I open my mouth to argue, but the patio door opens. With one glance, my heart jumps to my throat, inhibiting my ability to breathe. Going rigid, Noah wraps an arm around my waist and brings me closer to him.
“Your call on this,” he says so only I can hear.
I nod, because I can’t talk.
“Hello, Echo,” Mom says as she releases the door from her grasp and steps into the night. She’s wearing a form-fitting red dress that spills out near her ankles. Sort of like she was a sparkly mermaid. Her hair is a blazing red and just as curly as mine, but she wears it up, and I wore mine down.
I’m not my mom. My choices are different.
“Hi.” It comes out garbled, and I clear my throat to try again. “Hi.”
“You look beautiful tonight,” Mom offers softly. “And may I ask who your friend is?”
“This...” Can’t seem to think or talk. “This...ah...is Noah. He’s my boyfriend.”
Mom surveys him like he’s one of the paintings in the gallery, and I can’t tell if she likes what she sees. “I’m Cassie, Echo’s mother. It’s nice to meet you.”
I blow out a long stream of air. I can imagine the two million replies Noah would prefer to give her, and I’d bet my brother’s car that most of them begin with a word that starts with the letter f.
“Echo said you would be here,” Noah says.
Oh, Noah, I could kiss you. No bad words. No telling her she’s the antichrist. I don’t kiss him, but I do peek up at him in appreciation. It’s lost on him as his focus remains on my mother.
Mom points behind her, to the gallery. “I saw your work. It’s beautiful. Especially the constellation Aires.”
Her forehead wrinkles, and she readjusts the silver bag attached to her wrist. “I like that you painted Aires, and I like your technique, with the deep black around where the star Hamal is...like you created a hole.”
“Thanks,” I say, and the word tastes weird. All summer I’ve been searching for other people’s approval. To be honest, part of me was hoping for her approval, but now that I’m here, listening to her, listening to other people, I realize the approval I desired was my own.
“But what I really appreciated,” she continues, “was how you portrayed Hamal as a new star, like it had just been born out of the dark hole. It spoke to me, Echo.”
I altered the constellation. It’s something I did after Noah and I laid out our pain. The spot where Hamal should have been is dark, but off to the side...close by but far enough away to alter Aires, I painted a new star. One that had just been born. One to show that new things can come to life after there’s a death.
“Your painting spoke to me,” Mom repeats. “It spoke to me and, from listening to others, it’s reaching them, as well.”
I know. It’s what I want to say, but I don’t. This is where I experience the high, the giddiness. Not that people like my work, but that my work spoke to them. That there was a part of their soul that was touched.
“It made me feel like anything is possible,” she says so quietly that I strain into the night, wondering if I heard her correctly.
I added the star to the painting because I lost a piece of me I’ll never reclaim. The blackness of the loss will always be there, but I’ve gained new things in my life. A new path. A new love. A new outlook. Like the star, I’ve been reborn.
Mom’s gaze flickers between me and Noah. “Can I talk to you alone?”
“No.” But I do ease away from Noah. “But we can talk over here while Noah stands over there.”
The patio is the size of my father’s living room, and there’s no doubt Noah will hear everything we say, but it will give Mom the illusion of privacy, and it will confirm I’m not alone.
With a kiss to my temple, Noah heads to the wall that had shown lots of promise moments before and leans his back against it. His eyes narrow on us, a hawk set on the mice.
“I’m proud of you.” Mom motions to a rock wall, and the two of us sit. Me two feet away from her. “I heard of everything you’ve done this summer and how you’re now studying under Hunter Gray. I can’t express the pride I have inside.”
I nod as she talks, but then I shake my head. “You shouldn’t have done it. Made the phone calls asking people to buy my work.”
Mom’s eyes widen. “Who told you?”
The Wicked Witch of the West. “It doesn’t matter. I wish you would have let me do this on my own.”
“Echo...” Mom clutches her handbag. “I don’t know how to make things better between us.”
A heaviness overtakes my lungs. “You can say you’re sorry.”
“But it’s not my fault—”
I throw up my hand, and she stops.
“Having bipolar disorder—no, that isn’t your fault, and you should never apologize for that. What happened that night between us—the night that left me scarred—I know you were hurting. I came over to visit you because I was hurting, too. We both lost Aires.”
Mom pales at the sound of his name, but I continue, “You made a mistake. You came off your meds. You were hurting, and I was hurting, and we both ended up in more pain. And here’s the truth...I used to think that all the hurt I had inside me was about that night, but it’s not... Forget that night. Let’s look at you, Mom. Just you. There were periods in my life that you were given a choice between me and something else, and the something else always won.”
“You don’t understand,” she interjects, not denying my words. “Those opportunities were life-altering with my art—”
“I’m not allowing you to sweep our past under the rug or dismiss me. It happened. I’m glad that you’re doing well, and I’m glad that your career has taken off, but I can’t be your daughter until you look me in the eye as my mother and tell me that you’re sorry. Mom—I deserved to be number one at some point in your life, at least once. Not second or third behind your art and your career.”
I suck in a breath and say what has to be said, even if it could be a stake to her heart. “And even if you do say you’re sorry, you have to be okay with whatever type of relationship we can figure out because this—” I gesture to us “—will probably always be complicated because you hurt me. Not just that night—not just physically—”
It’s so hard to say the words when they’re like leftover shards of glass in my bloodstream that were so small the hospital had to leave them in. “All those years...all the times you chose something else... You broke my heart.”