In the commotion, I’ve forgotten about group today. In the glorious activities leading to last night, I meant to call her, verify her mood, and catch a glimpse of how she’s holding up without me. She’s always passing quick, irritated messages to Angel Mae, annoyed with my inquisitions as they disrupt her time with her lipstick collection. The truth of my conundrums hit me in the face. I need to steer my focus back on Mom, as I recondition my approach with Alec, salvaging and conserving what I’ve embarked on with him.
But I’ve always been short on balance. I prioritize better than I can equate, and this week, Alec took precedence. I’m left speechless. From the day I was born, Mom’s always been my lead.
“Can I come closer?” he asks.
Alec re-emerges in my vision, almost as hopeless and tortured as the thoughts that carried me away. Does he know I’m in the dark with him? My heart clenches. I feel dismal and overwhelmed by the intricacies of our liaisons.
Say yes
, I bid myself, because, of course, I know it’s not a dead-end path we’re on. It’s just avenues opening in the distance, laying down the groundwork so Alec and I may merge together. I look to his mouth, the heavenly lips that paradoxically solidify and strengthen me, rooting me as I melt in his embraces.
Yes! Yes, of course I want you closer
, I cry, barely sotto-voce because it was only in my head. Alec waits, seemingly faint, and surely I match his lightheaded stance.
“Caroline?”
I blink. Alec’s eyes narrow, and his gaze shifts to the door behind me.
“Caroline?”
I collect my bearings. I’m so lost in the realization that I thought the feminine voice calling my name was Alec’s.
“What’s the matter?” he asks over my head, confirming Sofie’s entrance.
For a second, I shake out of the clasp that Alec’s existence has on me, not aspiring to squander the compulsion of telling him we’re still okay.
I want you,
I told him before he dropped my clothes to the floor in this very room, and I still want him, maybe even more so.
“Caroline?” Sofie tries again.
I think the Earth quaked a little. I shudder, paling from Sofie’s unnervingly blank expression. I’m slightly shaky on my legs, wobbly all of a sudden, and my hands are first to ice over.
“What?” I croak. “What is it?”
With those words, a vast disconnect ensues. My hearing is fuzzy; blurring a little like it’s something I can change the tremble to. Likewise, my head feels heavier, but I have a vague feeling that my body has disappeared, as though I’m invisible. Nothing will support my thoughts as my brain rushes to process the room and its people, sensing a break down. I didn’t ask for tears, and yet, here they are, a foolish, inexplicable upwell commencing. The bob in my throat is erratic, moving up and down heavily, burdening and choking the voice and ragged breaths that are caught there.
“Did… did you call home today?” Sofie murmurs. Sofia-Marie never whispers.
The tears are torrid, scalding my cheeks as I contemplate sitting. I really must sit. I think I want to curl up on the floor, actually. Maybe where my skirt and top are still in a puddle. I could drag the bedsheets over me and curl under them as a violent pour of wreckage falls around me. There’s something so unkind and horrid loaded up and ready to be propelled, and it’s heartlessly aimed at me.
When
did
I call home? It wasn’t this morning, that’s for sure. It was yesterday, before painting my nails and leaving for the art gallery. It was definitely yesterday—yesterday morning.
Oh my God.
Over twenty-four hours have passed since I reached out for an update. Twenty-four hours! That’s a lifetime.
What have you done, Caroline?
I know how much can happen in that span of time, so what was I thinking? How irresponsibly distracted have I been out here in Maine, here with Sofie, here with Alec?
Mommy.
Chapter Twenty-Six
My name is a wake-up call before the Titanic sinks.
“Caroline?”
Mommy
, my broken spirit calls, risking what’s intact, and finally all the pieces drop.
Nothing dilutes this fear except anger. I’m angry at myself and Sofie. I’m angry at my father for encouraging her, at Jay for introducing Alec to her, and at Alec for not minding his business when Sofie’s laptop blared a screensaver of us.
I’m aware of the cautious movement around me, the sounds of the outside world bleeding into the bedroom. They fuse into a solid, monotonic drone.
“Caroline?”
A voice jolts my heart rate to a peak.
“Caroline!”
Another fleeting spike in my lifeline brings me back to present, but I blank over.
How could I forget my mother?
“Care, please.”
“Love, sweetheart. Say something.”
Things are in slow motion, but I’m conscious that I haven’t actually collapsed. I gaze numbly at the two figures before me, from Alec’s alarmed face to Sofie’s woeful one. Every passing second, their disquiet apprehension surpasses the other.
I blink, relieving my burning eyes somewhat and smear the tears across my cheeks. Hoping to stumble upon my voice, I swallow.
“What did she do?” I whimper.
My mind flits through the most unpleasant accounts it’s ever known: narratives and reports of people gone astray, and the impossible climb out of darkness. Years of stories from group block my reason and wits. I empty the basin, picking through sediments for clues pointing to which account is my mother’s. Which chronicle will I have to share with Amy Walsh or Jed Rosenberg and Dr. Toussaint? What will my father and I be forced to live through again—encumbering us? I’ll take it. I’ll saddle with all of it. Just let my mother brave living. Please let her exist.
I find strength to face the threat head on. “Is she okay? Tell me.”
Sofie takes a step forward as Alec does, too. I recoil, my hand emerging and coming up between Alec and me.
“No. Don’t, please.” I can’t put up with him touching me.
Alec’s stunned with horror as Sofie gently prods him out from my vision. She knows. Sofie’s privy to everything about me, and she’s clued-up to what I need, and it helps somewhat as I try to collect myself. I need to think about myself if I’m to proceed watching over my mother. As heartbreaking as it is for me to wound Alec, it’s also the way it has to be.
“Caroline,” says Sofie. “Amalia checked herself in.”
I register the news.
“She went to group today. She went to Cat’s House, and Uncle Nate drove her because she refused the car service you arranged with Dr. Toussaint. But Amalia didn’t sit with circle.”
Sofie stops, her anguish palpable. “She insisted on intervention. They had to place her, Caroline. She’s in Dr. Toussaint’s custody in the Safekeeps building.”
Sofie’s gaze locks on me, and I’m not sure if I appreciate it there as I hate to remember this part.
The Safekeeps building is a charming white, three-story frame with black shutters. It’s the in-patient clinic on the Catherine’s House estate, and for three months Mom lived in a chamber that looked a lot like a modest hotel room. I remember the staff as cordial and generous, but it’s hard to recognize my mother when she’s not amongst her things. Her dress and appearance is crucial, and she’s always physically striking. But in Safekeeps, it’s painfully uncomfortable watching her just try to survive.
I had to learn early on not to get attached to Mom, which is ironic given that I still live with her and accommodate her. It’s so unkind, living this way, like she and I perpetually walk along the edge of a cliff, and she can, at any moment, choose to jump away from me or push me off the brink. I’ve felt this way since I was a child. When I was five, they couldn’t leave me alone with her. Dad or a nurse and therapist had to accompany me for our tricky quality time, and I wasn’t so young and ignorant to the fact that they had to coax my own mother into seeing me. There’s such a vast disconnect between us, and it’s humiliating and frightening.
My mother’s dressing room merely became an exit strategy. It’s like the heavy side-part of her hair, allowing her less eye contact without anyone truly noticing. They’re too busy figuring out why she’s so atypical in her get ups than realizing the distance she manipulates. They become focused on her physical appearance, and that suits her fine. How could she ever make room for a child with that kind of personality?
I close my eyes.
“Why?” I mutter. “Why did she do that?”
Sofie’s shoulders hunch.
“I’m not sure,” she says, her green eyes swimming in grief. “Uncle Nate called me so I could tell you in person. Caroline,” she manages, “we have to go back.”
My neck collapses, taking my head down with it to my heaving chest. Alec’s jeans and feet are in my field of vision again, and he being here is a cutting pain. I can’t breathe.
I look up wildly around the room, registering their panicked faces. My hands go up, supporting my head, but I can’t breathe. How am I possibly standing when I feel like I’ve fallen back against something? I wail an eerie cry that’s almost inhuman, and tear out of the room. I want to get as far away from these people before I say something I’ll regret.
“Caroline!” they shriek.
I’m inconsolable.
Unstoppable.
As he descends behind me, Alec leaps over the railing and touches down to block my escape path.
I can’t tolerate seeing him. His vicinity burdens me.
Fuck.
“Please go away.”
“Caroline,” he pleads, shocked.
“Go away.”
Alec freezes, injured. The face I adore sad and upset.
“Care,” says Sofie, “I’ll grab a few things and get our documents. Everything else Jay can pick up around the house. He’ll close up the cottage, and we can take off in a few minutes.”
Her voice runs like poison to me, as I angrily brush tears with the back of my hand.
“I told you,” I say acidly, “I couldn’t leave my mother alone. I told you she has to be monitored, just like I told you no one can read her like I do.” I’m careful that each word is wrapped and delivered in sharp shards of ice.
“And here we are, Sofie, the vacation from hell continues. Don’t you
ever
put your nose into my business again! Don’t you ever think that
you
know what’s better for me than me. My mother is in a psychiatric ward because I’m here!”
Alec doesn’t make a move towards me and stands there ashen and demoralized. I can’t placate his feelings when I need everything I have to resuscitate my mother’s soul. I avert eye contact, deterring a rebound. I’m the worst thing to happen to this beautiful man, demolishing him like a wrecking ball.
In defeat, I lower my head, tipping Sofie off we’ll do as she says, and I cry. I cry less for the break-in or Ryan, or even my mother, but I cry for Alec, for what I briefly, foolishly thought I could be with him. It’s a death. All the new-found courage has escaped me, and I recognize the old me is back with a vengeance. Alec makes me feel things more than I should, and the grief of never seeing him again is indescribable. I feel too awful and tired for words, and I know his arms—his strong, compassionate arms—could carry me out of my burning house. He makes my fear and suffering bearable, and I get too lost in him. He looks positively broken.
Me, too, Alec. Me too.
But this is how it has to be.
I’m unable to turn my mind off. The covered bridges and rivers did not do well with distracting me throughout our return trip. As Sofie drives, I’m incapable of seeing value or enjoyment in the passing scenery. The quaint, precious little towns we whizzed by on the way to Maine only serve to mark time. New Hampshire, Vermont, and finally Canada through Québec and into Montreal have been indicators and reminders of how long until I can see my mother again. There are insufferable bonus hours to this ride after a jammed border crossing, and then driving past city traffic up to Catherine’s House. Sofie’s restrained, her nature tampered with by the blow. She’s agonizing over Mom and perturbed about me, but I don’t have words for Sofia-Marie.
I can’t rally up anything to say when I couldn’t even face Alec. I’d feel guilty for trying when I wasn’t able to give him good reasons for ending it and didn’t have it in me to comfort him. If I couldn’t manage it for Alec, then I don’t want to manage it for anyone else. No one’s worth that effort, except Mom. My music fills the silence—Bono sagaciously singing—as my forehead bumps on the window. Like a ghost, a tall sign carved from wood materializes.
Catherine’s House is tucked at the end of the gravel road, and Safekeeps is inserted further behind on the same lot. The guest parking is empty at night, except for my father’s lonely Lincoln, which helps make things feel real.
Mommy.
I press a fingertip to the window, and my hand glides back down to my lap. It moves again, clipping the silver handle, and the door swings wide.
“Caroline! Shit.” The car halts. “What the fuck are you doing?” Sofie shouts.
I don’t know
, I want to tell her, but my heart’s been beating too fast for someone sitting down so long. I need to move this adrenaline into stronger emotion. I have to accelerate my body to match the swift course of my blood that’s pumping my veins and rushing to my head. I step down, my toes curling in my sneakers as my heels lift off the road, and I dash, tearing through the pebbles and grit. I sprint, heaving retched breaths into the dewy, pine-filled air.
Alec.
Through choked tears, I push the limits of my endurance, remembering him on his deck. His memory will taint all woods and foliage for me now. I can’t remember anything without it feeling painfully wicked. I press fists to my forehead, shutting down the recalls and keep running to Mom.
“Caroline!” I hear Sofie howl from behind.
“Princess, stop! Caroline!” my father shouts.
He streams down the brick, herringbone path to obstruct my passage. His hands are spread wide up in the air, and his body swings side to side to catch me. I stop, and he gathers me at the shoulders like I’m a clutched bird flailing her wings.
“Shh. Stop, Caroline. Stop.” He draws me in so I can rest my head. The dam lets up, and I sob.
When I visited as a child, Dad made a mountain of me, the way he bundled me up against the cold bite of winter. The personnel at Safekeeps greeted me with open arms, and sometimes I was passed around as he unwrapped me. My father was a kind-faced hawk, securing my whereabouts, and Noni Sara always packed my lunch bag with my favourite snacks.
As he has gotten older, my father’s hair has thinned, and keeping it short makes it look thicker. On a summer’s eve, it reminds me of a dark, honey ale, and the tapered sides and back are quietly laced with white. On top, Dad leaves it longer, cut in demure angles so he can brush it slightly forward or to one side. He keeps his sideburns trimmed to about half the height of his ears and sometimes sports a soul patch under his bottom lip. Tonight, his weary, tanned face sprouts a less manicured goatee.
“Shh,” he pacifies, clasping me against his chest.
My fingers intertwine as if in prayer under his neck. “What happened?”
Sofie appears at our side, and my father slips an arm around her, too. She steps back after a brief embrace.
“I need to pee,” she announces, and breaks away to enter the reception area.
Dad laughs bravely.
I stay in my nest, sheathed by my father’s cocoon as his familiar shower gel tranquilizes me. It’s nice to have him alone. The office is full of interruptions when we manage lunch together at his desk. Away from work, Sandrine can be a barrier, too—
was
a barrier. I startle, thinking back to that development.
“Did she do this to get back at me?” I ask, and dad grunts an exhale.
“Don’t go there.”
The words resonate with Alec’s plea: Don’t go down that road, love. You are no such thing.
“What happened, Daddy? Last I saw, she looked eager for me to give her some space. She said I’m always rushing her, and this was a vacation for her, too.” I hiccup sniffles. “Is she asleep? Did they sedate her?”
“Yes.” He sighs. “She let them.”
I flinch, my eyes dart up to meet his.
“You would have been proud, Princess. I was.”
“She didn’t fight them?”
“That’s the thing, Caroline. Your mother wasn’t making much sense at first, even said she thought Angel Mae was planning to abduct her.” His posture relaxes as he sheds light on the events for me. “Then Amalia insisted she stay closer to Dr. Toussaint, but I was already going to seek her out.”
“Why?”
“Well, there were some bumps in the road with her patterns, and she was becoming excitable and anxious,” he explains.
Dad releases me as his hand clasps mine, staggering towards the front door of the greeting area. He rings, and after a buzz, he pulls it open for us. I enter first, gasping at the familiar scent of cleaning products before the reception nurse admits us through a set of glass doors. Dad signals her to delay our access, and we sit on an iron park bench in the entry.
“She hasn’t slept very well,” he picks up. “She’s hardly had an appetite, and I came to check on her only to find some changes around the apartment.”
I pull back. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Things only spun out of control yesterday,” Dad says apologetically. “I went around to the apartment figuring I should remind her about group, and Angel Mae was beside herself. Your mother rattled that poor woman, and I discovered Amalia had rearranged the apartment.”
“What did you do?”
“I emailed Dr. Toussaint and managed some paper work and phone calls from the kitchen. I spent the night checking in on your Mom, and by morning she was impatient to attend group.” His brows shoot up, and he looks at me askew. Obviously, Dad found that as suspicious as I do.
“One thing led to another,” he says, “and here we are. This is what Amalia thinks she needs. She was adamant about it on the way here.”
“Because she thought Mae would kidnap her?”