Page 106 of The Fate Factor

Since Mom showed up with only what would fit in her backpack, completely unprepared for the temperature change from West coast to East, she’s in one of Nana’s long cardigans. She looks like a child playing dress up.

“So then he said he needs more room to breathe than the van.” She dabs the corner of her eye with her sleeve. “I pointed out the window to the literal desert we were parked in and said ‘you’ve got acres of room, you foolish man! Go wander the sand for a bit.’ I don’t know, Noel. Some people just don’t know what they want from one minute to the next.”

I nod absently, unable to even respond to that ridiculous judgment coming from her. She’s been bouncing from one thing to another her whole life. Men, jobs, adventures. I keep that thought to myself as usual.

Instead, I reach across the cushion and squeeze her wrist, offering her the box of tissues on my end table. She takes one and in the same motion reaches for Pixie, scooping her from my lap to hers. A little squeak of protest escapes me, but she doesn’t notice. She goes on about California, about Dennis and how his adult kids weren’t supportive of his decision to sell his house to do the whole van thing with my mother either, and I hate the bitterness creeping into the back of my throat. I hate it but I can’t seem to fight it off this time. I should be a good daughter, a sympathetic ear. I’m trying to be whatever she needed from mewhen she came here. But I can’t be the port right now when my heart is a swirling storm.

It hits me like a rogue wave, that I’ve never even been a mess before. I found the emotion I’d been looking for here, found it in droves. Only for it to end in my first ever emotional breakdown on the beach. For a panicked moment, I think I’ll actually burst from the ache. This is what wanting does to you. This is why I’ve never wanted to be like her.

My breath starts to stutter, and my eyes spill over like two raging rivers. “I actually can’t do this right now,” I blurt.

Mom pulls back a bit, blinking at the interruption, and I follow my first real foot-putting down moment with a broken sob that shakes my shoulders.

“Honey, are you okay?”

I shake my head, batting at the tears streaming from my eyes. “No. I’m not,” I tell her. “My heart is broken, and I can’t stuff down my feelings to make room for yours anymore. These ones are too big.”

Mom’s eyes are saucers. “Heartbroken? Honey, over what?”

Despite myself, I laugh, utterly vindicated at her question. She doesn’t even know Jamie exists. She doesn’t know his name. His face. That dimple that knocked the wind out of me. How his eyes are just the tiniest bit asymmetrical, and a color that I’ve tried for hours to recreate with paint or chalk or pencils before I realized I wasn’t talented enough. How he always sleeps on his stomach. How everyone,everyoneloves him but he lovedme. Even when all I ever gave him was hesitation.

All these things have happened to me since I last saw my mother and she doesn’t know because she didn’t think to ask. She touches down when she needs my help, never the other way around.

Such an easy kid.Barely ever cries.

I think I saved all those tears for this moment right now. With a half sob, half groan of frustration, I move to stand, to leave this conversation for what it is—shallow, one-sided at best, certainly not any help toward putting my heart back in my chest—but she must see it on my face, this despair, because she catches my wrist and tugs me back to the couch. “Tell me,” she says.

“I fell in love. Real love, and I hurt him. I made him think he wasn’t good enough, but really he was too good. I want him too much, and I’m scared of it.”

“You’ve always been full of nerves,” she says with a pious shake of her head.

I choke on more tears. She’s right. Ihavealways been full of nerves. Terrified to want or to love, because her kind of love is chaotic and untrustworthy and scary, and it’s the only example I’ve ever had. Until now.

Loving Jamie is like a hug after a bad dream. A cup of tea after a white-knuckle drive in the snow. He’s my wild streak and my calm place. One minute he’s the wind and the next he’s the sturdy ground, and I don’t know if I ever could have seen that coming even with a glimpse of the future.

Mom points her teacup at me. “You know, Noel, your Nana used to say ‘Life is one part fate, two parts figure it out.’”

I run a hand under my nose. “What does that mean?”

“It means humans have a knack for screwing up a good thing. God knows I do. You know she knew about you before I did. Saw it in a candle. I was only twenty years old,” she says, like I’m not acutely aware of the youth I stole from her. How she ended up taking mine in return by leaning on me the way she did.

“But before that, I had these plans to go to Europe when I graduated high school. I wanted to study art like you. Well, first I was going to backpack through the countryside, but then I was going to get serious. I had the money too.” She waves a hand. “It was the nineties. Everyone had money then.”

I’ve heard this story a hundred times, and I nearly give up again, dump my tea and head to bed just so I can have some peace to wallow in, but she keeps going.

“Anyway, I hadn’t even told your grandmother about this plan, and then one day, she was reading my candle wax and she saw the whole thing. Wine and paintings and French men.” She winks. “And you know what I did? I picked your father. Stupid me, I guess.”

I flinch at the careless reminder. My whole existence is a result of that “stupid” decision, but I don’t have any more pain to dedicate to her, so instead I go back a step. “I never heard Nana say that, the thing about fate only being part of it.”

She shrugs. “Well, maybe she didn’t think you’d want to hear it. You were always her biggest skeptic.”

I sniffle scoff. Those were the days. I wish I could go back to being a skeptic, forget all of these glimpses and half-clues as to what’s in store. I think of the belief draining out of Jamie’s eyes and it’s like pouring lemon juice on a cut. I finally did believe in magic, and it betrayed me.

Except… maybe what Mom’s saying is it didn’t.

Two parts figure it out.

After I saw Jamie’s tattoo, I asked Kate what the point of seeing the future was if I could change it, but what if that’s thewholepoint? Or at least two parts of it.

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