Chapter Thirteen
Lily
My stomach did a flip, and my pulse tripled in pace. Holy crap. After all these years, my mother had finally contacted me. Hands trembling, I set the letter down on the counter and began to read.
Lily, my darling,
I’ve waited a long time for this. It wasn’t safe to try to talk to you before. Even now it’s not exactly safe, but I just had to do it. I had to write to my darling baby girl. I miss you, and I wish I’d been there to see you grow up. I know you’re nineteen now – already a young woman. I don’t know what you look like, but I bet you’re just as beautiful now as you were when you were younger. Even more beautiful, in fact.
I know you probably despise me, Lily. I know you hate what I did, and you hate how I left. I know you feel abandoned by me. And you’re right. I did leave. I did abandon you and your dad. But you have to know, I did it for our family’s sake. I did it for YOU, darling. Let me explain.
That day, I didn’t mean to kill Jenna. I just went there to scare her. I only wanted to give her a taste of what she deserved for hurting you. You remember how she hurt you, don’t you, darling? It was bad enough that she was trying to break our family apart in other ways, but to hurt you was far worse. The final straw. So I got the gun. I went over there to scare her, fire a few bullets off to make her sweat. She had to know she couldn’t get away with her behavior anymore. But the gun…I messed up. I hurt her. Badly. I didn’t mean to, like I said, but she DID deserve it.
Afterwards, I ran. I had to. It was my only choice. I couldn’t let my little girl grow up having to visit her mother in prison every weekend. I’m sorry, Lily, but it was better that way. Better that you never saw me again. I know you’ll never fully understand that, because my mind has never worked the same way as most others, but please try. I honestly did everything I did for you.
Know that I am always thinking of you. Every day you’re on my mind, my gorgeous little girl.
Love,
Mommy
My insides felt like lead, sinking so fast I thought I might fall straight through the floor. This letter….it was bullshit. Did my mom seriously think that anything was clearer to me now? That I’d feel bad for her and what she did? And what was she talking about when she said Jenna hurt me?
I racked my brains, trying to tease fragments of memories out, and finally something popped into my head. I knew why I’d been sick the day she died now. I’d been tired and headache-y that entire week with terrible stomach pain because I’d been refusing lunch and dinner. I was starving myself, essentially, and it was all because of a snide little comment Jenna had made at one of Jackson’s barbecues the month before. I was barely thirteen at the time, so I was at that tender, impressionable age when young girls are just starting to bud but still don’t quite have the body of a woman yet. Back then, I’d look at all the models and actresses on TV and in magazines and wonder why I didn’t look like that, even though I’d already hit puberty, and I didn’t understand that it took years for my shape to finally appear. Just because I had my period and hair down there didn’t mean I had a fully-formed woman’s shape yet, and it was still natural for me to have some baby fat from when I was a kid.
But I didn’t know that back then. So when Jenna saw me scarfing down a hot dog at the barbecue and casually commented that I was ‘filling out too fast’ and should probably limit the amount of hot dogs I ate, it hit me hard. I stopped eating properly for a whole month, only eating the bare minimum to keep my stomach from constantly growling. When my mother confronted me, demanding to know why I’d been doing this—she figured it out despite my best efforts to hide it—I told her what Jenna said.
That was two days before Mom went over there and shot her to death.
And now I knew why.
Even if it was an accident—which it clearly wasn’t; Jenna was shot four damn times, for god’s sake—it was crazy. Absolutely and utterly crazy. Sure, Jenna had upset me enough to make me want to starve myself skinnier, but it wasn’t that big of a deal, at least not enough to warrant going around to her place with a gun to frighten her and hurt her. My eating issues hadn’t lasted all that long, and until now I hadn’t even remembered what Jenna said to me to trigger them.
Don’t get me wrong, social and media pressure on young girls (and the resulting eating disorders) was a terrible thing, but it did not mean that Jenna deserved what happened to her. And that’s what my mother was saying in this letter—she was saying she did what she did for me. To protect me. That Jenna deserved to be hurt. Killed.
At least I knew I didn’t kill Jenna now.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the flow of hot tears. After all these years, my mom was guilty after all and still totally unrepentant. Still totally crazy. She’d tried to justify everything. It was an accident. Jenna deserved it anyway. I had to abandon you afterwards; I just HAD to.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
I couldn’t stop the tears anymore. Dad wasn’t here, so there was no one here to comfort me. No one nearby to hug me and tell me everything would be okay. No one except….
Grabbing the letter, I stuffed it in my purse, picked up my keys and ran out of the house. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, wind whipping my hair, and when I reached Jackson’s house, I stood on the porch, panting as I tried to regain my breath.
The front door opened, and Jackson looked down at me, eyes dark with amusement and lust. “I assume you’re here to—” His sentence was abruptly cut off when he saw my expression, and his eyes flashed with concern now instead. “Lily, what’s happened?” he asked sharply.
I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t even form a coherent sentence in my own head, let alone get a single word out of my mouth. There was only one thing I felt like doing. Only one thing I could do right now. I stepped forward, and I buried my face in his big chest.
And then I cried.