Christy-Lynn shifted uncomfortably. “No. No children.”
“Was that by choice?”
“Yes.”
“Because of me?” she asked quietly. “Because of . . . how I was?”
“Because I was afraid of how I’d be. I was afraid I’d . . .”
“End up a drunk?”
“Yes,” Christy-Lynn replied, holding her mother’s gaze without flinching. “Or worse. I swore I’d never put a child through that.”
It was Charlene who looked away first, sighing as she shifted her attention to the glowing tip of her cigarette. “You were never like me. You were always good . . . responsible. I’d have given anything to be a better mother to you.”
“No, Mama, you wouldn’t. Not anything.”
“No,” Charlene admitted, nodding. “Not anything.”
Christy-Lynn put down her tea and reached into her purse for the envelope she had taken from her nightstand. Charlene looked on as she spilled the contents into her lap, then picked up the photo and held it out. “Do you remember that day? You took me to the fair.”
“I remember.”
“And this?” Christy-Lynn held up the tarnished necklace, letting it dangle slowly from her fingers. “Do you remember this? You’re wearing one just like it in the picture.”
“The other half of mine.” Her voice had fallen to a near whisper. “You kept it all these years?”
Christy-Lynn ignored the question. “Do you remember what you said when you put it on me? You said we’d never take them off. But you did take yours off.”
“I didn’t realize it meant so much to you. It was just a cheap trinket.”
“It wasn’t the necklace, Mama. It was the promise you made when you gave it to me. The promise you broke when you pawned it.” She paused to gather up the contents of the envelope and tuck them away. “That’s when I knew the drugs were more important than me—and how easy it is to make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
Charlene nodded dully. “I see. It’s judgment day. Go on then. I can take it.”
“This isn’t about judging you. It’s about wiping the slate clean. My slate. For years I managed to keep all the bad stuff locked away, to pretend it happened to some other girl, someone who didn’t exist anymore. But some things have happened lately, things that make me realize I can’t do it anymore. It’s like a door opened, and all the stuff—the way you were, the way we lived—all came spilling out. The drugs, the evictions, the men. And then seeing you in the hospital with your face all stitched up. You going to jail, and me shipped off to the county.” She broke off abruptly, reaching for her tea. She wasn’t thirsty, but she needed something to hide behind.
“Foster care,” Charlene said, drawing the words out slowly. “Was it . . . terrible?”
Christy-Lynn took another sip of tea, staring at the twenty-year-old burns on her wrist. She had come to exorcise her demons, to force her mother to own her past and acknowledge the damage she had done. But suddenly the words wouldn’t come. What would it serve to dredge up Terry Blevins now? Except perhaps to pass her demons on to her mother. And it was clear that Charlene Parker still had enough demons of her own.
“I ran away,” she said finally, leaving out the why. “I lived on the street for two years until I turned eighteen.”
Charlene’s eyes filled with tears, the scarred corner of her mouth puckering in a lopsided grimace. “They told me. When they couldn’t find you, they came to me. They thought I might’ve heard from you. They should have known I’d be the last person you’d come to.”
Christy-Lynn wasn’t sure why her mother was crying. Were they tears of self-reproach or self-pity? The line between the two had always been blurry, and the years had done nothing to make that line clearer.
“I didn’t come here to make you cry. Or to make you apologize. In fact, today isn’t about you at all. It’s about me looking you in the eye and facing what happened back then, about reminding myself what I’ve been through, and that I was strong enough to survive it. I’m here because I want closure, because I need it. So I can finally stop punishing myself.”
Charlene had been about to light another cigarette. Her head came up as the lighter fell from her hand. “Why in God’s name would you punish yourself?”
“For leaving you,” Christy-Lynn said thickly. “For running away and leaving you alone all those years ago. I never knew if you were . . .” She looked away, blinking back tears she had vowed not to shed.
Charlene shifted in the recliner until she was facing Christy-Lynn, her cigarette forgotten. “Now you listen to me, baby girl. You did right to leave. And you did right to stay gone. Look at you, where you’ve ended up, what you’ve made of yourself. Strong, respectable, beautiful. Do you think for a minute it would have turned out like that if you’d stayed around to babysit me?”
Christy-Lynn dragged in a breath. “There’s no way to know.”
Charlene’s gray eyes flared. “Yes, there is, and we both know it. You think I don’t know what it was like for you, having to take care of me when it should have been the other way around? You think there’s a day I don’t remember coming home drunk out of my mind, stoned out of my mind, passing out or worse? I do. I remember it all. It’s amazing what comes back to you when you lay off the stuff. Things you wish to God you could forget. Hell, you were better off on your own than with a mother like me—a boozer and a junkie. It’s not an easy thing to say, especially to your own daughter, but there it is.”