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“Like what?”
“Like flowers.” She shrugs, still focused on the cat in my lap. “Like being told that I’m pretty.”
I don’t know why that makes me angry. I just know that it does. “You are pretty.”
“You don’t have to keep saying.” Now she frowns. She’s not looking at the cat anymore. She’s looking at her hands. The thick lines of black under her nails. Caked around her cuticles. “I know what I look like.”
Giving my mirrors a quick check, I pull off the road, onto the shoulder letting it roll to a slow stop. We’re about ten minutes away from where we’re going but this can’t wait.
She looks out the window at the side of the highway before giving me a puzzled look “Are we here?”
“No, smartass,” I say, taking the flowers off her lap, I toss them on the dash before pulling her even closer. “Why don’t you want me to tell you you’re pretty?”
“Did you hit your head?” she says, scowling up at me. “I just said I did like it.”
“No, you said most people assume you don’t.” I search her face, trying to find the place where the conversation turned. “That’s not the same thing.” When she doesn’t offer an explanation, I say it again. “You’re pretty.”
“Please stop saying that.” It’s the word please that gets me. She rarely uses it unless I have her naked.
“If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to tell me why,” I tell her shaking my head. “I’m just trying to understand, Tess. I just want to—”
“Because I look like her.” She blurts it out so fast her mouth hangs open for a second before she snaps it shut, her chin tipped up, jaw held tight to keep it from trembling. Finally under control, she continues. “Because when people do tell me I’m pretty it’s always followed by just like your mother.” She swallows hard and looks away from me. “They get to remember her that way. They get remember her pretty and laughing and happy. They don’t have to re—” Her voice breaks and her eyes fill with tears. “remember what I remember.”
We’ve never really talked about her mom. What she told me that day on my parent’s back porch sits between us, pulling us together and pushing us apart, pulsing between us like a heartbeat and what kills me is that I can’t fix it for her.
So I do the only thing I can do. The only thing I know how to do.
I pull her close and hold her while she cries.