Chapter 17: No Stunts

I left the pancakes on the table and walked back to my mother's house.

Maura came behind me the whole mile, ten steps back, and said nothing.

Peggy had gone out to the grocery store, and the house was empty and quiet.

I went up the stairs to my old bedroom and turned around in the doorway.

She was right behind me, with her chin up.

"Say it," Maura said. "Whatever you're holding."

"Nothing staged. Nothing for a camera. That was your rule, not mine."

"I know it was," Maura said.

"You made me say it twice, at the lookout. You made me look at you."

"I remember," she said.

"And the first time it was convenient, you put a stranger with a lens across the street from my face."

"It was one kiss."

"It was a stunt," I said, loud. "I spent seven years being somebody's stunt."

Her face went still.

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it? You did what she did. You decided what the world should think of me and you didn't ask."

"You were going to say no," Maura said.

"Yes! Because it was mine to say!"

"I was trying to save you from standing on that stage alone," Maura shouted.

"I didn't ask you to save me."

"Somebody has to!" Her voice broke on the last word. "I watched her do it to you for two years, and I said nothing, and I will not stand by again."

"So you did the same thing from the other side."

"I know." She pushed her hair back with a shaking hand. "I know that. Do you think I don't know that?"

We stood a foot apart, breathing.

Her eyes were wet and furious.

"The photographer was staged," she said. "The mouth wasn't."

I didn't move.

"Say that again."

"I have not staged one thing about my mouth since the day you carried a riser into a theater in Burbank," Maura said. "Not one."

I took her by the front of the blazer and pulled her into the room.

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