River’s End

Olivia’s firmly. “Yes, I do. We were very close. I miss her every day.”
    With a nod, Olivia sat beside her, idly played her light on the ground. “Do you think about him?”
    Jamie shut her eyes. Oh God, what should she do, how should she handle this? “I try not to.”
    “But do you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is he dead, too?”
    “No.” Nerves jittering, Jamie rubbed a hand over her mouth. “He’s in prison.”
    “Why did he kill her?”
    “I don’t know. I just don’t know. It doesn’t do any good to wonder, Livvy, because it’ll never make sense. It’ll never be right.”
    “He used to tell me stories. He used to carry me on his back. I remember. I’d forgotten, but I remember now.”
    She continued to play the light, dancing it over the rotting log that nurtured seedlings she recognized as hemlock and spruce, the rosettes of tree moss that tumbled over it, the bushy tufts of globe lichen that tangled with it. It kept her calm, seeing what she knew, putting a name to it.
    “Then he got sick and went away. That’s what Mama told me, but it wasn’t really true. It was drugs.”
    “Where are you hearing these things?”
    “Are they true?” She looked away from the log, the flourishing life. “Aunt Jamie, I want to know what’s true.”
    “Yes, they’re true. I’m sorry they happened to you, to Julie, to me, to all of us. We can’t change it, Livvy. We just have to go on and do the best we can.”
    “Is what happened why I can never come visit you? Why Grandma teaches me instead of my going to school with other kids? Why my name’s MacBride instead of Tanner?”
    Jamie sighed. She heard an owl hoot and a rustle in the brush. Hunters and hunted, she thought. Only looking to survive the night. “We decided it was best for you not to be exposed to the publicity, to the gossip, the speculations. Your mother was famous. People were interested in her life, in what happened. In you. We wanted to get you away from all that. To give you a chance, the chance Julie would have wanted for you to have a safe, happy childhood.”
    “Grandma locked it all away.”
    “Mom—Grandma ... It was so hard on her, Livvy. She lost her daughter.” The one she couldn’t help but love best. “You helped get her through it. Can you understand that?” She gripped Olivia’s hand again. “She needed you as much as you needed her. She’s centered her life on you these last years. Protecting you was so important—and maybe by doing that she protected herself, too. You can’t blame her for it.”
    “I don’t want to. But it’s not fair to ask me to forget everything. I can’t talk to her or Grandpop.” The tears wanted to come again. Her eyes stung horribly as she forced them back. “I need to remember my mother.”
    “You’re right. You’re right.” Jamie draped an arm around Olivia’s shoulders and hugged. “You can talk to me. I won’t tell anyone else. And we’ll both remember.”
    Content with that, Olivia laid her head on Jamie’s shoulder.
    “Aunt Jamie, do you have tapes of the movies my mother was in?”
    “Yes.”
    “One day I want to see them. We’d better go back in.” She rose, her eyes solemn as she looked at Jamie. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”
    What a shock it was, Jamie thought, to expect a child and see a woman. “I’ll make you another promise right here, Livvy. This is a special place for me, a place where if you make a promise, you have to keep it. I’ll always tell you the truth, no matter what.”
    “I promise, too.” Olivia held out her hand. “No matter what.”
    They walked out, hands linked. At the edge of the clearing, Olivia looked up. The sky had gone a deep, soft blue. The moon, no longer a ghost, cut its white slice out of the night. “The first stars are out. They’re there, even in the daytime, even when you can’t see them. But I like to see them. That’s Mama’s star.” She pointed up to the tiny glimmer near the tail of the crescent moon. “It comes out first.”
    Jamie’s throat closed, burned. “She’d like that. She’d like that you thought of her, and weren’t sad.”
    “Coffee’s on!” Val called through the door. “I made you a latte, Livvy. Extra foam.”
    “We’re coming. She’s happy you’re here, so I get latte.” Olivia’s smile was so sudden, so young, it nearly broke Jamie’s heart. “Let’s get our share of tiramisu before Grandpop hogs it all.”
    “Hey, for tiramisu, I’d take my own father down