“I never hated you, Helen,” Clara choked out.
“You barely spoke to me for 15 years.”
“I know.”
“You missed birthdays,” I argued. “You left dinners early. You acted like being around me was work.”
Clara looked toward the patio.
The other guests had begun steering the children toward the pool, offering privacy by pretending they were not listening.
She sat on the edge of a lounge chair.
“I was afraid of you.”
I nearly laughed.
She nodded. “Of what loving you might look like.”
Her fingers moved across the lighthouse.
“Your mother had been gone two years when I married your father. Her photographs were everywhere. Her recipes were still taped inside the cabinets. You wore one of her sweaters even when it was too hot.”
I remembered the sweater.
Green wool.
Sleeves hanging beyond my hands.
Clara went on. “I thought if I tried too hard, you would believe I wanted to replace her. If I did too little, you would think I did not care.”
“So you did nothing.”
“I stayed too far away.”
It was not an excuse.
It was an admission.
“I convinced myself distance was respectful,” Clara added. “Then the years passed, and every attempt felt more awkward than the last.”
I remembered Christmas mornings.
Clara always wrapped my presents in brown paper because Mom had done the same.
She baked cinnamon rolls using Mom’s recipe but never accepted credit.
She kept my childhood artwork framed in the hallway.
At graduations, she stood at the edge of every photograph.
I had interpreted each backward step as rejection.
Perhaps some of it had actually been fear.
Perhaps some of it had belonged to me as well.
Ariel climbed onto Clara’s lap without asking permission.
Clara stiffened, then carefully wrapped one arm around her.
“Does the lighthouse still work?” Ariel asked.
Clara blinked.
“No. I mean the hope.”
Clara looked at me.
The question cracked something open between us.
