c21

I don't trust myself to drive the five hours home. I was hazy before from the weed, the heat, the hours trying to get a true read on Gavin, but the Instagram message is acting like a stimulant. My brain is scrambled, but one thing is clear: I need to see if the doll is still in Evie's room.

My mother opens the door wearing a cashmere robe. I have never known enough about fashion to be able to identify fabric on the spot, but immediately, I know. This is cashmere. This is buttery, expensive, the type of clothing the lead in a movie is wearing when someone unexpectedly shows up at their door. It's the thing they're supposed to cocoon into as they say "Who is it?" like they just feel so exposed in this state of undress, so embarrassed to be wearing an item of clothing that was handmade in Mongolia and cost $500.

This is how my mother looks when she sees me. Not shocked, exactly, but like this wasn't how she imagined her night going. Like I'm a friend from high school who's visiting town and said she might stop by. The understanding being, of course, that they won't. But here I am.

"I was in the neighborhood," I say. "Can I…"

I don't know whether to finish the question with "come in" or "ask you some questions" or "search upstairs" but eventually she puts me out of my misery, opening the door wider and stepping aside.

I expect her to ask why I'm here, if something happened, if I heard something about Evie, but instead she walks toward the couch. The TV is paused on some Netflix show that I don't recognize. There are pillows and blankets piled on the couch in a way that makes me think she's been here a while. Sleeping here, maybe.

She sits down in a corner of the couch and gestures toward the seat opposite her, a sweeping arm motion that says join me.

It's not even happy hour yet, but there's a near-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table, a glass perched on the side table next to her. I've spent more time around my mother in the past month than I have in the past four years, but this feels like the first time we have sat in silence, unsure what we're waiting for. No detectives at the door. No call we're anticipating. Is this what our family has boiled down to now? Is this how it will be?

I really look at her, concentrate. Beyond the cashmere, the veneers, the Botox, she looks tired. Her eyes are swollen and red, fixed on the TV, though she's yet to press PLAY. She reaches for her glass now and takes a big sip of wine.

"So…how are you?" I finally say.

Her eyes dart my way and stay there, like she's studying me, trying to gauge if I'm being serious or not. Eventually, she laughs.

"I'm doing spectacularly, Hazel," she says, gesturing around the room with her wineglass. Her sarcasm shouldn't wound me, not after all these years. After everything. But it does. Even when everything tilts off its axis, some things are exactly the same.

"Got it," I say, pushing myself up from the edge of the couch, remembering why I came here. The doll. A night of sleep. I was planning to ask my mom if she leaked the Palm Springs information to Gavin, but I don't even know if it matters anymore. If it should have been surprising to me at all.

"Wait," she says when I'm halfway to the stairs. "That was rude."

I pause, a bit surprised at the admission.

"I'm stressed, okay? Sad. Devastated. And work is, well…you can imagine. Worse than ever. Any brand deals I had in flux are gone. No one wants to touch this drama with a ten-foot pole, especially since it's all so…mysterious. Why did Evie leave? Why doesn't Erin know? What horrors occurred in her house to cause this? And it's not like I could just hop on Stories and sell some workout gear now, anyway, right? I'm just…done. It's all done."

I imagine the podcast didn't help things, I consider saying, but I bite my tongue.

"And let me tell you," she goes on, laughing darkly, "it certainly doesn't help anything when your own daughter doesn't seem to trust you, either."

"Evie's post could have meant all kinds of things, Mom…"

"I mean you, Hazel," she says. "You don't believe me. Though I guess you're right, in a way. Evie didn't trust me, either. I mean, clearly." She laughs again. She looks around the room, and I wonder if she's thinking the same thing I am, at the same time: I've never felt this alone. It crosses my mind that this is the one thing we agree on, that life without Evie is unbearable. It's more obvious than ever that we were never meant to be here without her.

"Look," she starts again, and I can tell she's trying to overenunciate, to disguise the way her words have started to blend, her consonants dulled by alcohol. "I know I fucked up with you. I know. There's no sugarcoating it. It's just the truth."

I open my mouth to respond, to tell her that she's wrong without thinking, to make myself agreeable, to make all of this easier. I want to say that we don't have to do this, not now, not ever, maybe. But she holds up her free hand, the one that isn't balancing her wineglass, to stop me.

"Let me just say this," she says softly. "Please."

I nod once. What else is there to do?

"I know you never wanted anything to do with any of it. Not from the very beginning. Even before your dad died. You hated it all, and you let me know again and again, every single time I tried to include you. And I thought—okay, fine. Let her hate it. Let her do her own thing," she says. "And so I did. I watched you distance yourself from all of it, from us, and I let it happen."

She's staring toward the wall of photos behind me, her eyes traveling over the memories, so many of which include only the smallest snippets of me.

"Before…what happened with your dad, before the video went viral…it was fine, right? You drove me insane with your stubbornness, but I also loved it. I thought: That's my girl. That's just like me. Maybe the only thing that was like me. And then it all changed. It got so much bigger, and you got so much more independent. I missed your dad so much every day and the only thing that seemed to make it even remotely bearable was to throw myself into this world. I told myself I would build this thing. For the three of us…even if you wanted nothing to do with it. Or me."

The unexpectedness of what she's saying hits me all at once, and I feel my throat pinch with tears. I dig my nails into my palm to keep from crying. I won't do that. Not now.

And what does she want from me? To tell her it's all okay? That I wasn't grieving and traumatized from losing Dad, too? That she was the adult I needed her to be, and I had been the child? No, I won't do that. Before I can reply, though, she keeps talking.

"I honestly thought I was nurturing the thing in you that seemed most important. In both of you. You hated the photos, the videos, the posts. My job. So I kept it all away from you. Evie couldn't get enough of it, so I gave her more of it. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I get it now. I pushed you so far away that it made it impossible for you to ever really come back, even when you needed me," she says, nodding as she talks. She takes another swig of wine and then she turns my way again. "I guess this is just who I am. What I do. I have to live with that."

What she's saying is so raw and honest that I don't know what to do with it, or with myself. I'm both relieved and surprised when she keeps going.

"I think there was part of me, for a little while at least, who was waiting for you to come around. I thought that'd you'd see everything I did for Evie and know that I'd do that for you, too. I'd champion whatever you wanted me to champion. I'd be there cheering for you, shoving a camera in your face and making you famous for whatever it is you wanted to be famous for."

"Not everyone wants to be famous, Mom," I say quietly.

"I don't mean famous, maybe. Just…successful. Happy. Whatever that meant to you. I wanted to help you make that happen. When I first got pregnant with you, I was so young. Your dad and I were surprised, and, frankly, scared shitless, but all I could think about was that fight with my dad. The way he had crushed my dreams. Doubted me so completely. I told myself I would never be that person. I would make my child know that I thought they should be shown off to the world. I would celebrate them on every mountaintop. We barely had any money, but I knew I could do that."

She laughs.

"And then you were born. And you grew up. And I realized that it was never going to be that simple. I was so proud of our life, of you, of the three of us," she says. "And then after years of not being able to have a baby…Evie."

She stops for a moment, like she's going to cry, but she clears her throat, sits up straighter, and keeps going.

"All the joy was just amplified. I couldn't keep it in. I had to share it," she says. "And when things got bad, when they were horrible, when we lost your dad…I didn't know what to do but to share that, too. The grief was spilling out of me just as much as any of the happiness was. I didn't know where to put it, Hazel. On you? On your sister? I couldn't do that to you. So into the world it went. And then it just…I don't know what happened. People suddenly were paying me for this thing that for years I had been doing for free, for fun. Was I supposed to stop when I had myself and two children to support? Maybe I should apologize for that, but I won't. Other things, though…the way you got lost in it all. Yes, I'm sorry for that, baby. I am."

It's maybe the first time I've heard my mother apologize to me about anything.

"I…" I start, completely unsure what to say. "Thanks. Thank you."

In response she thrusts her empty wineglass in my direction, like a toast, and then lifts herself off the couch, walking past me toward the kitchen. I can hear her open another bottle of wine and pour it as I walk back to the couch and sit down.

I'm used to my rock-hard thrift store loveseat, something with cushions so dense and solid that I could probably do a back handspring off of them. This thing, though? This thing is made for melting into. Everything about it is designed to keep you right where you are, to make sure you don't leave. It makes me feel uneasy, this level of comfort, like it dulls my senses slightly. It occurs to me that I need to be sharp for this, whatever this is.

I'm adjusting myself amid all the pillows when a wineglass pops into the corner of my vision. I look over my shoulder and my mom is standing there, a full glass in one hand and another held out for me. I take it, grateful that I'll at least have something to do instead of talk.

"Thanks," I say, taking a small sip.

"I figured it couldn't hurt." She smiles. "You know a brand sent this when everything first happened? When Evie first went missing? Some sort of PR thing with a note that was like, ‘To make a hard time easier'—I mean, they're not wrong, but really?"

"God," I say. "That's dark."

We both laugh a little, if awkwardly. This is new for us. Hanging out on the couch. Talking about something real. Her apologizing. The fact that I've just shown up here, no explanation, and she hasn't asked why I'm here or when I'm leaving. This is what Evie and my mom do, not us.

"My therapist says this is the first step." She sighs, scooching herself back into the L-shaped corner of the couch, stretching her legs out in front of her.

"Your therapist," I say back to her. "The one you mentioned the other day with the detectives? That therapist?"

"Well, yes," she says.

"So you weren't recording the Darker interview that day then?"

She takes a sip of wine, slowly. "Well, two things can happen on one day."

I sigh.

"Plus, I mean, I didn't really need to be there. Gavin kept me posted," she adds casually. "It was part of the agreement. He could use the location, the cameras…and I could handle other avenues."

Of course she was the one who told Gavin about Palm Springs, the car. Of course it wouldn't have just been the podcast, a one-off thing. Erin Davis always had a bigger plan.

"I mean, no good media blitz involves one platform," she goes on, as if reading my mind "YouTube, podcasts, blog posts…if Darker hadn't blown up in my face so spectacularly, it all would have worked seamlessly together, serving the intended purpose: more eyes on what was happening."

I notice she doesn't say "finding your sister."

"But, I mean, the therapy part is true, too," she says. "Isn't this what people your age are always going on about? What Evie's always telling me to do? I thought you'd be proud of me," she says.

"No, no," I say. "It's good. It is."

It is, right?

"Anyway, she's been saying that I should talk to you for months now. Months. All year, really. Since…"

Don't say it. Come on.

"Since last year, you know…and now, with all of this…"

She takes another long sip of wine, nodding as she does, as if she's telling herself a story, or coaching herself, reminding herself of how this is supposed to go. "Honestly, I haven't been ready for any of it yet, but she said I'd know when I was, when it was the right time, that a door would open and we'd finally have a real conversation about all of it, and wouldn't you know…here you are. At the door," she says. "So why not?"

Something about her tone is making me uncomfortable, and it's not the slight slurring. It's like we've turned off the path I thought we were on and now we're headed toward something different.

"Oh, yeah," I hear myself saying anyway. "That makes sense."

"It's up to you and me to open the lane of communication, she said, and it's on me to let you know that I'm ready at any point to listen," she says, her posture straightening as she speaks, like she's proud of herself. "To hear you out."

I take another sip of my wine, my eyes narrowing in confusion. "To hear me out?"

She smiles at me sweetly.

"We're both adults here, Hazel," she says. "We can both admit when we've done something wrong. We can both apologize, right?"

So that's what this is.

She looks at me expectantly for a moment. Waiting for me to apologize, I guess. My expression must give me away, because she rolls her eyes.

"Oh, please," she says. "Don't act like you haven't made mistakes here too. You can't be the victim in every room, every time, Hazel. Haven't you learned that by now?"

I stare at her, imagining the face of Evie's doll floating in front of her features, something ugly amidst all the beauty of the room. The doll. I need to go look for the doll. What was I thinking sitting here, drinking wine, trying to have a conversation like we'd ever have a normal relationship?

"I should go to bed," I say, though what I really want to say is: You're drunk, and a narcissist. And this—us—it's the same thing it's always been: pointless.

But I'm eager to change the subject. To look for the hideous doll that I can't close my eyes without seeing, and then go to sleep and wake up and go somewhere far, far away from this. Somewhere where I can actually help Evie, maybe.

"Oh, you're staying, then?" She laughs. "By all means. Make yourself at home. Glad you feel so comfortable taking advantage of it all again. That didn't last very long, did it?"

She means last year, of course. Last year when we sat in this house and I told myself that this is the last time. The last time I ever took anything from her.

"I'll be gone first thing," I say, and for a moment I've never hated myself more. All those years I told Evie to stand up to our mother, and I can't even walk out the door.

I'm halfway up the stairs, making my way to Evie's room, my mind flashing to that shelf in her closet, when my mom yells up behind me.

"I couldn't have protected her anyway, you know," she says. "I never could have. So why should I have been the one to change? In a world of people plastering their kids and their ugly babies with faces like wrinkled elbows on the internet every single second of every goddamn day, why should it have been me who has to say no more, to make some sweeping, moral choice? To lose out on money, on a career, on a whole world of opportunity? Me, who's bringing joy to people? Who's supporting your sister's dream? Why should I have to be better than all of it? It's not my fault the world loved your sister as much as we did from the beginning. That's not on me. Everyone acts like it's my responsibility to set some standard for parenting, when really I'm just following the same impulse every other person sharing their small, stupid life on Facebook has. Pride. Excitement.

The urge to shove your kid into the world and say, hey, that amazing thing is part of me, too. I did that. I built that. I created that. And one day, that kid may hate me or judge or resent me or push me away, but there's nothing that changes that fact that without me, they're nothing. Not even an idea of a person."

She's leaning halfway on the back of the couch now, steadying herself.

"You can judge me all you want, Hazel," she says. "But you'll never understand until you have kids. That is human fucking nature, baby. Sure, there were years when I could have pulled back. But guess what? I didn't want to. I wanted to be someone more than I didn't want to be a lesson. And now I have to live with that. Now I'm both instead of nothing at all."

This time I don't say anything, just turn and walk up the stairs to my sister's room, missing her so much it makes my teeth ache. I open her door and turn on the light, and everything looks exactly the same. Everything in its place. I walk to her enormous walk-in closet, shelves and hangers full of clothes from high-end designers and indie brands, tags still attached to so many of them.

I flick on the light and stand on my tiptoes. I've never wanted to see an ugly thing so badly. But when I find the spot where the doll lives in my memories, and all the shelves around it, it's nowhere. It's gone, just like Evie.