Maggie throws open the front door and steps inside the mudroom. “Hello?” she calls out, going into the kitchen. “Ma?”
The house is quiet. She grabs a handful of saltines from the pantry—she knows her mother always has the familiar red box on hand—and stuffs one in her mouth to quell the nausea. As with the last pregnancy, saltines bring instant relief.
“Ma?”
She finds her mother on the couch in the den, staring vacantly into space.
“Ma?”
“Yvon is dead,” her mother says, shell-shocked.
Maggie’s heart skips. Good, she thinks, feeling nothing at all. “How?”
“He hung himself.”
In spite of the shock, Maggie experiences a jolt of triumph. “Why?” she asks her mother, sitting down on her father’s worn ottoman. “Did he leave a note?”
“No. A girl came forward saying he’d raped her.”
Maggie wants to scream, I told you so! But she holds her tongue. She wonders how many others there were.
“The girl’s father was one of their farmhands,” Maman says. “She was twelve. Her father beat Yvon nearly to death and threatened to go to the police. Yvon would have gone to jail.”
“How did you hear?”
“Deda’s neighbor called me,” she says, sobbing into her handkerchief. “Thank God Deda isn’t alive to see all this.”
Deda had a heart attack last year, died in her sleep. Maggie didn’t go to the funeral.
“Other girls came forward, too,” Maman says. “From all over Frelighsburg.”
Her shoulders collapse and she starts to wail loudly, expressing more anguish than when her own husband died. Maggie’s back stiffens and she stands up. “You’re obviously very upset that he’s dead,” she says coldly. “I’ll leave you.”
Maman stops crying at once and looks up at Maggie. “It’s not him I’m upset about!” she cries. “It’s you. You tried to tell me . . .” She breaks down again. Maggie has never seen her mother like this.
“It’s all right,” Maggie says awkwardly. “It was a long time ago.”
“I didn’t believe you,” Maman sobs. “You tried to tell me and I cared more about protecting Deda than I did you.”
Maggie looks away, remembering the pain of that same realization all those years ago.
“Can you forgive me?” There is a vulnerability in her mother’s eyes that is hard to reconcile with the woman she has known all her life.
Maggie can’t bring herself to say yes. While she feels vindicated, it’s not enough. Not yet.
Maman jumps to her feet and pulls Maggie into a too-tight embrace. “I’m so sorry, cocotte,” she murmurs, her breath warm against Maggie’s hair.
Maggie’s body remains stiff in her mother’s arms. How strange it feels to be held like this, she thinks, as Maman’s thick arms squeeze her with surprising vigor. More than three decades’ worth of love poured into one well-intentioned but belated gesture.
“Don’t crush the baby,” Maggie tells her.