levels.” He sounded like a whiny five year old who wanted his mom to allow him to go play in the snow. Walking over to Mom, Daddy pushed out his bottom lip and gave her the biggest puppy dog eyes I had ever seen in my life. He began to give her puppy dog kisses all over her face until she reluctantly agreed.

“For Christ’s sake, Walter! Fine. Let’s get this over with!”

Daddy jumped up with excitement and told us all to go get our winter coats on. I was pretty excited. I hadn’t seen one of Daddy’s creations in quite some time and I was ready to be impressed. As he sat it in the driveway, Mom made Ladasha and me stay behind the porch, in case something went wrong. Daddy made sure to hush my mom as he turned on the snow blower, but he too, stepped behind the porch with his remote to control the robot.

“This is going to be amazing,” he promised as he pushed the on button. Nothing happened at first. “Just give it time. It has to warm up.” We waited. The weird robot started to shake. Daddy insisted it was normal. The robot started to walk down the driveway, Daddy guiding it with his remote. It was working! It was a three foot, mini TinMan, shoving our snow. We all cheered for him as the robot finished clearing most of the snow. It approached the end of the driveway. Daddy shut off the robot and tossed his hands up in celebration.

“You did it!” Mom hollered as she kissed Daddy’s cheek. She was so proud of him in that moment.

“Um…Daddy…” I stuttered. I nodded in the direction of the robot, now heading out into the street.

“Oh no,” Mom murmured.

The robot started to smoke. Daddy flicked on his remote again and started trying to control the robot to come back to us. His remote started to spark flames. “Holy shit!” Ladasha and I hollered as Daddy tossed the remote into the snow. Mom pinched both of our arms for our foul language as we mumbled an apology.

The robot was still on the move. “Go get it, Walter! Before the neighbors see!” My mom warned him. He went heading to the robot but stopped right as he saw it blow up across the street.

Ms. Kathy came out yelling as she watched her newly replaced dog-shaped mailbox go up in flames with the robot explosion. I saw the doggie’s tail land on her roof. She started hollering and shaking her fist at us, saying words that would have made Mom pinch me to the point of drawing blood. Mom’s eyes widened as she looked at us girls and Daddy. “Run! Come on! Inside, go!”

As we entered the house, the four of us busted out into laughter, replaying the horrified look on Ms. Kathy’s face. It felt good to be back with my parents and able to laugh. It felt better than I could have imagined.

Chapter Forty

AFTER I LEFT Wisconsin, I headed back to New York. It was time to get back together with Kyle and get my career going again. It seemed like a whole life had been lived since I’d last sat across from him at his desk. He was scrolling through his emails while checking messages on his cell phone, and for the first time in awhile, it felt like things were slowly getting back to normal.

“What do we have?” I asked him, wondering what offers were being shot my way to clean up this mess I had made for Ky.

He started sifting through the papers stacked on his desk. “The norm for magazines. Us Weekly, People, Star. Television offers started flying in after those magazines came out. They want you to host shows—Wedding Disasters, Couple’s Therapy, Dr. Drew’s Rehab.” His voice started off excited and he glanced up at me. He must have seen how uninterested I was in all of it, but I knew it had to be done.

“You know what, f**k them.” Kyle picked up all of the papers and ripped them in half.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He loosened his tie, shut down his computer, and turned off his phone. “Screw them, Coop. They don’t deserve to hear your story. You know what you need to do?”

I looked to him, knowing I was talking to my best friend and not my manager. “What you need to do is go to South Carolina and be with your mom. Fuck all this other bullshit. You’re a freakin’ amazing photographer, not a cheap reality star. You go be with your mom, you decide exactly what it is you want, and you come back here. And I will make it work.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. It would be a dream come true to go down to South Carolina and take care of my mom for a while.

“Get the f**k out of my office before I change my damn mind.” Kyle threw the papers at me. I stood up, pulled him into a hug, and thanked him.

I VISITED MY mom every day and every night when I got back to South Carolina. Some days she thought I was her brother. Other days, a complete stranger. On the worst days, she saw me as my father. And on the best days, she called me Cooper.

Today I was Cooper, and she actually knew where she was. The nurses told me it had happened before, but by the next day, she would fade back to the late 1990’s. But I held on to it. We talked about life. How Iris and I had gone our own separate ways. I thought it would be best to plant a few new memories into her mind to try to help her remember. To unscramble the fog. I told her about Iris and the divorce. I told her about the paparazzi. I told her about Andrea.

She cried when she realized what had happened to her, and I sat there with her until she fell asleep. I went home, rested, and came back the next day.

“Cooper, she’s asking for you,” Ms. Wells informed me. Her soft smile gave me hope that Mom was having a good day.

When I entered the room, I heard soft sniffles. Mom was facing the window, staring out. I walked over to her and placed my hands on her shoulders.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked. As she turned around, I wiped the tears falling from her eyes. In her hands, she was holding a photo album, one of the many I had left with her in hopes that it would spark some memory.

Her small hands caressed my cheek and she gave me a short grin. “I’ve missed so much.”

“It’s all right.”

She looked away, almost ashamed she’d let herself get so lost. How could she be ashamed? It wasn’t her fault. I kept telling her it was all right. But I wasn’t sure she believed me.

Walking over to her bed, she pulled out an old, broken down book. It must have been in the box of photo albums I dropped off. I saw the ribbon hanging from it and knew exactly what it was. It was the book I made for Andrea years ago when I was eleven. I sat down on her bed, flipping through it. Looking at how happy Andrea and I looked together. Mom sat next to me, resting her head on my shoulder and said, “Don’t make the mistake I made, Cooper. Don’t waste your life.”

Chapter Forty-One

SPRING HAD COME, and I still missed him. Ladasha came and sat on the front porch with me.

“Why don’t you call him?”

“It’s not that easy, Ladasha.” I thought about some of the horrifying things I’d said to Cooper. They replayed in my head over and over again. I didn’t know how to face him. I wanted nothing more than to call him and tell him what was going on in my mind—that the idea of going on another day without him was unbearable. But I couldn’t. I didn’t deserve the right to talk to him.

“Why not?” she asked.

“You don’t understand, Ladasha. I said some terrible things.”

“Yeah I know. You told him he would be a bad father. You believed the lies those magazines made up. You turned on him in a second because his crazy ex-wife had him followed.” Reminding me of all the terrible things I did made me feel even worse.

Her voice softened. “You spent the past few months mourning over someone who cheated and lied to you. You listened to his songs and your voicemail over and over again. You sprayed his cologne just to hold on.”

“Are you trying to make me feel worse? Because it's working.”

“The truth is you're afraid of losing someone again so you pushed him away before you could be hurt. You’re afraid that he too, might lie to you and hurt you. He never judged you for your past, and the fact that you threw his in his face, the shit that wasn't even true, is wrong. The way I see it, y'all are both f**ked up. Might as well be f**ked up together.”

“Why do you even care? You got your happy ending. You have your future, so stay the hell out of my business.”

Ladasha moved in closer and grabbed me by the chin, “You're acting like a bitch.”

“Don't talk to me like that.”

“I'm your best friend. I can talk to you however the hell I want. Wake up, Andrea. And don't try to push me away because I'm like cockroaches in the ghetto. I'll keep popping up, unwelcome.”

I let out a small chuckle as she wrapped her arms around me. “I got a call from a few dance studios…which is weird because I don’t remember applying to any, and you only told me about one.” Ladasha’s grin informed me that she had been going behind my back, pretending to be me. “They want me to come in and audition, dance for them.”

Her face lit up with joy as she heard the news. “Does that mean we can go home now?”

“I CANNOT BELIEVE this is happening again. Walter, say something!” Ladasha and I sat in my bedroom as we listened to my dad, once again, try to convince my mom to let me, once again, go back to New York City. I stood up, walked over to my bedroom walls, and began to remove the photos of Derrick and me from the space. I was ready to move on. I was ready to let go. And I was ready to retry New York City.

This time was different though. This time I wasn’t looking to go and become lost. No, I was going to find myself. I was going to make something of myself. Well, at least I was planning on it, if my mom would stop tearing up.

“Mom…” I looked at her as I entered the living room.

Her hands flew to her h*ps and she shook her head at me. “Don’t you even say it, Andrea! Look what happened last time you went there! And this time you two girls don’t even have jobs set up! What are you planning to do?!”

“Michelle is giving us a loan until we are able to pay her back. Also, I have auditions for dance jobs.”

Mom huffed and whined. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard that this past year.” I couldn’t help but smile at her comment.

Ladasha entered the room grinning ear to ear. Mom’s eyes narrowed in on her. “And what about you, missy? What are your plans?”

“Well, I can always go back to the strip club,” she smirked. She dodged the pillow flying at her head. “Okay okay. A friend of mine offered me a job at an art gallery as a receptionist. I’m going to work there through the summer and I’m enrolled in a summer film program.”