She gasps, but doesn’t say anything. She just throws her arms around my shoulders and hugs me tight. And I hold on to her just as hard. We both clutch each other and sob into each other’s shoulders. And there are so many things we need to talk about that I can’t sort them out. I just say the first thing that pops into my mind.
“Why were you walking out in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer?” I ask. “You would have killed me if I’d done that when I was a little kid.”
Mom is still holding on to me, but she pulls back enough that she’s staring me straight in the eye. Is there laughter mixed in with her sobs? A glint of humor in her eyes, along with the tears?
No, I decide. It’s all tears.
“I haven’t been able to get through the whole Lord’s Prayer since your father was arrested,” she says.
I stare back at her. Even with all her fear, I’d thought my mom was so smug and holy and self-righteous. But she can’t even pray right anymore? She’s that much like me?
“But . . . you go to church,” I say numbly. “All the time.”
“I’m trying,” Mom says. “I’m trying to get things right, to trust God again. . . . Usually I just sit there in silence during the Lord’s Prayer. But tonight I was having more trouble than usual. There’s one line I can never bring myself to say.”
I study her face, tinted by the red and blue and purple light from the stained glass. It looks like a bruise. I know exactly which line she means.
“ ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ ” I quote. “ ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us.’ You haven’t forgiven Daddy either!”
Why does this make me happy?
Mom nods, her face a study in shame.
“Sometimes that’s the reason,” she says. “Sometimes it’s more like . . . I don’t want to be forgiven. Because I can’t forgive myself.”
“Yourself?” I squint at her. “Why?”
She shifts to having only one arm around my shoulder, and we start walking together toward the car.
“I’m a grown-up,” she says. “A mother. I should have understood what was going on. I should have stopped him. I never should have let him ruin our lives . . . especially not your life.”
These are things I’ve thought, but I didn’t know she felt that way too. Her voice practically throbs with guilt. It hurts to listen.
“No, Mom, it’s not your fault,” I say, and for once I feel the truth of this; for once I don’t blame her at all. I snort disgustedly. “You could say it’s more my fault. Remember what Daddy said? ‘How else would someone like me ever be able to send his own kid to college?’ He told everyone he was stealing that money for me!”
Mom stops so abruptly in the middle of the parking lot that her arm around my shoulder jerks me up short. She turns to face me directly. We are standing under a light pole, so the two of us are bathed in light.
“Becca, you don’t actually believe that, do you?” she asks.
I don’t answer. Mom lets go of me to clutch her head in her hands.
“I thought I was protecting you, not telling you everything,” she murmurs. “But I was hurting you worse.”
“Wait—is there something else you didn’t want me to know because then I might think my father was a scumbag?” I ask.
How could there be anything else? How could my father’s crimes be such a bottomless pit?
Mom pushes her hands back into her hair. It’s a despairing gesture, and there’s nothing but anguish on her face.
“If your father had really been stealing any of that money for you for college,” she says, “he would have put it in some designated fund—a five twenty-nine, a Coverdell . . . I thought he was doing that with his legal earnings. I thought he had. I was so happy when the attorney told me one of the things the government wouldn’t seize—one of the things we were allowed to keep along with the house and the car—was college savings. Except . . . there weren’t any. He hadn’t saved anything for you.”
I wait for the anger to surge over me again—anger at Daddy for yet another lie, yet another failing, anger at Mom for yet another secret. And anger because this is just one more reminder that I don’t have the slightest idea how I’m going to pay for college, if I ever get to go. This is another door slammed in my face.
But somehow, this time, the anger doesn’t come. I don’t know if I found some tiny crumb of forgiveness as I stood under the glow of the stained glass, listening to “Amazing Grace.” Or maybe I’m just tired of being angry all the time.
“If it helps, I know your father thought none of this would be a problem,” Mom says. “He thought he could go on making—stealing—money hand over fist, so he wouldn’t have any trouble paying for your college or anything else. I don’t think he ever expected to get caught.”
It doesn’t even make me mad that Mom is still making excuses for Daddy.
“Is there anything else you’re waiting to spring on me?” I ask dejectedly. “Anything else you think you’re protecting me from, that’s really just another booby trap to destroy me?”
Mom studies my face. I can tell it’s on the tip of her tongue to say, “No, honey, that’s the last secret I was keeping from you. You know everything important now. Honest.”
But that isn’t what she says.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “That’s everything I can think of right now, but it’s been three years and I’m still figuring things out. I’m stumbling around in the dark here, too.”
There’s something different about how she says this—the pain she lets into her voice? The agony splayed across her face? The helplessness she openly reveals? It’s like she’s been unmasked.
She isn’t trying to protect me anymore, I think. She isn’t trying to hide anything from me. She isn’t pretending she has all the answers just because she’s the mother, the grown-up.
And that’s when I understand: In that one instant, she switched over to treating me like a grown-up, too.
This time it’s me who puts my arm around her shoulder.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
And it’s not that I think we will truly be safe there; it’s not that I think we’ve solved anything.
But neither one of us is alone in looking for answers anymore.