Page 76 of You Can Trust Me
“Every bit as beautiful.” His smile remains untouched. It is as perfect as I remember, with a few extra teeth.
“I’m so sorry, Danny,” I manage to choke out. “If I’d known… He never… I never thought or suspected…”
“I know,” he says, cutting me off. “Mom, you don’t have to do this. You don’t owe me an apology. I know you didn’t know. I know it’s not your fault.”
“It is though,” I whine, clasping my trembling hands together on the table. “You did this because of me. It was all because of me.”
“It wasn’t. It wasn’t your plan. Dad did this. Not you.”
I nod. It’s not nearly as simple as that, and we both know it. “I loved you, Danny. You were my… You were my baby boy. I never stopped loving you. Never stopped hoping we’d find you. We came back here every year, and I’d walk along the ocean and talk to you. If I’d known…” I look down, drying my tears. “I’m just so sorry.”
“I know. I knew I was loved. I knew you loved me. It’s why I did it. I wanted to protect you. You’re my mom. And I don’t regret it, for the record, if it meant saving you.” His face is solemn. Serious. “I’d do it a hundred times over.”
I can’t bring myself to respond. I look down, moving my hands to my lap. Next to me, Mae reaches over and rubs my arm. “We’ll visit every chance we get,” she tells her brother. “I’m sorry we couldn’t come until today. They wouldn’t let us.”
“I’m just glad you’re here now,” Danny says.
“So, you don’t hate me?” she asks gently. For turning him in, she means. Telling the police who he was and where to find him. Without her, he’d still be free.
“I told you to do what you had to do, and you did,” he answers.
“Is there anything we can bring you?” I ask him. “Maybe some snacks? I don’t know what they’ll let you have here.”
His smile is patronizing as he releases a breath through his nose. I realize I’m talking about prison as if it were summer camp. “I’m fine, Mom. I can take care of myself.”
“You always have been able to,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “But you shouldn’t have to.”
“Enough about me,” he says. “How have you been? How’s the treatment going?”
We talk for a while longer, though I’m not quite sure how to catch up on the last twenty-six years in the half hour they give us to visit. When the guard warns us our time is up, we promise to come back next week.
“Take care of yourself, big brother,” Mae says as we stand. “We love you.”
I blow a kiss his way, watching as the guard replaces his handcuffs and leads him out of the room.
When we’re alone, Mae rubs a hand on my back. “You okay?”
Always checking on me…
My daughter is a good one. A firm believer in karma and being a perfect person. It’s why she turned my son and husband in. Why she’s constantly cooking dinner for Florence and whatever guy she’s dating this week. Why she moved me in with her and Blake, so she can take care of me around the clock.
She believes when you do bad things, the universe will punish you like it has my husband. And when you do good things, like telling the truth, it will reward you, like it did when it sent Blake back to her.
I study the two of them in front of me, hand in hand, happy as clams.
I, on the other hand, am more skeptical.
I never did anything bad before I got sick. I was a good mother. A loving wife. I took care of my kids, my house. I went back to the store to pay for groceries when I realized the cashier had missed something. I taught my kids manners, had them water the garden for our elderly neighbor when she had the flu for a full week in the summer. I was a good person. I’d firmly tipped whatever karmic scales may exist in my favor.
But, in the end, the universe didn’t care. I got sick. I almost died. I’ve fought for my life for the better half of the last nearly three decades.
Good person or not, it punished me anyway.
But now, even after all the terrible things I’ve done, even after convincing Bill my plan was the only way, that it had to be done or I would die, I’m still here. When you compare the two of us, you might say he was the better person. He convinced me to save Mae back then, not to let them take her, too. I would’ve let them. I was that desperate, and we could’ve gotten more for her.
He called her ourrainy day fundin case things got bad in the future. He did the right thing—the good thing, the noble thing—and saved her life when I thought it was too risky. And look where that got him. Look where nobility landed him.
In fact, by the end of it, after everything I did, I still got both of my kids back, plus the money and the treatments, and somehow I managed to escape any of the blame.
Karma or no karma, I’m the winner here.
I’m still alive.
I want to live, you see. More than anything else in this world, I want to keep living. Andthat’swhat I believe in. More than being a good person. More than doing the right thing. More than karma. More than family. More than love.
Sheer determination above all else.
It’s never let me down.