Twisted Palace(113)
I swallow around the knot in my throat. Her words are so full of pain, and I don’t know how to take it away.
“I thought,” she continues between gulps of air, “sometimes I thought that my mom was wrong to haul me around the country, running from one bad relationship to another. I thought maybe it would’ve been better if I’d grown up with Steve. An O’Halloran, not a Harper.”
Oh hell. I haul her into my lap, placing her wet face in my neck.
“I know, baby. I love my mom, but I think bad thoughts about her, too, sometimes. I get that she couldn’t live with herself, but she should’ve tried. Because we needed her.” I stroke Ella’s hair and press a kiss on her temple. “I don’t think being angry or resentful that our mothers let us down is disloyal.”
Her small body heaves. “I wanted him to love me.”
“Oh, baby, something’s wrong with Steve. He’s not capable of loving anyone but himself. That’s his flaw, not yours.”
“I know. It just hurts.”
The driver’s door opens, and Dad climbs in. “Everything okay back there?” he asks quietly.
His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. I remain silent, because I know it’s a question for Ella.
She shudders and sighs and then lifts her head. “Yeah, I’m a mess, but I’m going to be okay.”
She slides off my lap but keeps her head on my shoulder. Dad backs out of the parking lot and starts the drive home.
“I told Val once that you and I are mirrors,” Ella whispers to me. “That we fit in some weird way.”
I know exactly what she means. The complicated feelings we have for our mothers, for their weakness and frailty, for their hidden strengths and the love they showed us, for the selfishness that affected us…all these things are part of what twisted us up inside, but somehow those tangled strands fused until we were whole again.
Ella makes me whole. I make her whole.
I used to be scared of the future. I didn’t know where I’d end up, didn’t know if the anger and bitterness inside me would ever truly go away, if I could ever feel worthy or find someone who’d be able to see through the asshole I pretend to be to the rest of the world.
But I’m not scared anymore, and I did find someone who sees me. Who really, truly sees me. And I see her, too. Ella Harper is all I’m ever going to see, because she’s my future. She’s my steel and my fire and my salvation.
She’s everything.
37
Ella
One Week Later
“What’s this?” I ask when I get out of the bathroom dressed in my favorite hanging-out clothes—a T-shirt of Reed’s and a pair of shorts.
Today’s dance team practice ran long, so I told Reed to go on home without me. Once I got back, I made him wait until I showered, even though he claims he doesn’t care if I’m sweaty.
Now, I walk into my room and find an assortment of colorful brochures on my bed. Most of them show pictures of teens clutching schoolbooks against their chests.
“Pick one,” Reed says. His eyes are fixed on the TV.
As I get closer, I realize they’re college brochures—about ten of them. “One what?”
“Pick where we’re going to college.”
“We?” Curious, I flip one open. UNC, the brochure declares, has been granting degrees since the eighteenth century.
“Duh.” He rolls over on his side, crumpling half the glossy pamphlets under his fit body.
“We’re choosing together?” I say in surprise.
“Yup. You said you wanted to dance, so there’s a couple here that offer a good arts degree.” He rummages through the pile and pulls out a red-and-white brochure. “So UNC-Greensboro offers a dance degree and so does UNC in Charlotte. They’re both accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance.”
A familiar heat starts to course through my body. “Did you research all this stuff?”
“Sure did.”
I suck in my lower lip so I don’t break out in tears. This has to be one of the nicest, most thoughtful things anyone’s ever done for me. I don’t do a good enough job of hiding my emotions, because Reed vaults over the bed and drags me against him.
His eyes search mine. “Are you upset about this?”
“No. This is so sweet,” I blubber.
Smiling, he sits on the edge of the bed and positions me between his legs. He looks half embarrassed, half proud. “I figured it was the least I could do. What were you planning to do before Dad kidnapped you?”
“Ha, so you admit he kidnapped me!”
He grins. “I just said that.”
“Fine. I was going to go to community college and get an associates in business. And then take accounting classes for two years and hopefully find a steady job counting numbers all day. I planned to wear a lot of khaki, eat in the cafeteria, and maybe have a dog to come home to.”