Page 82 of The Good Guy on My Porch

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dilly

I knocked on Mary’s door and waited. It had been a week since she’d ambushed me in the library. A week since I’d seen Oscar’s face, heard his voice. A week of Carrie refusing to call me back or answer my texts. A week of taking care of my mother alone, because Aunt Melly was out of town again. A week of me realizing maybe I was being stupid to ignore the offer of help from Mary and the others.

Mary opened the door and gave me a gentle smile. “Dilly, it’s wonderful to see you. How are you doing?”

Maybe it was because I’d been lying for so long, or maybe it was because I hadn’t slept a full eight hours in more than a week, but I couldn’t lie to her. “Not so good.”

She placed a warm hand on my shoulder and pulled me in for a side-hug. “Come in. Let’s figure this out.”

I followed her inside and took a seat on her floral couch. As soon as my butt hit the soft fabric, I popped back up. This was wrong. I couldn’t betray my mother. Couldn’t go behind her back to plot about what to do with her. She was a person, an ill person, not some burden I was forced to carry. “You know what? I should go. I just remembered I have—”

“Don’t go,” she said, her expression gentle, calming. She took both my hands in hers and gently pushed me back down on the couch. “Just listen for a bit. If you still want to go, if you decide the way you’re living now is what’s best for you and your mother, I promise to never bring this up again. I promise to let you go on however you choose.”

I wrapped my arms tight around myself and I sat. It felt like parts of me were leaking out, like I was letting go of the one thing I was supposed to hold on to the tightest. But it also felt somehow right.

“I remember your mother more every day,” she said. “Every time I see you, I remember something new about her, because you look so much like she did.”

I nodded. She wasn’t the first person to say that, though I couldn’t see it myself when I looked at old pictures.

“She wasn’t like you in any other way, though, Dilly. She and my daughter were best friends. Liza was so sad to hear how your mother is doing now. She wants to visit her next month if it’s okay with you?”

“I don’t know—”

She waved a hand. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Your mother was smart and she had a lot of friends, but she was timid. Whenever Liza had a plan to go flirt with some boys or take a midnight swim at Eagle lake, your mother pulled her back. As a mother, I thought she was the perfect friend for my Liza. She kept her in line, she kept her from getting into too much trouble. When I talked to Liza and told her what had happened to your mother, she wasn’t surprised. She said your mother had always been afraid of so many things. Had always worried about the worst-case scenario.”

“That didn’t start until after my father died. She had tons of friends. She had parties.” I was certain of that, had based so many choices on that certainty.

“She did.” Mary nodded. “But none of those things required risk. Maybe she got worse after your father died, but she was never like you, Dilly. You see a challenge, a risk, and you march into it. You’re more like your father, running full-speed at life and damning the consequences.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. My mother never talked about my father. I remembered bits and pieces about him, but nobody had told me I was like him. “I’m scared sometimes.”

“You’d have to be insane not to be,” she said. “But you are not your mother. You are not heading for a fate like hers.”

The tears slipped down my cheeks as Mary voiced my biggest fear. “How did you know. . .?”

She patted my hand. “Just a guess, dear. It’s what I would fear in your place. I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe that fear is the reason you’ve held your secret so tight, kept everyone at such a distance.” She sighed. “My Liza, she and your mother had a falling out their senior year. Your mother didn’t want to go to a party that Liza had promised her crush she’d attend. Liza felt that your mother never supported her, that she thought only of herself. As a mother, I saw your mother as someone who’d keep my daughter safe, but Liza had begun to see her as someone who’d hold her back.”

“She was sick,” I said. “She can’t help what she does, couldn’t help her fear.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe she was so afraid that all she could think of was her own fear and she didn’t care that Liza wanted and needed the support of her best friend in that moment.”

The criticism of my mother hurt. “It was just one dumb high school party. It’s not like Liza was drowning and my mother didn’t jump in to save her.”

She smiled. “Think back to high school, Dilly. Think about that one stupid high school party where you’d see your crush, a boy who’d finally noticed you. It might not have been a life or death situation, but it was huge to Liza. And it wasn’t only the one party, your mother had been saying no to Liza for a while. Liza finally got tired of it and got angry.”

“And that was the end of their friendship?”

“Liza thought so. She went to that party and it turned out she wasn’t the only girl invited by the boy she’d been crushing on. She found him kissing another girl, and she ran out of the house, planning to go home. She ran right into your mother on her way in.”

“She went to the party after all.”

She nodded. “She hugged Liza and wiped away her tears. Your mother convinced Liza to stay at the party and the two of them danced and laughed and had a wonderful time. Your mother met your father at that party.”

“But he wasn’t from Catalpa Creek.”

She patted my hand. “He was visiting a family friend.”

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