Page 86 of Rescue

“Of course. Just give me one moment.”

She hurries into the kitchen, and as she passes I see that her hands are still shaking.

“You okay?” Haylee asks. It’s funny, I’ve been hearing those words for months, so often that they’ve started to drive me crazy. But hearing them now, from Haylee, while we sit in my mother’s living room, I want to answer honestly for the first time in years.

“No,” I mutter, staring at my hands. “I think this was a bad idea.”

“It will be fine,” she says, slipping her hand through the crook of my arm. “It really will. We can leave if you need to.”

I nod, looking around the room, hardly taking in anything I’m seeing. No pictures stand on the mantle or any of the surfaces. Plenty of art and not one photograph of a real person.

“Here we are.” I look up and see my mother standing in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a tray. A tray that’s shaking in her hands.

“Let me grab that,” Haylee says, jumping up to rescue the tray before it can fall. She sets it on the coffee table in front of us. My mother looks adrift now that she doesn’t have a task. She fidgets for a minute then sits on the edge of a purple armchair directly across from us.

“I haven’t met your friend,” she finally says, nodding at Haylee.

“Oh.” My voice is dull, and I clear my throat. “This is Haylee Hunt.”

My mom smiles. The first smile I’ve seen on her face in seventeen years. I feel like I’m going to throw up. “You’re the singer,” she says.

“You know who I am?” Haylee asks, incredulous.

“Of course!” She jumps from her chair and walks to a leather trunk in the corner by the fireplace and lifts a large cloth book from inside. It’s the same kind of book that Paige had us use to make scrapbooks this summer. I have a sudden, horrible urge to laugh and bite down on my tongue as my mother brings the book over to us. “Here you are,” she says, turning toward the back of the book. She places it on Haylee’s lap, and I look down to see a clipping from a magazine. It’s a press picture of me and my brothers, a smaller picture of Intrigue in a box in the corner.Ransom announces tour dates for Europe; brothers to be joined by Intrigue.

I look up at my mother. “You have press clippings about us?”

“I do!” Her voice is a shade too high pitched; she’s definitely nervous and trying to cover it. She flips to the front of the book. “I’ve been collecting since you opened for Grey Skies.”

Haylee looks up at me, worried, and it occurs to me that I’m digging my fingers into my thighs. I make a conscious effort to relax them and reach over to take the book from her.

“Have you enjoyed the tour?” she asks Haylee, returning to her seat across from us.

“It’s been really great,” Haylee says, her eyes flicking back and forth between me and my mother. “We’ve had really great turnouts at all of the stops and…”

I tune her out, focusing on the book in my lap. I flip idly through the pages. Promo photos, magazine spreads, album reviews, sales figures. What did she say? She’s been collecting since the Grey Skies tour. Collecting. Like she’s some kind of fan or something.

“Were you at the concert?” I ask, interrupting them.

“The concert?” she asks, her voice squeaky. “You mean—”

“We played two shows in Paris.” I have no idea how I’m keeping my voice so controlled. I feel like I should be screaming. “It’s a forty-minute train ride.”

“I didn’t go to the shows, Lennon. No.”

“Why?” I hit the book in my lap with my knuckles. “You’ve been collecting info on our tours for years. Why wouldn’t you want to get the first-hand experience?”

Haylee reaches for me, but I brush her off, staring at my mother across the forgotten tea service. She looks different from the way I remember. Was it just my little kid’s brain that painted her as so beautiful in my memories? Her face is lined, much more so than my father’s, four years her senior. She’s thinner than I remember, all boney angles. And her hair is shorter and lank now, a dull brownish shade. It used to be so long, shining and smooth. Blond, almost white, just like Daltrey’s. Daltrey. Who was five when she left. I feel something like a sob—or maybe a yell—rise in my throat, and I have to dig my heel into my other foot to keep it together.

She holds her chin up a little, her voice stronger now. “I didn’t think it would be appropriate,” she says. “Or fair to you.”

“Fair.”

“Lennon—”

I shake my head, the desire to laugh overtaking me again. She didn’t think it would befair. “Don’t mind me.” I wave between the two of them. “You were talking about the tour. I interrupted.”

“Lennon,” Haylee whispers. My mother is staring at me with wide eyes.