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I grit my teeth, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Thank you.”
She turns back to me, hands clasped in front of her. She’s nearly sixty, but she could easily pass for someone fifteen years younger. Dark brown hair, the same color as Katie’s. A heart-shaped face with the faintest lines by her eyes and mouth. The same brown eyes as mine.
Eyes that are now full of sorrow.
I steel myself, waiting for the guilt trip.
“I’m sorry.”
I blink. “What?”
“I look around this room and I see…you.” She sighs. “The woman I imagine you would have discovered a long time ago if I would have just let go.”
Of all the things she could have said, this was the last thing I was expecting.
“I’m… Mom, I hope you can understand why I’m a little confused.”
“I can.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “If now’s not a good time, I can—”
“No.” I take a moment, trying to wrap my brain around what’s happening. “Let’s sit down. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Yes. But I can get it…” Her voice trails off. She blinks, then takes another deep breath. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
I recognize her words for what they are. An acknowledgment of my independence, that she doesn’t need to be hovering nearby, doing everything for me even as she slowly takes away my autonomy.
“I’ll let you know if I need help, Mom.”
She nods, her lips pressed together, and moves out to the balcony. I join her a minute later, setting her glass down as I ease into my chair and prop my crutches against the railing. My mom’s eyes are trained on the Eiffel Tower, her expression awed.
“How did you ever find this place?”
“A friend of Katie’s. She came here for a semester abroad, fell in love with Paris and stayed. She works for a property company that rents out places mostly to students.” I glance back at my apartment, pride filling my chest as the soft glow from the lamps washes the ivory walls with a pale gold hue. “I love it here.”
“I can tell.” She raises her wineglass. “You look happy.”
I take a sip of my own wine, trying to come up with the right words. Finally, I just blurt out what’s on my mind.
“Why are you here, Mom?”
The faint wrinkles in her forehead deepen as she frowns. “I was very angry when you first left. Like all the work I’d poured into keeping you safe all these years was for nothing.”
Even though I know I have nothing to feel ashamed for, my body responds to the decades-old fear of hurting my mother. My stomach pitches down to my feet as I force myself to hold her gaze.
“I’m sorry if I worried you, but—”
“I made a mistake, Tessa. A lot of them,” she adds into the surprised quiet that follows her pronouncement. “Too many. Mistakes I had ample time to reflect on once I was alone in the house. But you, or rather how I treated you, is probably the biggest mistake of all.”
My heart twists in my chest as anger I didn’t even realize I’d been holding on to started to unknot itself. “Mom…”
“I don’t know if you’re going to excuse what I did, so let me be the first to say there is no excuse. I…” Her eyes glint with unshed tears. “I feel like I clipped your wings. Like there were so many times you could have been happy, and I stole that from you because I was so afraid of letting you fall again.”
I reach over and cover her hand with mine. For the first time in a very long time, I feel connected to my mom.
“I’m the one who fell, Mom.”
She shakes her head. “I’m your mother. I didn’t lock the door that morning. I knew I was too tired, and I should have taken your aunt up on her offer to help. But I wanted to prove to your father…” She falters as a dull red stain creeps up her neck. “He was working so hard to try and earn your grandfather’s approval. I told him I could handle it. You, Katie, the house. We were fighting so much. I wanted to show him I could do it, and you paid the price.”
I look down at our hands stacked on top of one another, mine tan from my time in Greece, hers with the beginnings of wrinkles etching themselves into her skin. So much time has passed since that day. So much has changed. Yet the guilt we both carry lingers.