Chapter 14 - THE LAST TIME PATRICIA COULD BLAME SOMEONE ELSE
Patricia asked to meet Sarah alone.
They sat on a bench at Sharon Woods while Lily was at school.
Early fall leaves had begun collecting along the path.
Patricia looked smaller than Sarah remembered.
That did not make her harmless.
Sarah had learned not to confuse age with innocence.
“Did you give her the letter?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She put it in her desk.”
Patricia nodded.
“Okay.”
No complaint.
No tears.
Progress sometimes looked like the absence of pressure.
Sarah said, “There’s something I still need to know.”
Patricia waited.
“When Lily told you I paid seven hundred dollars, why didn’t you believe her?”
Patricia looked toward the lake.
“I thought she was repeating something you told her.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
Sarah waited.
Patricia finally said, “Because I was already angry at you.”
“For what?”
“You made me feel unnecessary.”
Sarah almost laughed.
“I was paying you to watch my child.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
Patricia folded her hands.
“When you divorced, I thought you’d need me. Then you got a better job. You bought the townhouse. You stopped asking my opinion about everything.”
“And Megan didn’t.”
“No.”
There it was.
Patricia had accepted Megan’s version of Sarah because it restored a familiar hierarchy.
Sarah irresponsible.
Megan loyal.
Patricia necessary.
“If you believed I was using you,” Sarah said, “then you got to feel needed and mistreated at the same time.”
Patricia winced.
“Yes.”
Sarah appreciated the honesty.
She hated how late it came.
“What did Lily have to do with that?”
“She shouldn’t have had anything to do with it.”
“But she did.”
“Yes.”
Patricia started crying quietly.
“I heard myself saying things to her that my mother used to say to me.”
Sarah looked at her.
Patricia had grown up in a rural Ohio household where children worked before breakfast and adults considered exhaustion evidence of character.
Sarah had heard the stories.
She had also heard Patricia swear she would raise her daughters differently.
“History explains you,” Sarah said. “It doesn’t excuse you.”
“I know.”
This time Patricia did not add anything.
Sarah stood.
Patricia looked frightened.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Will I ever see Lily again?”
Sarah did not answer immediately.
“That’s partly up to Lily.”
Patricia nodded.
“And partly?”
“Up to whether you can respect whatever she says.”
Even no.
Especially no.
Patricia wiped her face.
“I can.”
Sarah looked at her.
“You don’t know that yet.”
That was the final choice Patricia had not been able to avoid.
For decades, she had treated love as authority.
Now loving Lily might require accepting distance.
Sarah walked toward her car.
May you like
Behind her, Patricia did not call her back.
That was the first time Sarah believed her mother might actually be learning something.
