Page 14 of Penance
“I can take it, Abigail. Just—tell me so I can devise a plan to fix it.” I push, but I’m not sure I can.
“They think you’re cold,” she finally blurts, not meeting my gaze.
“Cold?” I repeat, dumbfounded. I work at and organize every charity event Benton Falls has. I work with kids. I visit the elderly in the nursing home, yet they consider me cold?
“Listen, dear—” Abigail pauses, reaching out and taking my hand between hers, and suddenly, I feel the ice that runs through my veins. Abigail’s hands are warm and a sharp contrast to mine. It’s like our blood doesn’t run at the same temperature. Logically, I know Abigail is speaking about my personality, but it’s easier to focus on this. To pretend—just for a moment—that I haven’t failed at something once again. But then, Abigail begins to speak again, and reality sinks in. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just that sometimes you come off as—unapproachable.”
“Unapproachable?” I repeat like a child who is only half listening,but my mind is spinning. There are a lot of things I can fix, but this—I don’t even know where to start. Since last night, a fissure has begun to form in the masks I’ve perfected, and I’m afraid if they take too many hits, I’ll be exposed for the imposter I am.
She winces. “A little. Maybe you could bring your family around. Show them there’s more to you than what meets the eye.”
I shake my head. “There’s no family.”
Not anymore.
Abigail’s eyes are sad when they finally meet mine, and I see what she was trying to hide. It’s not just the committee that thinks I’m cold. She does, too.
Chapter 4
Lily
Ifell in love with the rain when I was six.
I never noticed it before until my mom pointed it out.
It was my sixth birthday, but Mom and I were too poor for things like parties, and cake, and presents. So she gifted me the rain. It was also the day I learned she was an addict—not of drugs, not yet anyway—but of love.
My dad—he wasn’t around much, but that didn’t stop Mom from loving him. She accepted all the scraps he gave her and begged for more. He loved her in his own way. It just wasn’t enough. I watched it break her piece by piece, and that year, I watched him break the final one. It still didn’t stop her from loving him with all the broken pieces, though.
Although he was absent for most of my life, he always made it a point to show up on my birthday, and Mom knew that too. She looked forward to that day more than I did.
Our house was nothing to look at. It was a two-bedroom trailer that was better off being condemned than saved, but each year, my mom would spend the whole day making it look nice on the eve of my birthday. And when the house was all clean, she would start on herself. I would sit on the bathroom counter, watching the red lipstick slide across her lips. She never wore makeup, not unless she was going to see him. I think she thought it would make him stay if she were just pretty enough, but my dad knew shewas beautiful. It just wasn’t in his nature to stay.
We were going through the routine on the morning of my birthday. I was entranced with the way the red seemed to transform the confidence of her smile, and she must have noticed me staring because her blue eyes turned to mine, a brightness in them that was only ever there on the days she was going to see my dad. I recognize what it was now after seeing it so many other times. It was a high from the anticipation of the hit she was about to take.
She looked at me with that smile on her lips and asked the question I’d been waiting for my whole life. All six years of it. “Do you want to wear some, Lily?”
My mouth fell open, and I nodded my head eagerly. Back then, I wanted to be just like her, but life has a way of shattering the pictures we create of our heroes.
Her smile never faded as she took my chin between her fingers and said, “Purse your lips like this.”
I did what she said, mimicking her, but just as her hand was about to swipe the lipstick across my lips, the phone rang in the kitchen. She let go of my face, capping the lid over it and patting my leg. “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
Disappointment flooded me, but I nodded and waited as she walked out of the room. Thirty seconds later, she answered the phone, and thirty seconds after that, the last piece of her broke.
A loud crash came from the kitchen where the house phone sat, followed by my mom’s cry. I jumped down from the counter, running to her as fast as my little legs would take me.
“Mommy,” I called, rushing through the hallway, but she didn’t answer. My heart pitter-pattered inside my chest. That was the first time I’d ever known real fear.
The sobs reached me at the same time my feet hit the kitchen floor, and I drew up short, my eyes opening wide and darting around as I took in thescene before me.
A chair was overturned, glass shattered all around it, but it was the sight of the blood that I couldn’t pull my attention away from. Three drops. That’s all there was, but it was enough. As I stared at it, through the haze of fear and the sobs echoing in my ears, an errant thought struck me. The blood was the same color as her lipstick, and from that day forward, I would remember how my dad always made her bleed—even when it was just through her lipstick.
“Lily.” My name was a broken plea on her lips, pulling me from my haze. I snapped my gaze away from the blood to where my mom sat with her back against the kitchen wall, the phone still cradled in one hand. The other hand was bleeding, blood dripping from her palm down her wrist.
“Mommy,” I cried, and the tears dripped down my face the same way her blood dripped from her arm.
“Come here, baby,” she said, patting the ground beside her. I took a step forward, but my feet were bare. “It’s okay, baby. Just go around it. I’ll clean it up in a little bit.”
