Page 122 of Never Alone
"You're a good mother. I want you to know I see it."
I went still against him.
He kept his hand on my face. His eyes didn't move off mine.
"Noah's lucky he's yours. He knows it. I know it. I want you to know I know it."
I'd been a mother for nine years, and I'd never been told I was good at it.
Nicholas had told me, more times than I could count, that I was indulgent, anxious, hovering, soft, that I made Noah weaker every time I held him after a bad dream. Cole hadn't held Noah after a bad dream. Noah didn't have bad dreams anymore.
I put my hand on Cole's wrist and pressed my cheek into his palm.
"Thank you."
"Yeah."
I stayed there.
After a minute, he said, "Can I tell you something?"
"Anything."
His arm tightened a fraction at my waist. He looked past me—at the window, then the wall, then the ceiling. Then he came back to my face.
"My mom."
He stopped.
"Tell me."
"My dad died when I was small. Five. Heart thing, nothing anybody could've stopped. My mom—she didn't cope with it. Or she coped with it strangely. I'm not sure which one's truer."
He looked at the ceiling again.
"She wasn't home much. She'd go out at night. Sometimes she'd come back the next morning. Sometimes, a few days. There were different men. Different cars in the driveway when there were cars at all. I used to sit at the kitchen window and waitfor her. I'd watch the road. I'd tell myself she was on her way. Sometimes, she was. Most of the time, she wasn't."
His voice had gone flat in the way it went flat when something cost him to say.
"I was probably eight when I stopped sitting at the window. Maybe nine. I just—figured out she wasn't coming. And the times she did come, there'd be a guy with her. Some guy on the couch with a beer. Different guy every time. Some of them were nice to me. Most of them weren't anything to me. They were just there."
I didn't move from his shoulder.
"Shelby was thirteen when our dad died. She was eighteen when I stopped sitting at the window. She'd been raising me since I was five, and she got better at it as she went. She made me breakfast. She made sure I ate. She helped me with homework. She sat through parent-teacher conferences and pretended she knew what she was doing. She made cookies on Sundays."
He stopped.
"I've never told anybody this."
"It's okay."
"The reason I didn't sleep around—I know it sounds simple. I just couldn't. Every time I thought about it, I saw one of those guys on the couch. I didn't want to be one of those guys. I didn't want to be a man some kid was going to grow up remembering on her mother's couch with a beer. I didn't—I couldn't."
I lifted my head off his shoulder.
I sat up enough to see his face. He let me.
"Cole."
