"I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well."

― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

14

After she went back to Phoenix, my mother started off calling a bit more frequently. She sent a few more text messages than normal, requiring the usual three attempts to read her abbreviations. She would ask the odd question about me, or Ben, though after I answered, she never took it much further. It shifted promptly to her usual one-sided conversation. The neighbors have been so helpful since I lost Rose. I don't know what I'd do without them. I was at the point of just listening. I made mmhmm noises at the appropriate moments, though I doubt she even noticed. She had lost Rose, she needed help, she was in mourning. This hadn't happened to anyone but her. Don't worry, mother, the two daughters still alive are doing just fine. Never mind your grandson.

I hadn't heard from her in a couple of weeks. That had been normal before – she'd go months without talking to us, and when she finally called, the accusations were always the same. You never call me. You're very hard to get hold of. Don't you care about your mother? Despite her professing otherwise, there were never any missed calls from when she'd supposedly tried to get ahold of us. I don't think she knew cell phones had caller ID. There were no text messages to check in with us. There was the occasional one to tell us about how she was so busy, or a bit tired, or maybe how we've had such good weather in Phoenix. I had no fucking idea why the weather in Phoenix was so important, except that it meant I could walk to the corner for my cappuccino.

The drama was over for her, and she was back to what she knew. I didn't have the energy to resent her or judge her for the way she handled things. She appeared to me as a mother who lost her daughter over the time of the funeral, and I would never hold the way she managed herself at that time against her. In the aftermath, that compassion faded a little, back to my disaffected ways. She shouldn't have had to bury a child, any more than I shouldn't have had to bury a sister. I knew she must have felt the pain of that. What's more, for all I knew, perhaps she felt regret that she hadn't spent more time with Rose, rather than giving her life to a worthless asshole. Who knew what regrets or emotions she held, because she never managed to communicate them in a way that showed she was genuine, rather than simply being worried about what her shortcomings meant for her. She made the choices not to be there, but in her mind it was still her loss and her misfortune.

Her manner hadn't always been this way. Charlie never would have married her if he knew the person she would turn into. She wasn't a bad person; she just didn't have much grasp on consequence, foresight, or reality. But they married young, and Renee was an innocent young bride, bright-eyed for the devilishly handsome man who'd fallen in love with her. She had Rose at twenty, and the beautiful baby girl seemed to mask any shortcomings. I don't think either of my parents could deny that they were happy for a time. It was probably not long after they had me that Renee began to lose interest in being the mother and wife. My father always said I challenged her intelligence from when I was four years old. I wasn't a naughty kid, but a bond occurred between me and the rest of the family that Renee's growing distance didn't mesh with.

No matter where her mind was at the time, I could never figure out how a person could watch their three girls exist happily at home with the man who cared and provided for you for nineteen years, then walk out the door to go to "work," which actually meant "fucking another man." She carried on that way for a good six months before she came clean to Charlie.

We had always said that Renee never changed. After Rose, it became apparent she never would. Alice and I wondered if it might have been the one thing that might smack some sense into her. That she'd realize how stuck inside her own head she'd been for the past fifteen years or more. Instead it was confirmed that we were right to never expect anything from Renee. She didn't have any EQ – any perception for the emotion of others or an ability to read a situation and manage herself accordingly.

Alice didn't bother with letting Renee know about her miscarriage. It was telling of the lack of mother-daughter bond. She had what she needed around her with Charlie, Jasper, and me. I was reminded continually of how perfect Jasper was for my sister as I watched her pieces slowly fit themselves back together, one day at a time. He was simply magical. He didn't push her or cover her in cotton; he simply read her needs moment to moment to amazing accuracy. We were incredibly fortunate in the people that both Jasper and Emmett were. It could have been so much worse if those boys weren't so perfectly in love with my sisters and so very much a part of our family.