Page 7 of Penance (Rising From the Ashes #2)

Lily

I fell in love with the rain when I was six.

I never noticed it before until my mom pointed it out.

It was my sixth birthday, but Mom and I were too poor for things like parties, and cake, and presents. So she gifted me the rain. It was also the day I learned she was an addict—not of drugs, not yet anyway—but of love.

My dad—he wasn’t around much, but that didn’t stop Mom from loving him.

She accepted all the scraps he gave her and begged for more.

He loved her in his own way. It just wasn’t enough.

I watched it break her piece by piece, and that year, I watched him break the final one.

It still didn’t stop her from loving him with all the broken pieces, though.

Although he was absent for most of my life, he always made it a point to show up on my birthday, and Mom knew that too. She looked forward to that day more than I did.

Our house was nothing to look at. It was a two-bedroom trailer that was better off being condemned than saved, but each year, my mom would spend the whole day making it look nice on the eve of my birthday.

And when the house was all clean, she would start on herself.

I would sit on the bathroom counter, watching the red lipstick slide across her lips.

She never wore makeup, not unless she was going to see him.

I think she thought it would make him stay if she were just pretty enough, but my dad knew she was beautiful. It just wasn’t in his nature to stay.

We were going through the routine on the morning of my birthday.

I was entranced with the way the red seemed to transform the confidence of her smile, and she must have noticed me staring because her blue eyes turned to mine, a brightness in them that was only ever there on the days she was going to see my dad.

I recognize what it was now after seeing it so many other times.

It was a high from the anticipation of the hit she was about to take.

She looked at me with that smile on her lips and asked the question I’d been waiting for my whole life. All six years of it. “Do you want to wear some, Lily?”

My mouth fell open, and I nodded my head eagerly. Back then, I wanted to be just like her, but life has a way of shattering the pictures we create of our heroes.

Her smile never faded as she took my chin between her fingers and said, “Purse your lips like this.”

I did what she said, mimicking her, but just as her hand was about to swipe the lipstick across my lips, the phone rang in the kitchen. She let go of my face, capping the lid over it and patting my leg. “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

Disappointment flooded me, but I nodded and waited as she walked out of the room. Thirty seconds later, she answered the phone, and thirty seconds after that, the last piece of her broke.

A loud crash came from the kitchen where the house phone sat, followed by my mom’s cry. I jumped down from the counter, running to her as fast as my little legs would take me.

“Mommy,” I called, rushing through the hallway, but she didn’t answer. My heart pitter-pattered inside my chest. That was the first time I’d ever known real fear.

The sobs reached me at the same time my feet hit the kitchen floor, and I drew up short, my eyes opening wide and darting around as I took in the scene before me.

A chair was overturned, glass shattered all around it, but it was the sight of the blood that I couldn’t pull my attention away from.

Three drops. That’s all there was, but it was enough.

As I stared at it, through the haze of fear and the sobs echoing in my ears, an errant thought struck me.

The blood was the same color as her lipstick, and from that day forward, I would remember how my dad always made her bleed—even when it was just through her lipstick.

“Lily.” My name was a broken plea on her lips, pulling me from my haze. I snapped my gaze away from the blood to where my mom sat with her back against the kitchen wall, the phone still cradled in one hand. The other hand was bleeding, blood dripping from her palm down her wrist.

“Mommy,” I cried, and the tears dripped down my face the same way her blood dripped from her arm.

“Come here, baby,” she said, patting the ground beside her. I took a step forward, but my feet were bare. “It’s okay, baby. Just go around it. I’ll clean it up in a little bit.”

I nodded, my nose burning from all the tears. Picking my way around the glass, I worked my way to her, and she watched me the whole time with a blankness in her eyes I had never seen before. It scared me more than the blood.

When I reached her, I slid down the wall, and she wrapped her good hand around my shoulder, pulling me to her. She stroked my hair in long strokes, never saying a word until I thought my chest might burst from all the questions I was burning to ask.

“He’s not coming, is he, Mommy?” I asked at last when the burning became too much.

Her only answer was a sob, but it was enough.

Even at six years old, I knew what it meant, and it changed the course of my relationship with my mom.

Somehow, she was no longer holding me. Instead, I held her.

With her head in my lap, I stroked her hair and told her everything would be okay.

It was my birthday that he was missing, but he had broken her.

I comforted her like a parent should comfort a child, and I’ve often wondered if things would’ve been different if I had never offered her that comfort—if I had forced her to be the parent instead.

We sat on the floor until my butt went numb, and when her sobs subsided, she said something I’ll never forget.

Raindrops had just started to fall outside, hitting the roof in a steady patter, when she lifted her hand, brushed her thumb against my cheek, and said, “Never fall in love, Lily. It’s a penance we all pay but a sin we’ll never be forgiven for.”

I didn’t understand what she meant when I was six, but eventually, I figured it out.

She fell asleep shortly after that, but I stayed up, listening to the rain—a gift to me—because I didn’t have to cry alone when the sky was crying with me.