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Overview
A WHISPERING VOICE at the BACK of MY MIND REMINDS ME that I’VE BEEN THIS WAY for SOME TIME.
DEAD, THAT IS.
The dead have a very broad view of the living, of actions performed out of sight, of thoughts believed to be private. I would know. Losing both parents is a trial no child should endure, and Marina and Dylan have endured enough. They deserve the one thing I could never give them: a mother’s love.
A mother’s love, and the truth.
My children have believed a lie about me for years and years. After all this time I can still feel their hurt in my heart. But the tether holding me to them is frayed from years of neglect . . . and I have to find a way to make my confession before it snaps.
But when the truth comes out, what other beasts will I unleash?
“Why do we lie to the children?” someone asked me once.
“To protect them,” I answered.
How terrible it is that they need protection from me.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781401689629 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Christian Publishing |
| Publication date: | 12/19/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Sales rank: | 874,978 |
| File size: | 916 KB |
About the Author
Erin Healy is the best-selling co-author of Burn and Kiss (with Ted Dekker) and an award-winning editor for numerous best-selling authors. She has received wide acclaim for her novels Never Let You Go, The Baker's Wife, House of Mercy, and Afloat. She and her family live in Colorado. Facebook: erinhealybooks Twitter: @erinhealybooks
Read an Excerpt
Motherless
By ERIN HEALY
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2014 Erin HealyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4016-8962-9
CHAPTER 1
That SUV falls for years.
Like a burst of lightning I'm back at the twisted fence, pouncing on it, gripping the strained wire links, watching. Disbelieving. Terrified. This moment is so different from what I expected when the sun rose this morning and I made my way here. I rattle the fence with all my strength and have less power than a gust of wind. The barrier doesn't budge.
The metal is solid and real beneath my fingers. I can feel the pain of it cutting into my joints. The world resists me. Each raindrop strikes me like hail that strips a tree of its leaves. Within seconds I've been pounded off the fence. I have to seek shelter. But first, I have to watch.
The Chevy dives headfirst into the excavation, where everything will soon be laid to rest in a casket of concrete. Hard-hatted workers still finishing their workday scatter. The vehicle finally hits the bottom. It bounces off the exposed net of crosshatched rebar and tumbles twice, the ground sledgehammering the cab.
The final, fatal, upside-down impact sends a shock wave that cuts me in half, and for a long minute, as the flattened SUV stills, the only thing I can do is try to breathe. Yes, the dead do breathe, just in a different dimension. Right now, it takes all my concentration.
A whispering voice at the back of my mind reminds me that I've been this way for some time. Dead, that is. The voice is fear, and it caresses my neck with cold secrets. Death is timeless and irreversible. It begins its work on the human heart long before it strikes its final physical blow. And by then, we're conditioned to hardly notice it.
For a sacred moment there's nothing but the sounds of my wheezing and the pattering of rain drumming on car tops, splatting in its own puddles, pinging the undercarriage of a destroyed car, a crushed life. The rain is shredding me to ribbons, causing pain without injury. I crawl between an outhouse and a piece of plywood tilted against it.
Gawkers are collecting on the sidewalk where they're not supposed to be. The especially stupid ones play with their own lives by leaning into the chasm opened up by the truck and the distended fence. The merely careless risk their electronics in the downpour for the sake of a picture or video. One phone slips out of its owner's hand and plummets into the site. How can these people value their own lives so cheaply? They can't see what's right in front of them, and they're going to call themselves witnesses. What do they know about what happened here today, really? They'll tell stories that might seem true but aren't even close, and no one will be able to point out the falsehood.
But even I feel confused about what just happened. The flimsy pink shoes jutting out of the twisted links look like a lie. Or at least a terrible misunderstanding. I crawl out from under the shelter and reach for them, thinking to pry them out, but I can't even wiggle the soft soles. My fingers are like floppy feathers trying to jack up a steel beam. I leave the shoes to rot and walk away with nothing, staggering under the pelting rain toward the shelter of a low awning on the other side of the street. The brick building embraces me.
The man in the beret who pointed out the work site is walking away under his umbrella. Did he know what would happen there?
The dead have a very broad view of the living, of actions performed out of sight, of thoughts believed to be private. Across the pit, someone standing at the front window of a store is praying. Fifteen cars behind the red light, a nurse has left her car door open and is looking for someone who knows the way down into the site. In the deli on the corner, a crane operator who stopped for dinner at shift's end has left half a sandwich on the plate and is rushing back to work. Behind me, where the street is jammed with people who want a good story to tell over drinks tonight, an off-duty highway patrolman in sopping wet street clothes is showing his badge to drivers and giving them instructions.
Eighty miles away, surviving family members are watching TV in a beach house, unaware that the curtain is rising on a terrible drama in which they will have to take center stage.
My children. Almost adults but not quite. Independent but not self-sufficient. Capable but in need of resources.
Who will take care of them now that both their parents are gone?
Who will tell them what happened here?
Raindrops fall from the awning onto my protruding feet, striking like stones. The pain is a living thing.
I've spent a lot of years thinking about what it would have been like to apologize to my kids courageously. Face-to-face, and with a happy ending. My fantasy looks like this: I'd unveil my secrets over cups of strong coffee, and they'd listen, and understand. We'd exchange weak smiles and awkward hugs all around. They'd get answers to their questions. I might eventually get mercy.
As I said, it's a fantasy.
The rain tapers off. It's safe to venture out. The skies are gray and night is near. Lights from cars and streetlamps and windows flicker on, resisting darkness. My weak hands smack a mailbox, a skinny tree growing out of the sidewalk, a newspaper stand, a parking meter. I make no sounds, leave no mark.
My children have believed a lie about me for years and years and years. After all this time I can still feel their hurt in my heart. The tether holding me to them is an old rope frayed by years of neglect. I have to find a way to make my confession before it snaps. What I did was unforgivable, but my own pardon is beside the point. My children deserve the truth, and more. They deserve what I could never give them: a mother's love. I want that much for them even at this late date. Because some part of us always needs mothering no matter how old we are.
My plodding walk quickly becomes a jog fueled by a new goal. I turn west and break into a run.
CHAPTER 2By car the Rincon Point beach community is about an hour and a half northwest of LA, but I arrive on foot, unaware of how much time has passed or which route I took to get here.
The night sky is clear and sharp, and the scents of recent rain are almost as strong as the sea salt. The tiny, gated neighborhood is a quiet combination of year-round residents, snowbirds, and vacation renters. And surfers. Its crescent of rocky beach, rich with stones and real estate, juts into the Pacific just far enough to catch good, consistent waves.
By day dolphins leap through the surf. At night glittering oil derricks light up the ocean horizon.
The Becker house itself is a money pit, a modified (and modified, and modified some more) cottage first built in the fifties. It hasn't sucked up cash because it's a problem, but because it is a disappointment. The house has failed to be a home no matter how many improvements are made, no matter how luxurious the finishing touches. It is a showcase house. A facade.
This is only one of many reasons why I hate it. But it's my kids' home. And it's full of windows into their lives.
A wide clay-tiled porch leads to this door. Moonlight shines down on it through a redwood frame dense with bougainvillea vines that cast lacy shadows on everything. A small circle of light over the front door illuminates the three wide steps. Marina always remembers to turn the lights on.
She's responsible, capable. Twenty going on forty. My beautiful girl. Came out of the womb like that and will probably have her own funeral arrangements in order before she dies of a wise old age. And you know what? She will be that way whether I succeed or fail. She doesn't need me in the same way her brother does.
I know with a sudden, strange awareness that my sixteen-year-old son is upstairs reading poetry books that he has secreted away in the crannies of his room, because he needs some area of his life to be hidden from his sister's hovering, protective eye. It's not that she'd object to a few poems, it's that he wants the poetry to be his and his alone, even if thousands of people have had similar experiences reading them. Some things are just too sacred to be discussed with others.
There's also the fact that very few sixteen-year-old guys can make loving poetry look cool. Dylan prefers the people who know him to think of him as a brainy computer builder, gamer, and programmer. A quirky recluse who is too genius to leave his house.
I step onto the porch, which should be ocean-breeze cool, but the burnt-orange tiles are as hot as glowing coals. A soft hiss rises up beneath my feet, along with something like stage-trick fog. It seems like a warning, so I jump away and watch the smoky substance rise. It forms a barrier between me and the door before it finally dissipates. Of course. This house will be no different from the inanimate objects on the streets of LA—the fence, the newspaper box, the streetlamp. I can't turn a doorknob any more easily than I can pick up a pair of shoes. The door will deny me entrance. I'll have to find another way in.
The voices of Marina and her friend Jade come to me from the back patio, a partially enclosed area that overlooks the private beach.
"How come you never talk about her?" Jade is asking.
"He never talks about her. I've tried enough times."
My daughter's presence outside saves me. I circumvent the strangeness on the porch and go across the lawn to the brick footpath, which connects the front porch to the back patio. The path follows the front of the house and borders a small garden that Marina has planted and tended. Without the bougainvillea to shade them, the sweet peas, the snapdragons, the matilija poppies all glow in moonlight.
Tonight the light shines down on the memorial stone that sits among the flowers. A simple plaque mounted on granite:
In Memory of Misty Wife, Mother, Friend 1971–1997
At the back of the house, a low wall topped with an acrylic windbreak surrounds the patio. A wraparound bench holds several potted plants, interesting pieces of driftwood, and dozens of seashells, whole and broken. A low gate with a simple latch grants access to the beach. In the far corner, Dylan's surfboard leans against the wall next to a couple of spares. Little pools of rainwater on the sandy wood slats reflect the wall-mounted floodlights. Overhead, the sunshades are retracted on their rolls and the stars shine down.
Marina and Jade sit on cushioned wicker chairs around an outdoor dining table. Marina has a dark beauty that is unapproachable when she wants it to be. Those heavily lined midnight eyes, the molasses hair that sits on her shoulders like a helmet, the velvet brows, and the Michelangelo mouth can all speak as one without uttering a word. She uses her fierce good looks to select which few people can have access to her heart.
In spite of her name, Jade is beach-bunny plain by comparison, blond and tan and dime-a-dozen pretty. She sits with her head down, half listening to Marina, half tending to something on her phone.
"... says there isn't much to talk about," Marina is saying, her back to me. Her bare feet are propped up on the wraparound bench, and she's sipping natural soda straight from the can. "Mom committed suicide before Dylan even learned how to roll over."
Jade's eyes widen and abandon the phone. "She killed herself?"
Marina shrugs. "I guess she had a condition. A mental illness."
"So that's where Dylan gets his panic stuff from?" Jade asks.
"I don't know."
"Why not? Doesn't your dad know for sure?"
"As you already pointed out, we don't talk about it. What difference would it make?"
"But isn't that kind of thing genetic? If my head were screwed up, I'd want to know everything I could about why."
Marina's attention swivels toward the house, where the living room is bright but empty. She's looking for her brother, not knowing he's engrossed in a poem that's inspiring him with a new game concept. She lowers her voice.
"Dylan's not screwed up, okay? He's actually really high-functioning."
"I just meant it's a good idea to know your medical history."
"He worries about enough already. What good would it do if he started thinking he was his own worst enemy?"
"Doesn't he already?" Jade frowns at her phone. "Suicide is so sad. Aren't you even a tiny bit curious?"
Marina takes another drink and stares at the dark waters.
Jade sniffs. "Your dad still wears his wedding ring. He doesn't even date. You'd think he's still madly in love with her."
"Jade!" Marina laughs. She pulls her feet off the bench and leans in to the table toward her friend. "You have a sick crush on my dad!"
"No, I just think it's weird he doesn't talk about your mom. If I were crazy in love with a dead person I'd—"
"Well, you're not, or you'd know how much it hurts. Him and everyone else."
Marina's laugh is gone. Her warning is clear, but Jade's head must be full of air.
"C'mon, Marina. You told me you don't even have a picture of her."
My daughter's back stiffens and she pushes her soda aside. It's true, what Jade said about the pictures—and the letters, and the mementos, all of it—and the reason they are gone pains me too. It's nobody's business, though. Definitely not Jade's.
Still, Marina lets her off the hook. Sort of.
"When do you leave for Jakarta?" Marina asks.
"Three weeks from Monday." Jade grins. "If I decide to go."
"If? I thought it was all set."
"I don't know. You're not going. I still have to come up with that last payment. I met a guy."
"A guy." Marina scoffs. "You'd give up the trip of a lifetime for a guy?"
"I don't know if I'd call sleeping on dirt floors and helping to vaccinate snotty kids 'the trip of a lifetime.'"
"No, you probably wouldn't."
"He runs an auto shop up in Goleta. Says business has been really great and he can give me some work. Worst-case scenario, I'll scrape together enough for the last bill. But who knows? If he and I click, if the money's good, maybe I'll stay."
"Yeah, stay for all those broken-down cars. What's a few kids on the other side of the world?"
Jade reaches out across the table and gives Marina a playful shove. "You're the one who really cares about that sort of thing. It should be you on that plane."
"Too late. No money. Work. You know."
"No, I don't. Your dad's loaded. Unlike my delinquent parent, who dares to call herself my mother just because we live at the same address."
"You assume a lot. And your mom tries."
"Then Dylan must be your real excuse. Are you turning into an agoraphobe too? Seriously, Marina. He's sixteen, old enough to snap out of it so you can have a life. When's he going to get a job? Even a driver's license would be an improvement!"
Marina sighs. "He gets paid for some of his computer stuff. And if you had a brother with special needs maybe you'd understand."
The problem as I see it isn't that Jade doesn't have a brother, but that Marina doesn't have a mother. She's had to be both mother and sister since she was three. She has special needs even she doesn't know about.
The gate on the enclosed patio is shut. I stand there, as invisible to those girls as I am to everyone else, and place my hand on the Plexiglas. My fingertips flatten against the surface, but when I lift them away, my palm leaves no mark. No fleeting moisture, no oily smudge.
The sound of a car pulling into the driveway at the front of the house reaches my ears. Immediately I know who it is. Police officers, arriving with terrible news. I didn't get here soon enough.
"There's Dad." Marina pushes off the table and stands, blessedly ignorant for just one minute more, and collects her empty soda can. "I'm going to warm up some dinner for him."
"Doesn't he know how to operate a microwave?" Jade teases.
"Is that your way of offering to do it?" Marina grins and waggles her eyebrows before going inside. I make note of her smile and wonder how long it will be before I see it again.
I want to save her from this crushing blow, so I try to call her name. "Marina!" But my voice seizes up the way it does in nightmares, straining and soundless.
The black-soled steps of authorities drum a death march on the red-tiled porch. See, already I've messed this up. I should have gone to Sara first, then found a way to get her here. She could have been here when the kids got the news.
There was a time when Sara Rochester cared for my children just because I needed her to. She might have even loved them. I never asked. She never said. We didn't have time before the suicide.
Maybe there's time now.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Motherless by ERIN HEALY. Copyright © 2014 Erin Healy. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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