Forged in Grace by Jordan E. Rosenfeld Read Free Book Online Page A

against my palm.
    “ Gracie, please,” she whispers.
    Still I hold on, and it comes—an image dark and hideous—my face burned past recognition. A child, a daughter, reduced to a swollen raw mess in a hospital bed. I drop her hand.
    Tears cloud my vision and pain rockets through my body as though looking for a landing spot—wrist, shoulder, neck, arms, then it’s gone. “You should have told me the truth,” I whisper. “I thought she abandoned me.”
    “ Gracie, they didn’t know if you were going to make it through the night. Who do you think sat by your bedside while you moaned that you wanted to die when the drugs started wearing off? Not your father, not your little friend. No, it was me . You don’t have any idea what I had to do for you…” Now she’s crying.
    I cradle my head in my palms, breathing through my nose. She ’s still trying to trump my pain with her own. “We’d all have been better off if I’d just died, right?”
    Ma points a meaty finger at me, her eyes blazing with a look I remember from the years when we fought about me hanging out with Marly. “How dare you say that to me! I chose to fight for your life—and I didn’t ask for your gratitude.”
    “ And you chose to take Marly from me, the only person who can look at me like this without cringing!” My palm still tingles from where we touched.
    Tears cluster in the corners of her eyes, but she wipes them brusquely away. “Well, don’t you think for a second I made that decision lightly. She was not a healthy person—I didn’t want her influence on you when you were so vulnerable. I put you first. All that driving to San Francisco and back—I stopped painting. Stopped talking to your father. I put it all on hold.”
    Inside the extra flesh of her face I almost see the lines and angles I once shared with her, our slender Norwegian heritage disappeared in each of us by different forces. “She wants me to go back to Vegas with her. Stay awhile.”
    Ma gasps, clutches her heart, and looks so pale that for a moment I fear I ’ve given her a heart attack. My own pulse is going at a breakneck speed.
    She laughs, a guffaw I haven ’t heard in years, since she used to host a woman’s painting group, heavy on cocktails, at our house. “You’re just going to up and leave, are you? Pack your bags and go to Las Vegas—”
    She slaps her thigh.
    Perhaps she sees my determined expression, and on my face, it must be somewhat horrifying, because she stops laughing.
    “ What is it you hope to do there?” she asks then, in a softer tone.
    I look away from her, to the vanity dresser that belonged to my great-grandmother, the only antique in this house that hasn ’t met with ruin. Its mirror has been covered with a thin grey veil for years. Through it I can still see the faintest reflection, like someone swimming underwater. Now, that reflection is trying to gaze back at me, as though my old self is still there, wondering how to get out.
    “ I want to remember what it feels like to have friends, fun, go out,” I say . Rush against a horizon of excitement.
    Ma purses her lips.
    “Vegas isn’t so far from Arizona. Maybe it’s time I contacted Dad, too. At some point I have to suck up my pride.”
    Ma ’s eyes reach out from the density of her face. “Oh Grace, do you really want to dredge all that up? You know it’s just going to make you feel awful.”
    “ Me? Or you? I’m twenty-eight! Should I just keep waiting until it’s all over? Just wait until Dad’s dead, and I’m too old to try anything? I know you’re afraid for me, but you can’t protect me from everything.”
    Ma sniffs, looks away.
    “Come on, please don’t cry. It’s only for a little while. I need to do this.”
    She nods, and though I know I ’ll pay for it, I come around behind her and lean into a hug. “You don’t have to, Gracie,” she says, but I stay there, and let it come, heat, a throbbing ache, my vision going hazy at the edges.
    What comes