[CHAPTER 19]
Emily was fifteen when she asked me the question I had been expecting for years.
“Can I read Grandma’s notebooks?”
I looked up from my laptop.
“No.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t need every cruel thought somebody wrote during the worst version of themselves.”
“They’re about me too.”
“Some.”
“So I should get to know.”
I closed the laptop.
“You get to know anything that concerns your safety, your money, or decisions that affected you.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is some of those pages are just poison.”
Emily crossed her arms.
“You read them.”
“Yes.”
“So you decide what I can handle?”
There was enough truth in that accusation to make me uncomfortable.
I thought carefully.
“I’m trying not to hand you pain simply because I had to carry it.”
She looked away.
“That sounds like deciding.”
“It is.”
I exhaled.
“And maybe I’m wrong.”
That made her look back.
Old Diane would never have said that.
I had learned something from refusing to become her.
“Why do you want to read them?”
Emily’s anger faded.
“I want to know if she hated me.”
My chest tightened.
“She didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I read them.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No.”
She was right again.
I finally agreed to let her read selected portions with me.
Not every page.
Not Linda’s private information.
Not Mark’s.
Not humiliating details about relatives who had not consented.
Only entries directly involving Emily.
We sat at the kitchen table.
The same table where so many discoveries had begun.
Emily read slowly.
Emily asks for Mom when upset. Redirect.
Her face tightened.
Another.
Need Emily to understand Claire is working because family needs money.
Another.
Emily becoming argumentative. Too influenced by school counselor.
Emily stopped.
“What did that mean?”
“You told someone you were tired.”
“Oh.”
She continued.
Then she found one I had forgotten.
Emily is wonderful with Rosie. More mature than Claire realizes.
She stared at it.
“That sounds nice.”
“It is.”
A later entry:
Emily ruined dinner with attitude. Took tablet.
Then:
Feel guilty. She is only ten.
Emily looked up.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
“She knew she was being too hard.”
“Sometimes.”
“Why didn’t that stop her?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily closed the notebook.
“I’m done.”
“You okay?”
“Not really.”
We put the notebooks away.
She did not ask again for months.
Then, one evening, Diane visited.
By then visits were unsupervised in my home while I was present.
Emily brought up the notebook herself.
“I read some.”
Diane froze.
“I see.”
“You wrote that you felt guilty.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop?”
Diane sat down.
“I wish I had an answer that made sense.”
“Try anyway.”
I almost smiled.
Emily had inherited my line.
Diane looked at her.
“Because every time I felt guilty, I told myself the problem was that you were difficult, not that I was controlling.”
Emily’s face hardened.
“I wasn’t difficult.”
“No.”
“You wrote that.”
“Yes.”
“Do you still think I was?”
“No.”
“What do you think now?”
Diane swallowed.
“I think you were a child trying to tell adults that something felt wrong.”
Emily began crying.
Diane stayed in her chair.
She had learned not to rush toward tears.
“I’m sorry I punished you for that.”
Emily wiped her cheeks.
“I used to think being good meant nobody got mad at me.”
My heart cracked.
Diane’s did too.
“I taught you that.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Emily stared at her.
“Mom says saying sorry isn’t the same as fixing it.”
“Your mother is right.”
I looked away before either of them saw my tears.
Then Emily said, “I forgive you.”
The room went silent.
Diane covered her mouth.
Emily immediately raised a finger.
“But.”
Diane laughed through tears.
“Okay.”
“I forgive you because I don’t want to keep being angry.”
Diane nodded.
“It does not mean you get to tell me what to do.”
“I understand.”
“It doesn’t mean I forget.”
“I understand.”
“And if you ever treat Rosie like that again, I’m done.”
Diane’s face became serious.
“That’s fair.”
Emily looked at me.
I could barely speak.
“That’s your choice.”
She nodded.
Diane did not ask me whether I forgave her.
I appreciated that.
My relationship with my mother had become quieter.
We spoke occasionally.
Coffee once every few weeks.
Family dinners sometimes.
She never regained a key to my house.
She never regained access to finances.
She never became a regular caregiver.
Those were permanent boundaries.
And strangely, once she stopped trying to be essential, she became easier to love.
Not trust blindly.
Love.
There was a difference.
On Emily’s sixteenth birthday, Diane gave her one gift.
A watercolor set.
Not expensive.
Not dramatic.
The same kind I had bought Emily on Rosie’s fourth birthday.
Emily opened it and stared at me.
“You remember?”
I nodded.
Diane looked confused.
“What?”
I told her.
“That day, I came home with a watercolor set for Emily.”
Diane’s face fell.
“Oh.”
Emily touched the brushes.
Then she smiled.
“I still have the old one.”
“You do?”
“Some of it.”
She looked at me.
“That was the day everything changed.”
I thought about it.
“Yes.”
Rosie, now nine, interrupted.
“Can we not make Emily’s birthday depressing?”
Everyone laughed.
She was right.
We ate cake.
Emily opened presents.
Nobody waited for adults to finish dinner.
Nobody washed dishes alone.
Later, I found Emily painting at the kitchen table.
“What are you making?”
She turned the paper around.
A red hand.
My stomach tightened.
But around the hand she had painted flowers.
Bright ones.
Yellow.
Blue.
White.
“What does it mean?”
She shrugged.
“Something bad happened.”
She added another flower.
“But it isn’t the whole picture.”
I stood there silently.
My fifteen-year-old daughter had just explained healing better than every adult I had met.
She dipped her brush into yellow.
May you like
Then smiled.
“And I like the colors.”
