“Jenny…wait. You were angry with her? What are you talking about?”
“You know…how she asked him not to come. After she really started going downhill that September. She asked him not to come in the room anymore. She didn’t want him to have memories of her in those final, awful days.”
Erik’s heart was beating faster and faster, and his breathing felt ragged. “What are you talking about?”
Jenny turned to her brother, brows furrowing at his tone. “You know this, don’t you? You must know this, Erik.” She paused, looking at his face, her brows creasing. “They said goodbye over two weeks before she died. She told him, ‘It’s going to get bad now, Carl…no matter what, no matter if I call out to you, don’t come. It won’t be me. It’ll be the sickness, the drugs calling. Not me. This is me now, telling you goodbye, telling you how much I loved our life, how much I loved you. I don’t want you to remember me weak and frail and dying. Don’t come, Carl. We say our goodbyes now when it’s still me.’ That’s what she said. That’s what she wanted.”
“She never said that. That’s a lie, Jen!”
“Erik! She did! Of course she did!” Jenny crossed her arms over her chest, looking around to see if they were attracting attention, and finished softly. “I was there when she said it.”
“Oh, and I suppose she didn’t mind you seeing her like that?”
“We’re talking about Mamma here, Erik. She was old fashioned. I was her daughter. Womenfolk are supposed to see those sorts of things. Think about that line in Persuasion: ‘Nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his province.’ We talked about that line for half an hour that summer when we were reading all of her favorites. She was trying to tell us something. Having me there made sense to her. Having him there didn’t. She wouldn’t have had any peace in those final days if she knew he was watching her die.”
“No!”
“Yes, I promise you,” insisted Jenny. “I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”
“Just to be totally clear…you’re telling me that she told him not to come to her?”
“I’m saying that the sort of love and respect he had for her made it possible for him not to break his promise...as far as she knew.” She sniffled softly. “But he did break it, of course. Late at night, he would lift her up and scoot her over, and lie next to her for an hour, maybe more. I was in the cot in her room, pretending to sleep, so I knew. I’d hear him come in, but act like I was asleep. She never knew; she was so out of it by then. He’d wrap his arms around her and hold her wasted body for a while, then head to the park before dawn like he was never there. But I knew. I knew he’d been there.”
Erik’s eyes were burning with unshed tears. He’d been so wrong about his father. So terribly wrong. He thought of his father’s breath on his cheek at Big Sky Mountain whispering I believe in you. But Erik hadn’t believed in his father. He had believed the worst, and it made him want to fall at his father’s feet and beg for forgiveness for judging him so harshly.
“Wait, Jen. She wouldn’t let him be there, but she let me be there?”
“No, Erik. I did that.”
He turned to her, eyes wide. “What?”
“I couldn’t do everything alone, and I w-was closest to you. None of you were supposed to be there at the end. She said not to let you h-help, but I—”
Jenny’s voice broke and she hung her head. Erik put his arm around her shoulders. Sam looked over, but Erik caught his gaze, asking with his eyes for a few more minutes. He turned Jenny away from the dancing, and they walked a short distance to a bench on the main path.
“Tell me the rest, Jen.”
“She didn’t want Pappa there. She didn’t want you boys there. Only me at the end.” Jenny swallowed. She wouldn’t meet his eyes and her face was coloring. “But I couldn’t lift her…no, that’s a lie, she didn’t weigh anything. I could’ve cared for her on my own if I’d had to. The truth is this: I didn’t want to do it alone.”
Erik nodded beside her. “I see.”
Jenny touched his arm, and he turned to her, her eyes a mirror of his. “I thought you knew, Erik. She was so out of it by then, I thought you knew, and you helped me anyway. That’s why I never mentioned it. I thought it was hard enough for you to go against her wishes without me asking you about it.”
“We Lindstroms don’t exactly share our feelings, Jen.”
“That’s true.”
“She didn’t want me there, Jen?”
“Only because she loved you. She didn’t want the men in her life to see her fade away, out of it, dying. She wasn’t herself at the end. It was messy in every imaginable way. You know that.”
“Do you think she regretted it, Jen? Pushing him away when he—when he loved her so much? She called for him at the end. I heard her. She wanted him.”
“That was the sickness, Erik. She was out of her head on the painkillers they were giving her. She didn’t know what she was saying. Love is different for everyone. Best not to try to figure it out when it comes to someone else. Just believe in the people you love. Believe that they did their best.” She rested her head on Erik’s shoulder. “We don’t repeat our parents’ journeys. We
