Page 119 of The Same Backward as Forward

A cloak, I realize, that resembles the red one my mother wears now.

“It could be worse,” my mother murmurs.

“What could?”

She turns off the flashlight, sinking us once more into darkness. “I know that you love her, Toby. I know that in your heart, that baby is already yours, and believe me when I say that itgrieves me to tear you from your child.” She reaches for me again. “From your love.”

I step back. “You don’t have the power,” I say, my voice vicious and low.

“Had I more power, things would be different. Someday, my son, perhaps the deck will be stacked in my favor—but not today. If you stay here, if you refuse to remain a ghost, I will not be able to protect you—or the ones you love.”

I would like to think that I am a better man now than I used to be, but the idea of there being any kind of threat to Hannah or the baby makes me want to burn the world down. “Protect them,” I demand, taking a step into my mother’s personal space, “from what?”

She does not step back. “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The biggest threats are the ones that no one sees coming. If you love your Hannah, if you would truly do anything to protect her, you must leave.”

I have never excelled at doing what I am told. “Or I could hold a press conference. Announce my miraculous survival—and yours.”

She is not the one holding all the cards here.

“Dear boy,” my mother says, patting my cheek the way I can remember her patting it when I was young, “you would be dead before you made a single call.”

Dead.Her intonation on that word is absolutely chilling—not a promise or a threat.An inevitability.

“Who are you?” I growl. The mother I knew was the ultimate planner of parties, my father’s confidante, his one true love. She was not dangerous.Shewas not the one who plotted and planned.

She was a powerful man’s pretty wife.

“I have to go.” The rain stops the moment my mother says the words, as if on her command. “And so, my son, do you.”

Chapter 43

I walk to the hospital, my mind a mess of voices. My mother’s. Jackson’s. Hannah’s.

If you love your Hannah, if you would truly do anything to protect her—

You could still keep that promise of yours. Hold on like hell.

Someday, son, you’re going to look back on this moment—

I hated you until I loved you, and I will love you until the end.

The maternity ward is secure, but it’s late, and I have my ways. By the time I slip into Hannah’s room, the only thing I know for certain is that I have to see her.

And there she is, exhausted but awake, alive and well and holding her daughter.Ourbaby girl.

Hannah’s eyes meet mine. I can read her like a book. She wasn’t sure that I would be back. She is in love with her baby. She is strong enough to survive even if I leave, but, more than anything, she wants me to stay.

I make my way toward her. Lying on her bedside table, there’s a birth certificate. Hannah has only partially filled it out. The last name—Grambs—tells me that my mother was not bluffing when she claimed to know the father’s identity, when she told me that Ricky Grambs was a pathetic kind of man.

Hannah hasn’t chosen a first name for the baby yet, but there’s a middle name already filled out.

“Kylie.” I see immediately what Hannah has done. “Like Kaylie, minus one letter.”

“An homage,” Hannah tells me. “I was forbidden from anything else.”

By Kaylie, I think.In your dream.

Hannah has never said it, but I know that as practical and as no-nonsense as she can be, a very big part of her has always believed that her dream of Kaylie wasn’t just a dream. And I cannot help thinking about the promise that Kaylie extracted from Hannah, a promise to dance, a promise to live life with no regrets.