Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [106]
Hell, how could anyone know the right thing to say?
When no words came, she lay down next to the sobbing girl and held her. Brushing Julianne’s blonde hair back from her face, Mara cried tears of her own.
“Why are you crying?” Julianne demanded.
“Because I don’t know what else to do,” a weary Mara told her, her emotions worn to the quick. “I don’t know what to say to you, or what to do for you. I want to tell you that everything your father told you about me was a lie, but I know I’m not supposed to say that, because it would make you feel conflicted. But obviously he didn’t tell you the truth about things. Look at me. Certainly I’m not dead. And I was a good mother—I was a very good mother—but if I start telling you all the ways in which I was a good mother, then I’ll be wrong for showing your father up as a liar. I am damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t.”
Mara sat up and exhaled. “I’m sorry, Julianne. I shouldn’t have said that. Not any of it.”
She rubbed her temples, tried to rub away the throbbing pain that had settled in and kept announcing itself, over and over and over. Neither she nor Julianne seemed able to look at the other. The storm of emotions had been so swift and so strong.
“My room is the same,” Julianne said after a few very long minutes. “I remember a lot of the dolls. And the stuffed animals there on the shelves.”
She got up and went to the bookshelves and touched the spines of several books.
“I looked at a lot of these last night. I remember some of them. I remember you reading to me at night.”
“We always read together at night.”
“Mr. Willoughby’s Christmas Tree.” Julianne took one from the top shelf. “I liked this one. The rhymes. I liked the way the tree kept getting smaller and smaller.”
She smiled as she flipped through the pages. “I liked how the mice had the tiniest tree at the end. . . .”
“You used to make me crazy, wanting me to read that over and over and over.” Mara managed a smile.
“I remember.” Julianne skimmed the last page of the book, then slid it back onto the shelf.
“Why didn’t you get rid of my stuff?” she asked. “You didn’t change anything.”
“I wanted your things to be here for you when you came home.”
“What if I was twenty when I came back? What if I was in college?”
“It would still all be here.”
“What if I never came back?”
“It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t come back someday. I wasn’t sure how old you’d be, but I knew one day, I’d find you and you’d come home.”
Julianne picked up a music box and brought it to the bed and sat down next to her mother. She opened the lid, and watched the tiny skaters whirl stiffly across the ice in time with “The Skater’s Waltz.”
“It still works.” She closed the lid and the music stopped.
“I kept replacing the batteries.”
“How many times?” Julianne looked up at her. “How many times did you have to do that?”
“Lots, I guess. I didn’t keep count.”
Julianne leaned back against her mother, her head resting on Mara’s chest, and raised the lid again. She hummed along with the tinny music as the skaters resumed their dance. Mara put an arm around her child and closed her eyes tightly, giving silent thanks, no longer concerned about what came next. She allowed this first bit of closeness to fill her, every lonely corner, and knew that for now, it was enough.
“So what do you think, Cahill? Same places as last night?” Will asked as they left the house next door to Mara’s and headed across the drive.
“Sure.” She shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, either way.”
“Maybe we’ll have a bit of action tonight, what do you think?” Keeping to the shadows, he took her hand for just a minute.
“I don’t know. What if we’re wrong and this is all a waste of time? What if Jules decides it isn’t worth it to him to take the risk to get Julianne back?