Page 85 of Feels Like Falling
“You did it for yourself and you did it for nothing.”
“Ellison!” Her voice is shrill but not quite panicked. She’s outraged I have the gall to talk to her like this, but she’s not heartbroken—not over me. “You can’t just throw your life away.” She seethes like it’s a personal affront that I don’t want to be in her world.
“Mylifeis Montana Greene. My life is with him, and I would rather be poor and happy in Blackstone Falls with my best friend than—” My voice cracks and I have to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“Than what?”
“Than be like you.”
“I gave youeverything.”
“No, you did everything for yourself. The only thing you ever did for me was to stay in Blackstone Falls so I’d have a home to come back to when I was finally free of you. Goodbye, Mother.”
Without waiting for a response, I push the end button on the screen and let my phone fall to the counter, the tears immediate as they roll down my cheeks. But I’m not crying over losing her.
I let the tears fall as I purge the most toxic relationship in my life. I cry for the little girl who’d never known love or affection and the woman who grew up to finally realize a person like that doesn’t deserve the title of mother.
The tears fall for me, for Arden and Monroe, and they even fall for my father who sacrificed decades of his life to a loveless and remarkably cruel marriage. Healing will take time, but I deserve the lightness in my heart—we all do.
38
ELLISON
The knock on my door is expected but still makes my heart hammer in my chest, my body already wrung out from the phone call with my mother. Turning the knob, I open it, the woman’s expression one that most likely mirrors my own.
Arden James.
My sister.
“I brought cake,” she says, holding up the box. “I didn’t know if it was too early for wine, and I was too nervous to drink any more coffee.”
“Is it chocolate?” I ask on a choked laugh.
“Is there any other kind?”
“No,” I agree as we stand there, both nervous as excitement pings tentatively between us. “Is it weird that I missed you?”
“Only if it’s weird that I missed you too.”
Placing the box on the counter, I wrap my arms around the woman with the eyes like mine who I’ve always longed for but never knew why. Grandad had talked about a piece of him dying with Nan, but my heart had never been whole because I’d been waiting for her.
Had she always missed me? Had she felt the ache of loneliness that I’d worn like a second skin my whole life?
“I love you,” she whispers as her tears land on my shoulder. “I loved you even when I didn’t know you existed.”
“I love you too,” I say, the words coming on a sob as I hold her tighter, completely unafraid of this moment and what it means. “And I know, because I felt it too.”
Pulling back, she laughs as she pushes her glasses up into her hair, the lenses fogged up as she swipes at her eyes.
“I think it’s time for cake,” I say, taking her hand and leading her to the breakfast bar. Grabbing two forks, I hand her one as she opens the cardboard lid, stamped with The Poppy Seed, the bakery in Clementine Creek.
We’re quiet as we take bites of the decadent layer cake, the entire scene almost comical as if I am looking in on it rather than experiencing it.
“Evan didn’t know,” Arden says finally, a bite of cake suspended on her fork. “I asked my mom a lot over the years about him, but I never got far. She’d been on her own and took the money from Sherri Ann to support me.” Arden’s smile is sad. “She wasn’t proud of needing it.”
“He loved her.”
“I know.”
