With my hands clutching tightly to the ballet barre attached to the mirrors that ran the length of the studio wall, I bowed my head and tried not to scream.

When I left Eli earlier today, after another laid-back, easy afternoon of riding horses and reminiscing about the summer we first fell in love, I ran home to finally read the last letter and almost wished I hadn’t. I wanted nothing more than to pretend like I hadn’t seen those words, didn’t know what my mother had done, didn’t have the proof of it back in my bedroom or the realization that I’d probably always instinctively known she had something to do with the way Eli left and chosen to ignore it.

I’d also ignored the text my mother sent me a few weeks ago the morning I was in bed with Eli, simply stating that we needed to talk. After reading that letter, I wanted nothing more than to turn my back on her and never speak to her again. She never cared about me, she never cared about my happiness, she only cared about herself. The pain in my chest is so acute that I can’t stop the sob that flies from my mouth when I think about the words Eli wrote and remember everything she stole from me.

The only reason I finally agreed to meet with her, the only reason I’m here right now, is because I want to understand. I want to know how it’s possible for a mother to hate her daughter so much. I want to know what was in the e-mail Eli sent to her that day and I want to know why he didn’t tell me about it, but I’m scared to death to finally have all the answers.

I thought coming here to the studio to stretch and listen to music before I met her up at the house would calm my nerves, but the longer I stay here and avoid the inevitable, the worse I feel.

“I was always jealous of you two.”

My head flies up and I quickly whirl around when I hear her voice. My heart flutters nervously, wondering how she found me here, how she knows about this room, and why she doesn’t look at all shocked to be standing in the doorway.

“You and your father,” she continues quietly, assuming the surprised look on my face has something to do with the statement she made. “I was always jealous of the connection the two of you had.”

She steps farther into the room, her heels clicking against the wood floor and I take a moment to really look at her. Gone is the demanding, haughty look on her face, perfectly pressed business suit, and every hair flawlessly in place. She looks like she’s aged twenty years as I continue to stare at her when she stops in the middle of the room, twisting her hands together nervously in front of her. Her black pants suit is full of wrinkles and her usual tight, slicked-back French twist has started to come loose, strands of hair falling against her face and around her shoulders. She looks so vulnerable and small and it makes me sad. It should make me happy that she finally looks as miserable as she’s made me feel most of my life, but it doesn’t. I don’t know how to deal with the emotions I’m feeling for her right now. I’ve spent so much of my time resenting her and she made it easy with her nose up in the air, looking down on me all these years. It’s hard to hate someone who is standing in front of you, cutting herself open and bleeding all of her emotions out into a puddle at your feet.

“I never wanted to be a mother, but I still hated how close the two of you were,” she goes on. “Going off together all the time, sharing secrets and laughs and a bond that I could never understand. I never wanted a child, but I still hated that the two of you had something like that and I didn’t.”

I want to speak, ask her a thousand questions, shout a million insults, and scream at her until my voice is hoarse, but I can’t make the words come. I can do nothing but stand here, tightly clutching onto the barre behind me, letting her finally tell me what I’d always wanted to know. Everything finally makes sense, but it’s not a relief to hear her say these words to me. I stopped giving her the power to hurt me a long time ago, but it doesn’t stop the pain from spreading through my heart hearing her admit she never wanted me.

“I always knew about this studio, too. I followed the two of you one day when you snuck off, thinking I wasn’t paying attention,” she explains quietly. “I watched you dance and…it hurt everything inside of me. It made me angry and it made me hate you even more. I knew it was horrible and I knew it was wrong for a mother to feel like that when she discovered her daughter had so much talent, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop it.”

She pauses to run her hand nervously against the side of her head, trying to control the wayward pieces of hair that have fallen out of her updo, but she gives up after a few seconds when they won’t conform.

“Why?” I finally whisper.

With a deep breath, she closes the distance between us, reaching into the front pocket of her suit jacket and pulling something out. I look away from her eyes at the item she holds out to me when she gets right in front of me, letting go of the barre with one hand to take the picture from her.

Staring down at it, I can hardly believe what I’m looking at. The photo is worn around the edges, a crease lining the center of it from the number of times it must have been folded and unfolded over the years, but there’s no mistaking what it is or who it is. It’s a picture of my mother, probably not much older than nineteen or twenty, wearing a black leotard, a sheer black chiffon ballet skirt, pink tights, and pink pointe shoes, with her leg extended gracefully up by her head and her arms in perfect first position. Her face is so serene and peaceful and happy that I almost wonder if my eyes are playing tricks on me. I’ve never seen her look anything but hard and disappointed.

“What is this?” I mutter, even though I know what it is, but I’m so confused that I feel like my head is spinning.

“I was one of the best premier dancers for the New York City Ballet,” she tells me quietly, staring down at the photo I clutch tightly in my hand. “Dancing was the only thing I’d ever known. The only thing that made me happy and the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

I don’t know whether to scream at her, or drop down to the floor and cry. All these years, we had so much in common and I never knew it. She never let me know it, and for some reason, she hated me because of it.

“I know you don’t understand, Shelby, and I wish I could change the way I felt when you were younger and the way I treated you, but I can’t,” she goes on. “I never thought I’d want anything more than ballet, until one day, when I was twenty, a man came to the ballet. He acquired access backstage when it was over and he handed me the largest, most beautiful bouquet of pink roses I’d ever seen.”

A sad, wistful expression comes over her face and it takes my breath away.

“He asked me out on a date, and I accepted. I didn’t come from money, my parents were blue-collar workers who could barely pay the bills. He took me to fancy restaurants, he showered me with expensive gifts, and he loved me more than I ever thought someone would,” she tells me softly. “I fell for him hard, and in a few months, I got pregnant with you.”

All of the pieces start falling together. Why she hated me, why she hated it when she found out I could dance…it all makes sense now.

She blamed me for taking away her dream.

“As I’m sure you know, my schedule was grueling and exhausting. I ignored the nausea, pushed through the fatigue, and never gained weight. I didn’t find out until it was too late to…well, until it was too late.”

I toss the photo to the ground angrily and cross my arms in front of me. The silence in the room is deafening, and I want to smack her across the face for how little she cared about me from the moment she found out she was pregnant. Something most women would think was a blessing, she thought was a curse and hated the idea of it. Hated me.

“Too late to get rid of the problem, that’s what you meant to say, right?”

She swallows nervously and gives me a terse nod of agreement.

“Your father was over the moon with happiness when I told him. He always wanted a family and was finally getting what he wanted. He had no idea that it wasn’t what I wanted. No idea that it would ruin everything I’d worked my entire life for. I figured I’d have you, hire nannies, and work twice as hard to get back to the only thing I ever cared about, but it didn’t work that way. By the time I’d given birth to you and recovered, it was already too late to go back. The ballet world moves quickly and there’s always someone else waiting in the wings to take your place, someone better, younger, stronger, and with no attachments.”

I can do nothing but shake my head at her, holding back the tears that are pooling in my eyes.

“I didn’t know how to be a mother and I didn’t want that life, but I still hated it that you went to your father for everything. I hated that the two of you were so close and I felt like a third wheel around you. Then, when I found out you could dance and that you were a hundred times better than I’d ever hoped to be, I hated that you were going to get the dream I’d always wanted. The one I gave up to have you and the one I still wanted more than anything else in the world, so much that it consumed me and I couldn’t stop myself from being so jealous and angry,” she admits.

I finally have the answer to the question that plagued me my entire life. The reason why my mother never hugged me, never smiled at me, never encouraged me, and never treated me like anything but a thorn in her side. I should feel relief finally knowing the truth, but I don’t. Everything inside me feels bruised and battered, knowing there’s nothing I could have done to change things. Nothing I could have done to make her love me. She hated my very existence. But it still doesn’t explain everything.

“Why did you send Eli away?” I demand. “I can try to understand why you treated me the way you did, why you hated me so much and made my life miserable, but I can’t understand why you’d do that to him. Why you’d hurt him and threaten him and take him away from me? As much as you loved dance, as much as it consumed you and made you happy and you couldn’t imagine your life without it, that’s exactly how I felt about Eli and you took him from me. If you hated me that much, why didn’t you just let me go? Send me away and let me live my life and never speak to me again? Why did you have to hurt him? WHY?”

I can’t hold the sobs in any longer and my voice rises in a shout, so hurt and so angry by her actions and her choices and how easily she could ruin so many lives because she couldn’t let go of the past and couldn’t find her own happiness.

“Tell her. She deserves to know the truth.”

My mother’s head drops and mine whips toward the sound of Eli’s voice to find him lounging against the door frame. I want to run to him, wrap my arms around him. and let him take away all of this hurt and pain that engulfs me, but I can’t move. My knees are locked and my feet are rooted in place as my body shakes in fear, already preparing myself for the final blow I’m waiting for my mother to deliver.

“I tried,” she whispers, so softly that I have to crane my neck forward to hear her better over the loud thumping of my heart pounding through my ears. “I know it was too late, I know I couldn’t make up for what I’d done, but I tried. I did whatever I could to protect you, but I had no other choice.”

For a minute, I’m confused all over again thinking she’s still speaking to me, until she finally lifts her head and looks back at Eli.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she tells him, tears clogging her voice.

“So, you admit it? After all these years, after everything you’ve done, you finally admit it?” he asks.

She nods her head silently and I watch the pain wash over Eli’s face, tightening his features as he closes his eyes and runs his palm down his face.

“Shelby’s father had made a lot of careless choices with our money over the years. Things I knew nothing about until he died and it was too late to figure out how to fix them.” She speaks rapidly, looking back and forth between me and Eli. “I didn’t know what to do. We were going to lose the house, we were going to be bankrupt and left with nothing. I had a bad night, too much to drink, and I went for a drive, just wanting to clear my head and forget about things for a little while. It was dark and I was upset and it all happened so fast.”

My hand flies to my mouth and my body bends in half at the waist. I shake my head back and forth, not wanting her to keep going, not wanting to hear the next words out of her mouth. I hear myself chanting softly as I cry, telling her to stop.

Stop, stop, stop, please don’t say what I know you’re going to say. Please don’t let this be true, please, please, please.

“I lost control when I went around a curve and it happened so fast,” she says again. “I didn’t know what to do. I knew it was bad but I didn’t know what to do, so I called Landry.”

My hand drops from my mouth and I whimper when she says his name, still shaking my head back and forth trying to shake this knowledge and this truth from my head before the weight of it crushes me.

“So he’s the one who covered it up. Made it look like the accident was all my parents’ fault and took you completely out of the equation. Why? Why in the hell would he ever do something like that for you?” Eli asks angrily

I can barely understand the words he’s saying and the questions he asking; all I can think about is that my mother killed Eli’s parents. My mother is the one who tore apart their family, left Eli and his sister alone and forced him to work himself to exhaustion for years just to keep a roof over their head. I don’t understand how he doesn’t hate me. I don’t understand how he could even look at me without being sick and disgusted, always assuming but never knowing for sure until now.

“Don’t clam up now, you’re on a roll,” Eli tells her angrily when she doesn’t immediately answer his questions. “Why in the hell would Landry do that for you?”

My mother looks back and him and then slowly turns to look at me.

“I’m not clamming up. I know you don’t care how I feel, and I know I deserve that, but this is hard for me. You have no idea how difficult it is reliving all of the selfish choices you made and thinking about the people you hurt along the way, but I know I need to do this. You need to hear all of this from me, and not from someone who will twist the truth to suit his needs,” she whispers brokenly.

My mother takes a deep breath and my world crumbles around me into a pile of ash as she continues.

“He fixed everything. He covered it up and he paid off all of the debt because he knew,” she whispers. “He knew I was desperate. He knew I would have done anything to protect myself and to keep the life I had. He knew and I let him use me. I let him do whatever he wanted because I was weak and selfish. I let him continue holding it over my head for years, I let him threaten me and I let him take advantage of everything just to keep it quiet. I never wanted anyone to know. I never wanted anyone to find out what I’d done and the person I’d become.”

I take a few steps away from her until my back hits the ballet barre, wanting to be as far away from this woman as possible. I’m ashamed of her for being so weak and only caring about her reputation and her money after what she’d done.

“Why did he do it? What did he want so badly that he would do all of this for you?” I ask angrily, already knowing, already realizing what she’s going to say and feeling like a fool for never seeing it before now.

“You,” she sobs softly.

My knees unlock as soon as she says that one word. The one I knew was coming but wouldn’t allow myself to truly believe until she says it. My knees give out and my legs buckle, the weight of all these truths at once finally becoming too much and it takes me down.