"My beautiful Eden," she whispered, "I never thought I'd see you again."
"I love you, Mom," I said, blinking at her, trying not to tear up. "I never forgot you."
She caressed my cheek, a tear escaping her eye. It rolled slowly down her cheek as she said, "Oh, my sweetheart, I love you, too. I never thought I'd get the chance to tell you that again in this life. We have so much lost time to make up for." She wiped the tear away and hummed again for a few minutes.
I lay there after she'd closed the door, looking around in the dim light of the moon outside, reeling at how life could change in an instant.
All my life I'd dreamed of my mother, held on to the belief that I'd been loved before. And now I had her back. I said a silent thank you to the God of Mercy, hoping against hope that being back in my mother's arms would help heal another piece of my broken heart.
CHAPTER THREE
Eden
The day I stumbled away from Acadia, the day I lost the love of my life, I thought I'd never feel happiness again. I didn't think I'd ever care about anything. Nothing mattered and all I could do was hurt. Just breathing felt like enough.
I'd heard it said that the only way through grief is to grieve. Sometimes I felt like I'd done a decent job of that, and other times, I saw something, or remembered something, or smelled something, and the pain would hit me so hard, I almost felt like doubling over with the blow.
I'd been living at my mom's house for a month and like I'd hoped, the stability and love I had found there was a balm to my heart. Not that I hadn't found some measure of peace with Felix, but it wasn't quite the same. I didn't belong to him. For the first year I'd been there, the only thing I'd been able to do was grieve. For the two years my mind could focus on anything other than my grief, I had focused on earning and saving money, attempting to build something of my own that would allow me to feel safe. I didn't imagine I'd ever have more than a few fleeting moments of happiness, but I craved safety, security, and so that's what I worked toward. I had known Felix was ill the day I arrived at his house, and losing him had been a constant worry for me, for more reasons than just the fact that I grew to love him.
Every morning during those first weeks at my mom's house, I woke up in my pink, frilly twin bed—the comforter still preserved from my childhood room. It felt like again, I had woken up to a whole new story and I was a different main character, stumbling through, trying to understand my new role.
I had expected that not having to concern myself constantly with how I would take care of myself and how I would survive on my own if it came to that would help me heal even more. But in fact, not having that anxiety allowed my mind to spend time probing areas I'd somewhat successfully neglected up until then, like skirting around the edges of a fading bruise only to find the pain remained. I hurt. It felt like I ached all the time that first month at my mom's house. I still hadn't yet told my mom or Molly about Calder because I simply didn't know if I was strong enough to talk about him to anyone. It was another step I'd have to feel ready to take—I guessed I'd know when that time came. But my mom didn't seem to want to discuss Acadia very much anyway. We'd talked about it that first day, but anytime I made any reference to it now, she changed the subject. I wasn't sure if she was trying to protect me from the sadness she thought it brought me to discuss it, or if she herself preferred not to think about it. I suspected the latter.
My mom had a piano in her living room and so I started back up with a couple lessons. And if I didn't have a lesson, I played anyway. Some days it helped more than others.
When I wasn't playing the piano, I filled my time by walking through my mom's neighborhood admiring the old homes, browsing through shops with no intention of buying anything—acquainting myself with the outside world in portions I controlled. I visited Marissa, finally telling her where I'd come from, and I looked things up online I still didn't understand. In a nutshell, I existed. Was this the life I was meant to be living? Was this my destiny . . . to walk through all my days feeling a constant void deep inside, a constant wanting? If I was moving when the question arose in my mind, I would stop and pause, the very small whisper of a feeling telling me it wasn't. What then?
Although my mom didn't seem to want to discuss grown-up topics with me, it seemed she was constantly where I was, constantly reaching out to touch me, looking at me with almost fearful eyes, as if I could evaporate into thin air at any second. I understood it, and part of me appreciated her continual mothering. After all, I'd lived without any for so long. I had yearned for a mother's love for what seemed like forever. But another part of me finally had some freedom and I wanted to try to figure out who I could be on my own. I wanted to be treated like the twenty-one-year-old woman I was, not the child she often seemed to still want me to be. We were both struggling with the dynamic between us. I guessed that would just take time.
In many ways I felt like I'd always be a captive, even if in very different forms: first with Hector, then by the fear Clive Richter created, then of my own doing, and now by my mother. It felt as though I'd never be free to be myself. I'd only ever experienced that with Calder, and I only ever would. With the thought, despair gripped me.
One beautiful early fall morning, I woke up just after dawn and took my coffee out on the patio. The air was cool so I grabbed a throw sitting on the edge of the couch and took that with me. I wrapped it around my shoulders and sipped the strong, hot liquid as I admired the chrysanthemum and ivy-filled planters. I could tell the garden was my mother's therapy. I could tell she nourished it as if it was her own heart - a tangible thing to keep loved and well cared for, beautiful. I supposed we all needed something like that. For me, it was my music. It was where I went to fill up and feel alive.