I’m not thinking when I slip back in through my front door, not like I need to be. I remember the creaky floorboards but not the oversized vase Mom recently added beside the entryway.
I bump it with my front caster just enough to send a possibly-not-too-loud clang echoing through the house. I have barely a second to convince myself that I’m still in the clear before the vase topples into the wall with a definitely-heard-by-everyone crash.
“Rebecca?” Mom’s voice calls from down the hall, then louder as I hear her hurried footsteps. “What happened? Are you okay?”
My head whips around and my heart starts thundering. “It’s fine! I just dropped something. You don’t have to—”
But she’s too fast and I’m not nearly fast enough. I’m lunging back to close the still-open front door when she appears in the hallway. I awkwardly click it shut and freeze.
Her dusty lavender robe hangs loose as she processes the sight of me by the door.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say, then spot a clump of spilled pampas branches stuck to my wheel and quickly throw it at the vase beside me. “I mean it is, but I can explain.”
The moonlight filtering through the curtains shows her blink. “You snuck out?”
I can’t tell if it’s anger or incredulity I hear in her voice. I point my thumb over my shoulder toward the Kellys’ house. “Yes, but I was only over—”
“You snuck out.”
Not a question this time and based on the tremble in her words it’s a lot more than an angry parent I’m facing. My mouth falls open at the picture of—I don’t even know, worry?—she’s presenting me with. “I’m sorry?” I say, like I’m reading from a script I’ve never seen before. “I didn’t plan it. I was just—”
“No!” She raises her voice. “You don’t do that. You don’t get to do that ever again.”
I don’t understand the tears that suddenly spring to my eyes as I wheel toward her. I’d never do that again. She has to know that. I need her to know that like I need my next breath. “Mom, no, I wasn’t—”
“Stop it.” She slices her hand through the air to cut off my protests.
“I was only next door. At the Kellys.” There. Her eyelids flicker. She wasn’t expecting that and the surprise emboldens me to go on. “Ethan’s back,” I say in a voice barely above a whisper. I told John the second I heard Ethan was coming, but despite the handful of quick conversations I’ve had with her in the days since then, I haven’t brought it up.
The truth is I don’t share things with her. I barely did before the accident and I never do now.
Except I don’t have a choice now, not if I want to banish that haunted look from her face.
“I found out a couple of days ago and saw him for the first time this afternoon. It was a lot,” I say, dropping my gaze and tugging at the hem of the oversized sleep shirt I’m wearing—one of Dad’s—before trailing my fingers to the frame of my wheelchair. “He knew about everything here but it was still—” I fumble around for the right words and fail “—a lot. And he has a lot going on too. At least I think he does. Which is why I snuck out. I needed to talk to him tonight before he did something not great. But I shouldn’t have snuck out like that and I’m sorry.” I finish my eloquent speech and look up to find that she’s staring unblinkingly at my T-shirt with barely an indication that she heard me.
“Mom?”
Her eyes flutter as she sucks in a breath. I think for one hopeful moment that the hurt I see flickering across her features is about me keeping this huge, important person who’s suddenly back in my life a secret from her, that she’s going to express worry about the type of person he might have become or the potential hurt he may cause me and ask how I feel seeing him again after so much has changed.
I want her to ask with a longing so deep it almost pulls me from my chair as I lean toward her. I want her to care. She doesn’t though. Because she’s punishing me too, in her own way.
Tonight, for example, she walks right past me and chains the door before snapping the deadbolt shut.
“I don’t want to go back there, Rebecca. Bed checks throughout the night. But I will if I have to.”
I blink away a hot, half-formed tear as anger begins to take over the hurt. “Why would you when you’ve gotten so good at sending texts?” I meet her steady gaze with my own suddenly hard one. “I know I messed up tonight but you wouldn’t have even known about Ethan or any of this if I’d been quieter coming in.”
“John told me about Ethan.”
I frown, the heat cooling behind my eyes in an instant. “When?”
“The same day you told him.”
Ice crystalizes in my belly, chasing the burn away and leaving an empty chill behind. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”
She stills, glancing at my T-shirt again before turning away and adding in a broken voice, “Because in a few months it won’t matter. Even if he’s still here, you won’t be.”
Then she’s gone, retreating back to her room before I can move an inch toward mine.