Chapter Fifty-One
Natalie

It felt like being on an episode of This is Your Life, and when I looked around, I wasn’t impressed.

Can’t imagine what an audience would think.

Rochelle. After all these years. I saw Mack in an instant. Felt him, too. And I wanted to die. How dare she dredge up that kind of memory? How dare she open that door after all this time? And yeah, I know, it’s not like I had locked him up. He’s always been inside my head, roaming about. But to see her was too close to seeing his face. His questioning eyes. I just wouldn’t want him to blame himself. Even though sometimes, that’s the only person I blame.

Then she sat next to me to tell me she’s dying, when frankly, I had already grieved her. Okay, so you saunter in here, get your granddaughter’s hopes up and then tell us you’re about to kick the bucket. I could taste the anger in my teeth. What do I do with that, Rochelle? What can I possibly do? I almost asked her to leave when Wren got up and headed to her room, but I kept my cool. Stood my ground. We were going to finish this.

But then she talked about being broken. And my entire body lit on fire. I don’t know how to explain it. It started at the crown of my head and lit up my cells and organs like a slowly moving pour of lava. All my insides started to scream, and I was afraid she was going to hear it. That part. That part about looking over the fence? Mary. It reminded me of my dead ex-friend. Sheesh, how many people can say that? But I remember looking over her fence one too many times and wondering how someone can have so much but appreciate so little.

And then it made me think of me.

Things. I don’t have a lot of those. I know the way women look at me. I know because I look at myself the same way. But then I look at Wren, and I sometimes think, How can I be so lucky? Which makes no sense in the world. I’m thirty-seven and working at a glorified Hooters for crying out loud. But I am. I know that. Even here on my knees in the absolute thick of it.

Even as my fingers touch all these broken bits of me.

I am lucky. And I want to thank someone for that. But I’ve always had a hard time pinning down exactly who.

God. Rochelle talks so freely about Him. Her? I don’t even know. But hearing that name come out of her mouth, the fire consumed me. I felt known. Like, even here on this couch, Rochelle gone, and Wren still in her room, I feel incinerated and yet? Still whole.

But different. New.

If she’s turned me into a Christian, I’ll spit.