Page 20

I stand. My legs move before my brain has fully decided what I’m doing.

One step, then another. The grass is cool against my bare feet.

I move slowly, not because I’m uncertain, but because each step feels weighted with years of questions, years of absence, years of trying to understand why I wasn’t enough to make her stay.

Rebecca doesn’t notice me approaching at first. She’s too absorbed in her maternal performance, her attention wholly on the twins. I stop just a few feet away, close enough to hear their conversation while still maintaining distance.

“That’s it,” she encourages Mila, guiding her small fingers. “Thread it through, then pull gently. See how strong it is when you connect them right?”

I hover at the edge of their circle, suddenly unsure why I’ve come closer. What am I looking for here? Answers? Explanations? Some magical words that will make sense of why she could be this mother for them and not for me?

Rebecca glances up, finally sensing my presence. Surprise flickers across her face, followed quickly by something harder to read, hope maybe. Or fear. The twins follow her gaze, twin sets of curious eyes turning to me.

“Fallon,” Rebecca says, my name soft in her mouth. “Would you like to join us?”

The question hangs in the air between us. Simple words that somehow contain years of absence, of questions, of hurt. The distance between us is more than the few feet of grass—it’s a chasm filled with all the moments she wasn’t there, all the times I needed a mother and found only empty space.

I crouch down near them, careful to position myself just out of reach. Close enough for this conversation, far enough that she can’t touch me. The twins return to their clover chains, their world still simple, still whole.

“You got clean for them,” I say. My voice comes out steady, matter-of-fact. No anger. Just a quiet, serrated truth slicing through the pleasant afternoon air.

Rebecca’s smile falters, wilting at the edges. She glances at the twins, then back at me, lips parting slightly.

“Fallon…” she finally manages, my name a plea or a prayer—I can’t tell which.

“I have no memories of you sober,” I continue, keeping my voice low enough that the twins won’t hear, though they’ve already drifted a few feet away, chasing a butterfly through the grass.

Rebecca’s face stiffens now, pain flickering behind her eyes like lightning in a distant storm.

She knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“You dropped her,” I whisper, the words barely audible.

“She’d been home for three days after all those months in hospital.

You dropped her because you were high, as if she wasn’t knocking on deaths door the entirety of her life. ”

Rebecca flinches as if I’ve struck her. Her hands, which had been so confidently weaving clover stems moments ago, now twist in her lap, restless and uncertain. She looks away from me, toward the twins.

“I wasn’t high on drugs, Fallon. It was the depressants the hospital put me on, so I do remember that day,” she says after a long moment, her voice small.

“Do you?” My words come out as a hiss, sharper than I intended, cutting straight to the heart of things. “Because I do. I was ten. Holding my baby sister while you screamed that we ruined your life.”

The scene plays in my head with perfect clarity: Emma’s tiny body in my arms, her face red and scrunched as she wailed.

Rebecca lurching around the living room, pupils pinpricks in her bloodshot eyes, shouting that she never wanted another kid and how she fucked up and what were they going to do with Emma, they should have handed her over because we couldn’t afford to eat let alone pay for her medications.

Dad was working a double shift. There was no one else.

Mila laughs nearby, the sound bright and uncomplicated. Anya spins in a circle until she gets dizzy and tumbles onto the grass. Neither of them hears our conversation. Thank God. Rebecca swallows thickly and I can see her guilt on her face.

I keep my voice low even as the words tear at my throat on their way out.

“When Emma was seven, I had to carry her to the neighbor’s house when her lungs collapsed because I couldn’t get a hold of Dad who was working three jobs, and I didn’t understand why she was wheezing.

” The memory of Emma’s weight in my arms, her breathing shallow and terrifying, her lips tinged blue.

“You know how many nights I spent watching her chest rise, praying it wouldn’t stop? ”

Rebecca’s lip trembles, she doesn’t speak. Her silence is both answer and accusation. She wasn’t there. So she doesn’t know.

“How many times I watched Dad beg the hospital to save her despite not having the money to pay.” I gesture around us, at the manicured lawn, the expensive play equipment, the idyllic scene that feels like it belongs in someone else’s life.

“And now you’re here. In a fucking palace compared to the shitholes we lived in while Dad worked himself to the bone.

With healthy kids. Brushing hair. Kissing scraped knees.

Playing house like you didn’t leave us to clean up your mess. ”

Igor shifts on the porch, his attention caught by my increased intensity even if he can’t hear the words. I force myself to relax my posture, to appear calm. This isn’t the time to draw his interest.

Rebecca looks at me, really looks—her eyes swimming with tears she doesn’t let fall. She says nothing. What could she possibly say? There’s no explanation that would heal this wound, no words that could undo the years of absence and neglect.

The silence stretches between us, filled only by the distant giggles of the twins as they chase each other toward a flower bed. They move in perfect synchronicity, mirror images of health and happiness.

Rebecca whispers, “I didn’t—” she stops herself, swallowing whatever excuse she was about to offer.

“You didn’t what?” I press, needing to hear her say it. Needing her to acknowledge what she did.

She shakes her head slightly, her gaze dropping to her hands. “I can’t change what happened.”

“No,” I agree. “You can’t.”

The twins are picking flowers once again, comparing colors, completely oblivious to the current of pain flowing between their mother and me. Their innocence is a luxury Rebecca ensured for them and denied to me.

I watch them for a moment, these girls who have the mother I needed and never got. The ache in my chest is physical, a hollow space where something vital should be. I wonder if Rebecca feels it, too—this gulf between us, this broken thing that can never be made whole.

Rebecca reaches out instinctively like she wants to touch my arm. I pull back sharply. The movement sends a jolt of pain through my bruised ribs, and I welcome it. Physical pain is simpler, cleaner than this emotional morass.

“Don’t,” I warn, my voice low. “Don’t you dare try to be soft with me. You don’t get to be the mother to them that I needed.”

Her hand falls back to her lap, defeated. “I didn’t choose this life,” she whispers, her voice barely audible above the breeze rustling through the grass. “I just… survived.”

The simplicity of her response lights a fire in my chest, anger flaring hot and immediate. She makes it sound like she had no agency, no choice in any of it. As if abandoning us was as inevitable as the tide.

“No,” I say, the word sharp enough to cut glass. “You got clean. You learned how to be a mother. You chose when to start trying.” I gesture toward the twins. “And you waited until we were old enough not to matter anymore.”

Rebecca flinches as if I’ve slapped her. For a moment, I glimpse the woman beneath the careful maternal performance, worn, watchful, carrying something heavy that never fully leaves her.

“You should rest; you need to save your strength,” she says after a long pause, nodding toward a nearby bench in the shade.

The abrupt shift in conversation throws me momentarily.

I move toward it slowly. Rebecca follows at a distance, respecting the invisible boundary I’ve drawn between us.

From here, I can see Igor on the porch, still watching with predatory patience.

His eyes track our movement, alert for any sign of trouble.

“Does he always follow you everywhere?” I ask, nodding slightly toward our captor as I sink onto the bench.

Rebecca sits at the opposite end, leaving plenty of space between us. “Yes,” she answers simply. “Always.”

She glances toward Igor, then back at me, her voice dropping even lower. “I managed to get a message to your father.”

The statement is so unexpected that for a moment, I can’t process it. “What?”

“I managed to get Mikhail’s phone,” she repeats, her eyes holding mine with sudden intensity. “When the time comes, you need to run.”

A harsh laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Run where? We’re in the middle of nowhere.” I gesture at the mountains visible in the distance, the dense forest surrounding the property. “There’s nothing but trees for miles.”

Rebecca doesn’t respond directly, just watches the twins as they abandon their flower collection and race toward the play structure. “Who wants to go on the swings?” she calls out, her voice transformed into the cheerful mother-tone she uses with them.

The twins shriek with delight, rushing toward the swing set at the far end of the yard. Rebecca stands, then turns to me with an expectant look. “Coming?”

I remain seated for a moment, trying to make sense of what she just told me. A message to Dad? It sounds like desperate fantasy, not a real plan. Yet something in her expression, a focused intensity beneath the maternal softness makes me hesitate to dismiss it entirely.