Page 43 of The Master
“Mona’s back.”
The world stopped. My heart, my breathing, everything in me and around me, came to a screeching halt as I processed those two words.
Mona Wadsworth. The woman who I’d considered my mother the first thirteen years of my life. The woman who’d broken Mom’s heart as well as mine. Who’d walked away and never looked back. Never reached out.
Never wanted me in the first place.
“What…” I had to stop and clear my throat. “What do you mean she’s back?”
I hoped the question hadn’t come out as harsh as it’d sounded in my head, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had. Mona’s betrayal and abandonment was still an open wound, no matter how much I tried to hide it.
“She came here yesterday afternoon to talk. She’s been back in the city for a few days, trying to work up the courage to talk to us.”
I couldn’t tell what Mom was thinking or feeling, and I didn’t like it any more than I liked the fact that Mona wanted to talk tous.
“She didn’t know if we were still here, but figured she had to start somewhere.” Mom looked down at her hands. “She wants to make amends.”
“Amends?” I scoffed. “She’s been gone for ten years without a card or word, and then she shows up here like she can just say she’s sorry and fix everything? That’s if she’s even sorry in the first place.”
“She’s dying, Ashlee.”
The words were without inflection, but the pain I saw in Mom’s eyes was more than enough for me to know how she still felt about Mona. The anger and hurt I’d tried so hard to set aside came rushing back, overpowering the shock of Mom’s statement.
“And you believe her?”
The pressure of Nate’s fingers increased, but I didn’t look at him. I needed the truth, and I wasn’t sure Mom was ready to face it. I couldn’t let Mona destroy us after we’d worked so hard to survive.
“If you saw her, you’d understand,” Mom said. “She’s practically skin and bones. She looks twenty years older than she should, and even the smallest movement causes her pain. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so close to death myself, if I hadn’t experienced all of the pain from the cancer and my treatments, maybe I would think she was faking it. It’s real. She’s dying.”
“From what?”
“Easy,le soleil,” Nate murmured in my ear as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
I shook my head. He was trying to help, but I didn’t need help with this. I already knew how I felt and what I wanted to do.
“That’s her story to tell, but I can say there’s nothing anyone can do for her.”
“I won’t saygood, because I’m not a horrible person, but I can’t say that I feel any pity or sympathy for her.”
Maybe that did make me a horrible person, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have compassion for the person who’d left Mom and me to deal with years of chemotherapy and radiation.
“She wants to make peace with us before the end, and she doesn’t have long.”
Mom wanted to do it. I could see it on her face. Mom wanted to tell Mona that it was okay, that a decade of pain could be brushed under the rug just because she was sick.
“I can’t believe you’re considering it!” I let go of Nate’s hand and stood up, too full of everything I was feeling to stay seated. “I can’t believe you actually want to forgive her!”
Mom got to her feet, her hands on her hips in a stance I knew all too well from my childhood. When Mom stood like that, it meant she wasn’t going to budge.
“She’s truly sorry for how everything happened.”
My laugh was brittle, bitter. “Wake up, Mom. The only reason she came crawling back now is because she wants something. She says she wants forgiveness, but let’s be real for a moment. If she was truly sorry, it wouldn’t have taken a fatal diagnosis for her to come here.”
“I was angry too at first, but she means it. She sees how wrong she was to leave the way she did. You can’t understand what it’s like, being so close to death. All of the regrets and things left unsaid. Sometimes that’s what it takes for us to be honest with ourselves.”
I shook my head again, tears burning my eyes. “You’re right, Mom. I haven’t been close to death. But what I have been close to is being an orphan. And it was because thatbitchleft me as much as she left you. I’m sure having someone fall out of love with you is awful, but you, of all people, know what it’s like to have parents disown you. How could you forgive someone who did that to her daughter? Toyourdaughter? She was supposed to be mymother!”
Nate stood behind me now, but he didn’t touch me, and I was grateful for it. I wasn’t sure I could take anyone touching me right now.
