“Hi, Mom,” I say.
She’s lying in bed but turns her head to look at me. Even though the room is dimly lit, I can see that her eyes have that cloudy look they sometimes get when she’s on her pain medication.
“Hi, honey,” she says. “How was graduation? I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the ceremony—I really would’ve liked to see you get your diploma. I know how hard you’ve worked for it.”
I sit in the wingback chair beside her bed. Underneath the sheet and lightweight cotton blanket, her body is little more than skin wrapped around bones. We looked a lot like, my mother and I; before the accident, people used to ask if we were sisters. She always got a big kick out of that, but it was true: she looked great. She did yoga regularly and was training to do her first half marathon. Her vibrant blond hair showed no signs of going gray, and she had bright blue eyes, like sapphires with the sun shining through them. I’d overheard my father say that to her admiringly on more than one occasion.
“It wasn’t my graduation, Mom,” I gently remind her. “You’ll get to see me graduate next year.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” She smiles thinly and sighs. “You should go to bed, sweetheart. It’s late. You’ve got to be up early tomorrow.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll be back to visit on Sunday,” I tell her. “I’ll email you pictures, too.”
“No, I’m glad you’re going down there. It would do you some good to get away. Lorrie and Bill need you. I just wish I could go with you.”
I’ve been working at Sea Horse Ranch, down in Half Moon Bay, since I was thirteen. My mom’s childhood friend, Lorrie, and her husband, Bill, own it, and they’d hired me one summer to muck out stalls and help take care of the horses. As I’d gotten older, my duties expanded to include teaching lessons, training horses, finally culminating in supervising the teenagers who attended the ranch’s summer camp program. Working there was, in a way, like a rite of passage in my circle of friends, yet they had all moved on; they’re living in places like New York City and Boston as newly minted college graduates, on their way to fulfilling careers. I try not to think of myself as the one who got left behind, but the truth of it is, I’m the only one who’s still here. I’m the one who’s going to spend my summer shoveling horse shit and supervising unruly teenagers.
At some point, the ranch got a reputation for being a good place to send teens whose parents felt they were headed down the wrong path. Bill and Lorrie didn’t mind; they’ve always been do-gooder types who would welcome anyone into their home, and they truly believe that nothing can’t be cured by a day outside spent on horseback.
It’s when I’m about to leave that I notice the orchid. It’s sitting on a small side table by the window, half a dozen large white blossoms dangling from a curved stem. The flowers look so luscious they might be edible.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Mom says, when she sees where my gaze has gone.
“Yes,” I say, though I’m already certain I know who sent them, which makes them a lot less beautiful.
“Sean sent them.”
“I figured. But, that’s better than him stopping by in person.” I fight the urge to not go over there and swat the plant off the table, how the shattering ceramic would be music to my ears.
“Jill Freyss-Charon,” Mom says. “There is no need to speak that way, especially after someone just did something so thoughtful.”
“You’re right,” I say, though she’s not—there is nothing thoughtful about Sean Wentworth whatsoever. Calculating, sure. Manipulating, absolutely. But thoughtful? No.
“He just adores you, honey. I don’t know why you won’t give him another chance.” She looks at the orchid again and smiles. “It made me happy to get it. It’s been awhile since I last felt happy.”
Since the accident, Mom’s memory has been a touchy thing. Her short-term memory is shot; I don’t know how many times I’d told her I would not be graduating, but I would be going to the ceremony anyway to watch my friends get their diplomas. When her memory is working, all she seems able to recall is how depressed she is, which, considering she used to be the most optimistic person I knew, is pretty depressing in and of itself. She also seems only to remember the very best things about Sean; she’s somehow convinced herself that the accident was the reason Sean and I broke up, and therefore, was inadvertently her fault. All untrue, of course, but she refuses or is incapable of remembering it as anything else.
“I’ve got to get going, Mom,” I say. I go over and kiss her forehead. “I’ve got to pack and then get down to the ranch. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, okay?”
I go to my room and throw some clothes into my old gym bag. I’d broken up with Sean not long after my parents’ car accident, though it’s something I should’ve done a lot sooner. He was originally from Belvedere but was living in Palo Alto and attending Stanford when we met. Dad and I had gotten ice cream at his favorite ice cream shop and were sitting in Dolores Park, watching jubilant dogs chase Frisbees. It had been one of those unseasonably warm days in early April and the park was packed; people lay out under the hot sun, bare-chested or in bathing suits. They lounged in groups on spread-out blankets, drinking Anchor Steam or PBR. Sean and his group of friends were on a blanket maybe twenty feet away, and I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye.
“There’s a young man over there that seems particularly intent on staring at you,” Dad said.
“I think he just wants some ice cream.”
“I’m going to throw my trash away and then go buy a pint of the salted caramel to bring home to your mother. I’ll meet you back here in fifteen.” He smiled as he got up, and I tried not to feel annoyed. I’d gotten used to men staring at me and had pretty much perfected the art of ignoring it. For the first fifteen years of my life I’d been made fun of because of my height—was called giraffe, beanstalk, twig, could never find pants that were long enough. And then something happened my junior year of high school and suddenly the boys at school and random men out in public began to notice me. If it was supposed to make me feel good, it didn’t, because as far as I knew, nothing had changed. What had changed? It just made them seem like ass**les who were more interested in the way someone looked than who they actually were as a person.