After All I've Done

  I manage to find my voice and keep my consciousness. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I tried, Diana. Oh, I’ve tried. I accepted my mistake in giving you up, but you can hardly blame me for that, can you? After all, I’ve done everything I could since then to be a mother to you. A real mother. Not like that addict whore who adopted you.”

  She’s pacing now. Back and forth. Her rubber-soled shoes squeak on the tiles. Her fists clench. Release. Clench.

  Then she’s grabbing at Jonathan with both hands, and he’s fending her off as he tries to get up and out of his chair, but she’s blocking the way, and so all he can do is shake the table.

  I wait for the flicker of a memory to hit me. Something. Anything. I wait for the doors to fling open to all my dark rooms and let in the light.

  Nothing.

  “What do you mean? Giving me up?”

  My body remembers, though. I can’t catch a breath. I’m shaking.

  “Ma. What’s going on? Nothing you’re saying makes any sense,” Jonathan says.

  “It was a miracle, your accident,” she says to me. “It took away all the bad things, and it let us be a family the way I knew we were meant to be, but no, no. You both had to go and mess it all up!” Harriett turns to me. “You blamed me for it all, Diana, but anything I ever did was for you.”

  Now I know where her son gets it.

  “What do you mean, I blamed you?” I say.

  She’s ranting. Making no sense. Her voice is raw. Hoarse.

  “I was young. Naive. When the man you love says he’s going to leave his wife for you, well, you believe it, don’t you? I did. Until he changed his mind. Said he was going to stay with his swine of a wife.”

  Like father, like son.

  “You said Jonathan’s father cheated on you …” I manage to say.

  Jonathan recoils. He’s still stuck between Harriett and the kitchen gable. “What? Dad did what?”

  “I said he stepped out on his marriage,” Harriett tells me in a voice as calm and deep as a well.

  “You were the other woman.”

  “He loved me!” she cries. “He felt obligated to her, that was all! So he stayed with her and left me to raise our baby all on my own. I thought I was being smart, but at the time I was young. I was heartbroken. Giving you up for adoption was the only choice I had, and I regretted it every single day, Diana. It took me years before I was able to find a way back into your life, to be the mother to you that I’d always wanted to be.”

  “You’re my biological mother?” Each breath comes shuddery and shivery, but I no longer feel like I’m going to faint.

  I’m not sure what I’m going to do. In all the years of dreaming of who my biological parents might be, never once had I thought it might be … Harriett. Because that means … Oh. God.

  Oh my fucking god.

  Jonathan makes a guttural noise. “No. What the fuck?”

  “I am your only mother,” Harriett says. “I am the only mother you ever really had, and I am the only mother you will ever really need.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Val

  I got the text from Diana a few hours ago but didn’t see it until a few minutes ago. She’s home. She wants us to talk things out. Her, me, and Jonathan.

  Want u 2 come ovr, she texted. We need 2 talk.

  I should feel more nervous when I pull into the driveway. This confrontation has been a long time coming, and I wish I felt more confident that it is going to work out in my favor. What will I do if the two of them tell me, together, that they’re not splitting up?

  Nobody answers the front door when I knock, so I let myself in. I hear voices from the kitchen. Jonathan’s raised in a half shout. I’m expecting to see him and Diana arguing, but he’s facing Harriett.

  What the hell is going on?

  Jonathan catches sight of me. The look on his face is not one of love or relief, and I instantly regret coming here. He takes a step toward me.

  “Valerie, get out of here.”

  Harriett twists. She’s a tiny woman, small and frail looking. She wears too much makeup. She’s got a wide grin. Crazy eyes.

  “What’s going on?” I stay in the doorway, wary, and shoot a glance at Diana.

  She is pale and looks sick, one hand over her mouth like maybe she’s trying not to throw up or something. She looks at me over her fingers, and her eyes are wide, the pupils huge, her gaze slightly unfocused.

  “So, this is Val. Diana’s friend Val, the one I’ve heard so much about. Like a sister to her—she’s said that more than once.” Harriett’s voice drips with contempt. She never remembers who I am, no matter how often we meet, and I see now it’s always been deliberate. “This is the woman you couldn’t keep your dick out of, Jonathan? Did she ever tell you it was all Diana’s idea, that the two of them—”

  “Yes. Diana told me.” I’ve never heard Jonathan sound this way. Defeated. Exhausted. Demoralized.

  “She told me too. Months ago, she told me. Confessed it right to me, told me she couldn’t be married to you anymore. You were sleeping with Val. She was messing around with that Cole. Both of you, so stupid and selfish. You make me so ashamed!”

  “I told you about Cole?” Diana takes the hand away from her mouth.

  Something big has gone down here, but I have no clue what it might be. Only that the man I’ve loved for so short a time looks as though someone died, and the woman I’ve loved for a lot longer than that looks like she wants to kill someone.

  Harriett sneers. “You told me everything. And I told you everything too. All of it. That addict bitch was going to tell you the truth, but I couldn’t have that, could I? I had to take care of it. Make sure she wouldn’t fill your head with nonsense. And I thought when I told you all of it, everything, surely you’d understand, but no, no—you blamed me for it and everything that happened.”

  “There’s the reason I wanted you banned,” Diana says, but I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Oh my god. I can’t …”

  “I believe in fate, Diana. There’s a reason you had that accident. Why your memories were taken away. It was so you’d stop being so stupid and selfish,” Harriett says.

  “Diana? Did you text me to come over?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “No. Harriett had my phone.”

  “I texted you,” Harriett says. “You need to hear it from Jonathan himself, so we can get this all sorted. Tell her, Jonathan. You’re finished with her.”

  “Jonathan?” I say, waiting for him to tell his mother she has no idea what she’s talking about.

  “I’m sorry, Val,” he says. “I never thought it would get this far.”

  “Oh god, Jonathan, you’re such an asshole,” Diana says. “After all this?”

  Jonathan puts a hand on the back of a kitchen chair like if he doesn’t hold onto it, he’s going to fall down. He hangs his head. I can’t see his face, and I guess I really don’t want to.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  “You go on home now,” Harriett says.

  Diana steps toward me. “No. Val. Don’t go. You have to hear this. It’s about what I was going to tell you in August.”

  You’d think Diana had punched her in the face, the way Harriett starts to scream. She’s flailing and writhing, and if she had the room for it, I’m sure she’d be throwing herself onto the floor to pound her fists against it. I am looking into the face of a woman gone legitimately mad. Harriett puts a hand to her heart, her fingers curling and digging in deep enough to leave dents in her skin above the neckline of her blouse.

  “Harriett is—”

  But Diana doesn’t have time to say more, because Harriett launches herself toward my friend.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Diana

  “Have you lost your goddamned mind?” Val screams.

  Harriett catches me with a slap to the face, more by luck than anything else, but I’ve been in a psych ward for the past three days and detox
ing from prescription meds. I’m unsteady as it is, so the second blow to my face knocks me back a step. The kitchen counter hits me in the small of the back, and I let out a curse. I manage to get my hands up in front of me to stop most of the clawing smacks she’s aiming at me, but when she goes for my eyes, all I can do is shove her away from me as hard as I can. She’s still muttering accusations, unintelligible except for a word here or there.

  Baby mother … nobody else… love … mail-order pills …

  She’s seething, huffing and puffing. Her eyes roll. She’s fucking unhinged.

  Finally, Jonathan steps forward to struggle with his mess of a mother. He has to forcibly push her a few steps out of the way so he can get around the table. He tries to grab her by the upper arms, but she manages to slip his grip.

  “Ma, everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to call for some help.”

  Val has her phone out, but Harriett is fast. She slaps it out of Val’s hands. The phone hits the floor hard enough to shatter the screen and slides far under the table, into the corner. I blink and blink, trying hard to keep on my feet. Harriett is between me and Val, who looks too stunned to move.

  “All those pills I got for you in the mail. It’s not so easy to buy them, no, but I did! Everything you ate or drank. I knew Jonathan would never eat or drink anything, not with meat in it—oh no. It was all for Diana!”

  Jonathan goes pale and we share a look. It makes sense now, the few times he snuck some of his mother’s food. How he acted after. How I’ve been acting for months.

  “Were you trying to kill me?” I cry.

  Harriett stops struggling in Jonathan’s grip and goes very, very still. “If you weren’t sick, Diana, how could Mama possibly take care of you?”

  Val lets out a breath and mutters what sounds like an exclamation, but I can’t hear the words. Jonathan makes a low cry of disgust, puts the heels of his hands over his eyes. Nobody moves.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Val whispers.

  I don’t either. I don’t think I want to know. “Harriett, you need serious help.”

  “It had to be just enough—never too much. I didn’t want you to end up like that addict whore who tried to get back on your good side. She was too stupid not to take pills from a stranger, wasn’t she? But I suppose she thought we weren’t strangers, not after I told her the truth about who I really am. Still, she got what she deserved.” Harriett’s laugh is cold and cruel.

  I want to puke. I can’t be hearing this right. “You killed her. You killed my mother.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her she wasn’t going to do all on her own. I just helped her out a little. I mean, when life’s lemons make lemonade all on their own, what can you do but take a drink?”

  “Are you my mother?” Jonathan cuts in.

  Both of us look at him. Harriett seems to have forgotten he was there, just for a minute or so. Hope rises inside me, but it’s dashed when she speaks. “Of course I’m your mother.”

  “And you’re … Diana’s mother?”

  Val grunts. Harriett nods, grinning. She claps her hands together as though this is the best news ever, and not a devastating, disgusting revelation for the two of us.

  Thank god we never had kids.

  “Yes. I didn’t have the pleasure of raising her—I already told you that—but I’ve made up for it—”

  “Shut. Up,” Jonathan barks. “Dad is her father? And mine?”

  Harriett scowls, her pleasant expression twisting again into the face of a crone. “Yes. Are you stupid? Yes. That’s what I’m saying. I took care of his first wife, that sow, and he came around just like he was meant to. We had you. And years later, I was blessed with the chance to get to know Diana. We are a family now, and—”

  “But you set us up.” He gestures at me. “You set us up to get married.”

  “How else was I going to have both my babies back with me under one roof?” Harriett reaches for him, and Jonathan, maybe too stunned to protest, lets her pull him into an embrace. “It’s been so lovely. Our little family. Our perfect family, both of you with me the way it was always meant to be.”

  This hurts worse than anything else, I think. Because I’d never asked her to try to be my mother. I’d never asked her to love me. I’d just come to believe she did.

  “This is sick. It’s sick!” Jonathan wrestles out of her grip.

  Val pushes past Harriett and gets on her knees in front of the table, trying to grab for her phone. I close my eyes. I hear the clang of metal.

  When I open my eyes, Harriett has pulled the biggest knife from the block.

  She holds it in front of her, between us, and the fact that her hands are shaking wildly does not bring me any comfort because the blade is waving way too close to me.

  I am exhausted, but also I am beyond tired of Harriett’s fuckery. The knife scares me, but not enough to stop me from spilling some scalding truth tea all over this bitch. I make sure I look her dead in the eyes.

  “We are getting divorced, and we will never, ever, ever be your perfect little family. Not fucking ever, you sick, twisted psycho.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Cole

  I’m not completely out of it.

  Whatever that bitch put in my coffee is trying hard to push me under, but I’m bigger than she probably accounted for. I’ve lost some time, though. Not sure how much. Her living room floor is hard and cold under my cheek. The room spins.

  I need to get up.

  I push myself to my feet and stagger. I have to get this out of me. She’s drugged me. That’s all I can think, and I don’t know why, but it doesn’t matter.

  In the kitchen, I bend over the garbage can and put my fingers down my throat. I gag and heave, but nothing comes up. I try again, but the iron stomach I’ve cultivated is my enemy now.

  In the trash, yellow padded envelopes addressed to Harriett Richmond. Mailed from Mexico. Canada. Labels in Chinese. Pill bottles inside.

  Empty.

  I can’t make myself throw up whatever used to be in these bottles. I’m going down again, on my knees. I hit the floor with my face. Phone in my pocket. I swipe it but can’t get it to open.

  I’m passing out.

  I try one more time. A voice asks me what’s my emergency. I think I answer, but in the end, all I manage is one word.

  “Help.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Diana

  “How could you do this?” Jonathan looks defeated, and I have the most infinitesimal shard of pity for him. I mean, nobody deserves to be loved this wrongly. We’ve both been fucked over. The difference is, I already know what it’s like to be betrayed by a mother, and he’s only just learning. “You’ve ruined my life. I can’t even look at you.”

  “Noooo!” Her wail seems endless until it’s chopped off abruptly by the snap of her teeth.

  Harriett is faster than she looks. I am not sure she’s stabbed him until the first arterial spray of blood jets from Jonathan’s throat. She doesn’t stop. Again and again, Harriett’s blade raises and lowers, and although the knife skips off him in some places, it catches him in enough others. Blood is everywhere. She is screaming. I am screaming. Val is backed against the wall, covered in blood.

  Jonathan clutches his throat, pressing against the tide of crimson spurting out of him, and he can’t make a sound.

  I grab the blade, but it’s the knife end of it, and Harriett slices my palms. Metal clinks on metal; the only thing that saves the fingers on my left hand is my wedding set as it deflects the blade’s bite. Still, I let go, because I can’t hold onto it. The pain is cold, then hot, the burn of ice on bare flesh. I fall back.

  Val lunges forward, but she’s not fast enough. Jonathan falls face first, and his head bounces off the kitchen counter so he ends up on his back, sprawled on the floor. Harriett, still screaming, plunges the knife directly into his crotch, and if there was ever a more meaningful action taken by anyone in this life, I don’t kn
ow what it would be.

  The world is graying out in front of me. I fall to my knees. Harriett yanks the knife out of Jonathan’s motionless body and turns on me.

  “I’m going to tell them you did it!” she screams at Val—just before she stabs herself in the stomach.

  EPILOGUE

  Diana

  ONE YEAR LATER

  The police and paramedics showed up, first next door, where they discovered Cole. He was able to direct them to the main house before passing out completely. He was in the hospital for a few days but made a full recovery.

  Harriett’s self-inflicted wound was not fatal. The one she landed on her son, though, was. Jonathan bled out while I was unconscious. The paramedics found the three of us on the kitchen floor. Harriett had tossed the knife in Val’s direction, but of course that wasn’t enough to make anyone believe it had been Val who stabbed her.

  The frozen leftovers from all the meals she made just for me were analyzed, and it became clear she was dosing my food with medications she purchased online. I didn’t need credit card statements or receipts to prove she was the one buying all the wine, but the stupid hag kept them all together in a folder easily discovered on her desk. It turns out she was also regularly messing with the thermostat and changing the settings on my phone. In other words, she’d been deliberately and relentlessly trying to keep me helpless, for months.

  My memories still have not come back, and there will always be some mysteries left I will never figure out.

  I have Cole, though, and his ability to dig up the past even when it’s not conveniently buried beneath a tree in the yard. He was able to find out everything about the adoption and Jonathan’s father’s first wife. Her death, my mother’s, and the similarities between them.

  He’s got it all in a file, ready for me any time I want to know.

  As for the two of us, it’s not love. It might have been in the heat of last summer. It might have lasted, too, and grown into something real, if not for the accident. It might still, if we give it a chance, and there are days when I think about it. We’ll never know what might have been, but nobody ever can.