Emma gritted her teeth. “I’m Sutton,” she said. “My name is Sutton. So one more time. When was the last time you saw me?”
Becky edged up on the pillow. “At the canyon,” she said, her voice suddenly steady, the words no longer slurred. “That night at the canyon.”
Her hand grabbed Emma’s forearm, her nails cutting into Emma’s skin. A scream tore from Emma’s throat as she tried to pull away. Becky’s fingers clenched, her face staring and blank. Bubbles of foam gathered at the corners of her lips and trickled down her chin.
“Help!” Emma screamed. She fumbled to pry Becky’s fingers away, but it was like a bad dream—Becky’s grip just got tighter and tighter. The door flew open and nurses quickly flocked into the room. The man who’d escorted Emma earlier helped release her wrist. “She’s convulsing,” he shouted at the others as he pushed Emma back toward the doorway. Emma saw one woman deftly preparing a syringe, flicking it with her forefinger.
The place where Becky had squeezed Emma’s arm throbbed, and I could feel it, too. Then, without my willing it to happen, the heat of my birth mother’s touch blossomed into a memory. A memory of that night in the canyon, when I’d met Becky for the first—and last—time …
19
MOMMIE DEAREST
The woman’s smile broadens as she reaches out her hand to help me to my feet. “Hello, Sutton. I’m your mother. Becky,” she singsongs again. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
I stare at her outstretched palm. Something tells me not to take it. I try to get up on my own, but I stumble again, my shirt snagging on a branch behind me. I immediately curse my decision to come back here to this pitch-black, end-of-the-earth place. Why didn’t I go to Nisha’s, or call a cab to take me home?
I sneak a peek at the woman who claims to be my mother and take in her tangled hair, her glowing eyes, her jittery mouth. My stomach tightens the way it does when Thayer and I watch horror movies. The air crackles with tension.
“It’s okay,” Becky croons softly, kneeling down to me. Sticks and leaves cling to her torn clothes, as if she’s been wandering in the desert for days. Then I see a shallow gash across her forehead and a smear of blood on her cheek.
“What happened to you?” I ask, pointing. My voice is pitched too high, like a scared little girl’s.
Becky’s hand flies to her wound. “Oh. Just an accident.” She giggles cagily. “A little stumble.” But it doesn’t look like a cut from a stumble to me. It looks like the type of gash a steering wheel might make if one’s head were to bash into it after ramming into a seventeen-year-old boy.
Down in the subdivision, the thumping party music stops abruptly. It’s suddenly so silent I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the quick and panicked sound of my breathing. The woman in front of me shuffles a little closer. “Sutton,” she whispers, and reaches out an arm to stroke my cheek. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful.”
I want to jerk away, but I feel paralyzed. Her hands are cold, sandpapery. I can smell her sour breath. “You’re so beautiful,” she says again, the woman who thinks she’s my mother. But she isn’t. She can’t be. My mother is someone else, someone beautiful and soft and tragic. Not this dirty mountain woman, this freak. For whatever reason, my father—or whoever he is—lied to me. Maybe he just wanted to mess with my mind.
Finally, my muscles cooperate, and I pull away. “I—I have to go,” I say, climbing to my feet. “My ride’s waiting.”
Becky chuckles. “You don’t have a ride.” She’s on her feet in an instant. She’s quicker than I would have expected. “I saw your grandfather drive away.”
I blink. “You’ve been watching me?”
She nods. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been watching you for years.” Her voice is soothing, as if she’s singing a lullaby, but her words are twisted. “I watched you when you were learning to swim, when you were a little girl. Wearing Mickey Mouse water wings for the longest time. I saw when you dyed your hair blond in junior high. I was at the regional tennis meet last year—I saw you play. You’re amazing. And I saw you run off with that boy tonight—Thayer? Is that his name?”
The world feels unsteady under my feet. She knows everything. All this time, this weirdo has been a face in the crowd, an unwelcome guest in my life. White anger surges through my whole body. “You had no right,” I hiss.
Becky recoils as if I’ve shoved her. “Of course I do. I gave you life.”
There’s something so matter-of-fact about the way she says it, that in that moment, I realize she’s telling me the truth. I let the idea wash over me. It just makes me even sicker. “That gives you even less of a right,” I growl. “You watched me instead of caring for me. And now you just show up randomly, in the desert, in the dark, alone, and drop this on me? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Becky squares her shoulders defensively. “This isn’t how I planned it,” she pleads.
But I’m riled up. I want to hurt her. I want my words to burn. I’m furious at everyone who lied to me—my dad, my mom, and this woman most of all. “You’re no mother,” I spit, the words dropping into the silence with a sizzle, like acid. “You’re a liar, and I hate you.”
“You don’t understand,” she whispers.
“You’re damn right I don’t understand, and I don’t want to understand,” I say. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”