And so I have kept silent and stayed away for all of these years.
When you told me you had contacted Marley, I was terrified. I understand why you did what you did. I know you wanted to help. And I hadn’t told you anything about Boots. I was terrified that he would know and come after me or the girls. And Marley was still there with him.
What should I do? I waited in dread to hear of her murder. I hoped he wouldn’t find Maisey, since she carries your last name. I hoped he wouldn’t find me—or you—but I bought that gun, just in case.
And I began searching the internet, looking for news of my Marley. And I saw what she has become, despite her father and the upbringing she must have had. She makes music, Walter. She did more than just survive.
You want me to reach out to her, to try to talk to her. It is too late for that. Better to leave things as they are. If I were able to explain, if she were able to bring herself to forgive me for leaving her, it would be for what? To watch me die?
Death is a difficult companion. It is with me always now, demanding more attention than Boots ever did. This time I can’t run away. And I have no attention to spare for building new relationships or repairing old ones.
I have loved my daughters—both of them, the one I brought away with me and the one I left behind. I have loved you. And I’ve tried to make amends as I can for the places I went wrong, for the decisions I wish that I could change.
Was it worth it, to write out my story? To force myself back through the heartbreak and the fear and the guilt? I think so. I feel something that is very close to peace. Not with death, mind you. He’ll drag me from this life kicking. Neither have I come to any compassion or forgiveness for Boots.
But I can see my own choices from this new place, and that will make the dying a little easier.
Tomorrow I will shred these pages, to save you the pain of that task. The last wish of my heart is that I could make this easier for you. But I can’t. I suppose my death is part of your own journey and the choices you have made, and that, my dear Walter, is as close to wisdom as I am ever going to get.
Leah
Epilogue
One year after my mother’s death, the three of us—Marley, Elle, and I—go together to visit her grave. Dad comes here regularly, I know, but when we asked if he wanted to come today, he just smiled and shook his head.
I’m not much for graveside visiting—I don’t see the point.
My mother is present in every room of the house. She’s always in my head. Her grave is the last place in the world I feel close to her. But today is about some kind of symbolic gesture, as Elle puts it. And this was Elle’s idea.
The three of us stand in a row, spring sun on our bent heads, staring down at a grassy mound that is meant to represent, somehow, a woman who was never still, who never rested.
I feel awkward and self-conscious. All my grief and whatever else I’m supposed to be feeling is hanging out at some other grave, I guess. After I lay down my bouquet of flowers, I have nothing to do with my hands. I watch a parade of ants marching over the corner of her tombstone. Shift my weight to ease a sudden random pain in my right calf. Barely restrain myself from taking out my phone to see if Tony has messaged me.
As usual, Marley is the one to speak up first.
“Are we supposed to do something?” she asks. “Because if the idea was to stand here and look at the grave, we’ve done that. Can we go now?”
Elle glares at her. “It won’t hurt you to stand here for a few minutes.” Her gaze shifts to me. “Or you, either.”
Marley rolls her eyes at me. I grin back. All at once it feels like we’re the ones who are thirteen, being lectured by an adult.
But then the tears fill my daughter’s eyes and spill over and my heart twists in my chest.
“Aw, shit,” Marley says. “Shoot, I mean. What’s the matter, baby?”
Elle doesn’t answer, her face all screwed up tight with the effort to hold back tears.
I don’t need her to tell us. I am smart enough to figure it out.
“I’m sorry, Elle Belle,” I tell her, reaching for her hand. “Aunt Marley and I aren’t so good with emotions and symbolic gestures. We’ll behave. Only you need to tell us what we’re doing.”
Elle sniffles. “It’s just—I thought Grandma should know. That we found Aunt Marley. And that you’re with Tony. And that Dad didn’t win the court case.”
All at once it dawns on me what Elle is trying to get to.
Marley’s face mirrors my thoughts, and I know she sees it, too.
My mother—our mother—somehow found the strength to break free of the chains of her own family. Her mother, her grandmother, her mother-in-law, all were suppressed and beaten down by life and their husbands. Love for her daughters gave Mom the strength to break free from indoctrination and violence, to create a reality in which her daughters and her granddaughter stand free and independent today at her graveside.
Marley has cut all ties with Boots. And I am finally done with Greg.
The judge in our custody hearing chose not to change the parenting plan, which means I keep Elle. Greg can have her on weekends, but since she lives with me, he’d have to get her back to Kansas somehow. The judge says that’s his problem. She also says that if she ever hears a case presented to her again with evidence that Greg has hit Elle even once, she’ll deny him visitation.
He says she can’t do that, but she said, literally, word for word, “Watch me, Mr. Loftis. Go ahead, make my day.”
Elle will be going to see him this summer for a couple of weeks, but she says that’s okay. She wants to see Linda and her baby brother. She wants to see Greg.
And she wants her grandma to know all these things, only it’s weird standing over a grave talking to a dead person, especially when your mom and your aunt are acting like stupid teenagers. I’m trying to think how to fix it, prepared to go so far as to start talking out loud to my mother, even though I know she’d be more likely to hear me in her kitchen, when Marley solves the problem.
Right there in the middle of the empty graveyard on a Tuesday morning in June, she starts to sing.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me . . .
Her voice floats up, up into the blue sky, strong and true. I join in with harmony on the next lines.
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.
And then Elle, who has seldom been to a church but has managed to learn this song somewhere, somehow, despite all that, joins in. We link hands, standing in a circle, like maybe we’re performing a sacred rite.
And maybe we are, because it feels like we’ve summoned Mom to stand in the space between us.
With my eyes closed, I can see her, wearing the same sort of triumphant smile she wore every time I actually brought home an A on a school report card, the day I graduated from high school, from college, when my very first article was published in a newspaper.
All three of our voices rise triumphantly on the next verse, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear my mother’s voice is with us, adding a faint counterpoint.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.
The sound of our singing drifts off into the breeze, but we still stand there in the silence, linked by our hands and our hearts: three strong women with our lives ahead of us, one strong woman in the ground. I feel weirdly like we are trees, rooted in the soil my mother composted with her life.
“Are we good now?” Marley asks. Her voice sounds abrasive, so I know she’s just as moved by what happened as I am.
“Perfect,” Elle replies, letting go of my hand. “Anybody want ice cream?”
“Is ice cream your recipe for fixing everything? Like the Brits are with tea?”
“Pretty much. Don’t try and tell me you don’t eat ice cream when you’re mad or whatever. I saw you.”
I hear their feet swishing through grass as they move away from me, their voices already fading into background noise.