Page 82 of Pages of Amber
Amber glared at the finger her mom pointed upwards. “I’m not a dog. Stop commanding me! I’ll stop screaming when you give me an answer. Or you don’t have one, do you? Are you telling me you’ve been making me suffer all this time for no reason?”
Somehow, the thought made her angrier. Her mother threw her arms and marched into the living room. Amber felt crazed as she paced after her. Her chest hadn’t stopped burning and she felt uncentered. Her head throbbed, her throat ached but she wasn’t letting this go.
“Are you scared? Is that it? You don’t have a silent puppet you can kick into the corner and ignore until it's playtime anymore?”
“Don’t paint me to the monster here. I was never the monster.” Her mother gritted.
“You are!” Amber screamed. “And I was blind to it the entire time. I thought I needed to bring you back. I wanted the mom who danced with me in the kitchen, the one who gave me kisses and read me bedtime stories. I wanted the person you were when Dad was still here.”
Something shifted in her mom’s face. The shoulder of her gown slipped as she shot her finger wildly in Amber’s face. “Don’t you dare bring him into this. You’ve done more than enough. Everything that happened was your fault.”
“You keep blaming me, but I have no idea what for. You don’t want to hear about Dad? Well, I didn’t want an emotionally unavailable Mom who hated me and acted like I was the worst thing to happen to her. We don’t get to choose what we want! You taught me that. You don’t want it thrown in your face? Tough! At least Dad isn’t here anymore, or he would have been the disappointed one.”
The scream that tore through the air wasn’t Amber’s this time. She stumbled back as her mother advanced. Dottie’s gasp came from behind her, her hands clutched to her chest as she watched mother and daughter, unsure of getting in their middle. Her mom stared daggers into her as red bled into the whites of her eyes.
“I said don’t talk about him.” The warning this time was clear and unmistakable.
A pinch of fear rose in Amber’s chest, but she had lived with the feeling for years. It was easy to ignore.
“Why not? He was my father and I never get to talk about him. It’s like he never even existed. No pictures of him, no clothes that smell like him. You brought us to this bare, empty house. You erased every trace of him!”
Her mom’s eyes flashed. “It was painful! It was too much to even think about him. You think it’s easy to look at you when I see him? Everything about you, the greenhouse, that stupid school, those stupid ballet costumes. I hate everything.”
A fissure cracked in Amber’s chest. One of relief or heartbreak, she wasn’t sure. “Then why didn’t you say anything? Why would you let me keep going? Why did you want me to keep suffering through everything when you couldn’t? Why, Mom?”
“Because you killed him. You killed my husband!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HER MOTHER’S WORDS RAN on a loop, bashing around in her head and yelling at the top of its lungs. The ache it caused pulsed beneath her eyelids along with her tears.
Their conversation had begun like an old roller coaster stuttering to a start as its passengers clung on with anticipation and sinking stomachs. The climb, slow and arduous at first, had hit a high point with her mother’s last words. Amber feared that when they continued down the tracks, there would be no excitement or wide smiles. Only a wreck left as they plunged below.
“Why would you say that?” Her voice was broken to her own ears.
“Why wouldn’t I? You want the truth, don’t you? Here’s your truth!” Where Amber stood frozen, her mother was hysterical. Her voice pitched higher than Amber had ever heard it. Her hair had left its chignon bun somewhere between their abandoned dinner and now, flying wildly around her red face. Her mom shook as she pointed an accusing finger at Amber.
“How could I love you when you took the love of my life from me? You took my husband. You killed him! You’re asking for love? You never deserved it.”
The words hit her with a thud, spearing her heart. Amber clutched her chest, sure she could feel blood trickling from it.
“I didn’t,” She tried to defend but her words were small. They were blunt and useless against her mom’s anger and unleashed grief. “He was sick. I didn’t kill him.”
She vividly remembered her last memory with her father. How she had grasped onto his frail arm, unaware they were in his last moments. She had only been eleven years old but she loved her father, had hung onto his every word, missed him with every breath.
How could her mother accuse her of the unthinkable?
“He could have lived if it weren’t for you. You always wanted everything done your way. We spoiled you and he paid for it,” her mom continued, her words interlaced with heartbreaking sobs. Her pain leaked through reddened eyes fixed on Amber. “All he needed was rest. The surgery had been scheduled. We had the best doctors lined up. In a matter of days, he would have made it. He would have still been here.”
Her mother clutched her head, her hands sinking into her wild hair. Her shoulders hunched in and for the first time, Amber saw her mother look her age. Her eyes were glazed as though reliving the memories. “I begged him not to go. I did. But you… you cried and begged even more and how could he do anything but give you what your selfish heart desired? He followed you to that cursed recital. ‘It’s my first ever performance, don’t you want to watch me?’ you asked him. All he needed was rest and you wouldn’t even give him such a simple thing.”
No. Amber sobbed along with her mother.
That wasn’t true. An image came to her mind. A memory of her father. Pale, weak, drawn but his smile wide as could be when she climbed off the stage and ran to him. He had struggled to pull her into his lap and the kind nurse who had accompanied him had helped her join him in the wheelchair, then insisted that they leave. Amber had sat cuddled to her father the entire ride as she babbled about the performance and how she had been scared but seeing him there had made her so happy. Her father had tugged her closer, told her she would be a star one day, that he loved her and he was proud of her.
“It was the worst thing getting a phone call that said he was slipping away. My husband wasn’t responding anymore and the machines couldn’t pick up a heartbeat. What do you mean he’s dying? When I left, he was fine. He was smiling and happy that he would get to go home with his family soon. That he could return to doing the things he loved.” Her mother gasped, her hands tearing at the collar of her dress as though she couldn’t breathe. Dottie ran over to her side to keep her standing but she hardly registered it. “The drive back to town was the longest two hours of my life. Sitting in that car with nothing to do but pray, hope, wonder. Only to find you at his bedside, slumbering while he slipped away. You were wearing a costume and I wanted to rip it. I wanted to believe he hadn’t gone when I’d asked him not to.”
Amber remembered the wail that had scared her awake. She had thought it was a hospital alarm until she’d seen her mother fall to her knees, her cries echoing in the room. The nurses had rushed to her side while others took Amber away as they tried everything they could.
