My Daughter Called from Eighteen Years Ahead

When the doctors told me my cancer was terminal, my husband, my best friend and I sat down together and mapped out eighteen years of growing up for our newborn daughter.

I thought that even once I was gone, she would be loved by the two people I trusted most in the world.

Then, the day I finished the last gift, I got a video call from my daughter — eighteen years in the future. "Six months after you died, they had a baby of their own," she told me. "And I've been locked in a basement since I was little.

I've never spent a single day in school." Chapter 1 The moment my daughter's face came up on that screen — my daughter, eighteen years from now — all I felt was joy.

Cancer had taken almost everything from me, but somebody up there was still looking out for me.

In whatever time I had left, I was being handed this one impossible thing: the chance to see with my own eyes the woman my baby would grow into.

She had gotten almost every good part of me and of my husband, Powell. Especially the eyes.

Those were mine down to the last detail, and when she smiled, they curved the way mine did. Except… Her skin looked dry, and her hair looked dry too, brittle at the ends.

Not a girl who had been fussed over, not a girl raised with money behind her. But we didn't have long, and I wasn't going to spend our minutes on small things.

So with my eyes burning, I told her, one line at a time, everything I had rehearsed a thousand times in my head. "Sweetheart, Mommy is so sorry she doesn't get to grow up with you." "So before her time runs out, Mommy made you eighteen presents." "I did it so that after I'm gone, you can still feel how much I love you." "But I know you won't go without a mother's love, sweetheart." "Because you'll have Aunt Brittany.

She's Mommy's best friend in the world, and she'll take care of you exactly the way I would." I couldn't help smiling. "That brat.

Thirtysomething years old and still holding on to something that was never going to go anywhere." "I don't even know if she ever ended up with the man she waited all those years for." When a person is close to the end, there are always people and things she can't let go of.

Brittany was one of mine. We had met in college, and she had been single ever since.

Powell and I dated for ten years before we got married, and in all that time I tried again and again to set her up with somebody. She turned down every one of them.

It took a lot of pushing before she finally admitted there was a man she had been carrying around in her heart for years.

If she couldn't marry the one she loved, she'd rather stay alone. There was nothing I could do about that.

All I could do was keep having her over for dinner, so she wouldn't spend her evenings by herself.

But I was about to leave this world, and I couldn't stop worrying about what would happen to her after.

So I wanted to ask my daughter from the future how our old friend had turned out.

The second the words were out of my mouth, my daughter's face crumpled and she burst into tears, crying so hard she could barely get the words out. "Mom, did you really never know?

Back when you were so sick, Dad and Aunt Brittany were already together behind your back." "Less than six months after you were gone, they had a new baby.

And me…" "They threw me away like garbage!" What? Chapter 2 I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Thump. The thick stack of papers in my hand hit the floor.

I didn't even reach for them.

I threw myself at the screen instead, and the denial came out before I could stop it. "That's not possible!" "Sweetheart, isn't there some kind of misunderstanding here?" "They're the two people I'm closest to in this world, the two I trust most.

How could they ever do something like that to me?" Because when I was diagnosed, the two of them fell apart worse than I did.

One of them stood in the corner with his back to me and smoked without saying a word. His shoulders had caved in on themselves.

The floor around his feet was covered in cigarette butts.

The other one held on to me and sobbed, cursing how unfair it all was, asking why this had to come down on my head, when I was such a good woman.

But my daughter only smiled, a grieving smile, with something cold and mocking in her eyes. "Mom, you really are as sweet and simple as they always said you were.

No wonder they kept you in the dark all those years." "You trusted them with everything you had.

And you have no idea how early they started betraying you — earlier than any date you could ever guess!" "And once they had a child of their own, everything you asked of them, everything you left in their hands, went straight out the window.

They didn't care that you had one daughter still alive in this world!" "Do you know what these eighteen years have been like for me?" "Locked in a basement!

I have never spent one single day in school!" Every bit of strength went out of me at once, like something had drained me dry, and I collapsed back into the chair.

My face had gone white. There wasn't a drop of blood left in it. I looked like I might stop breathing in the next second. That frightened her.

She remembered I was a sick woman, and the guilt hit her all at once, and her voice shook as she apologized. "Mom, I'm sorry… I shouldn't have talked to you like that…" Small, careful, desperate to please.

Nothing like the grown woman I had imagined. And then the anger came up through me and swept everything else aside. Where did they get the right?

What gave Powell and Brittany — that piece of shit of a man, that trash bitch of a woman — the right to grind my daughter down like that?!

I dug my nails into my palms and made myself calm down. The countdown on the screen was down to sixty seconds.

I made my voice serious. "Sweetheart, listen to what Mommy says next, and listen carefully!" "Besides the eighteen presents, there's something else.

All those years I was trading stocks, and I put what I made into physical gold." "Nobody knows about it except my personal attorney." "I meant to tell you on your wedding day.

I wanted you to always have money that was yours and nobody else's, so you'd never have to depend on anyone." "But now…" Now it was the only way out my daughter had left.

She listened hard, and she asked the one question that mattered. "Then, Mom — how do I find it?" Thirty seconds left.

I took a breath and talked faster. "The gold is at Corbin Vault Company. It's not a bank.

It's a private vault company, people store things there." "At the Ainsworth house, in the southeast corner of the front yard, there's a magnolia tree.

There's a metal box buried under that tree, and inside it are the key to the Corbin box and the access code." "And the combination to the metal box is the answer to the hidden question Mommy left you in your thirteenth birthday present." The second I finished, her eyes went wide and her lips started shaking. "Mom… but Dad sold that house a long time ago…" "He — he sold it?" It hit me like a board across the back of the head.

For a second I couldn't think at all. Every road I had left open for my daughter looked like it had just been closed off. My voice was shaking when I asked.

Chapter 3 "When did he sell it?" "When I was eight." Her voice dropped. "Aunt Brittany said somebody had died in that house, that it was bad luck, that it gave her the creeps to keep it." "So Dad sold it.

He bought a house in the best school district in the city for my brother." A house where somebody had died? I couldn't take it in.

That house was the only thing my parents left me when they died.

It was where Powell had gone down on one knee and asked me to marry him, with Brittany standing right there watching.

And now I was being told that the house holding every memory I had was sold off eight years ago by my own husband. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.

But there was no time to be sad. The countdown was still running, and there were ten seconds left, the only ten that mattered.

That was when I heard a key turning in the lock at the front door. Somebody was home.

I rattled off a string of numbers as fast as I could get them out. "Sweetheart, you have to remember this. It's the number for Uncle Russ, Mommy's lawyer!" "Find a way to call him.

He will get you out of there!" "Honey? Baby, where are you? Your favorite husband is home!" At the door.

Powell had already let himself in, dropping his keys in the bowl and hanging up his coat while he called for me.

I looked toward the doorway, panicking, and swallowed the sob long enough to get out the last thing I had to say. "Sweetheart, wherever you are, whatever happens, remember that Mommy loves you!" "And Mommy is going to fight for you with everything she has left before she dies!" The countdown ran out.

In the last second before the screen went dark, my daughter cried out for me, like she couldn't bear to let go. "Mom—" Click. The next second, the study door swung open.

Powell came in and stopped short, surprised to find me sitting on the floor. "Honey, so you were in the study." Papers everywhere.

He crouched down and picked them up one at a time. "You weren't in the living room.

You scared me half to death — I thought something had happened to you." He went on talking the way he always did. Like he was still the husband who loved me.

My eyes moved down to the pages in his hands. Every one of them laid out the plan he and Brittany had made with me.

Age 1: a little sweater knitted by Mommy, pink yarn picked out by Aunt Brittany. … Age 3: Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, from Mommy.

Daddy says he'll read you one every night. … Age 6: a firstdayoffirstgrade present, a flowered backpack Mommy sewed by hand. … Age 10: a diary Mommy and Aunt Brittany made together, so anything on your mind has somewhere to go. … Almost every gift on that list had been planned with the two of them.

The two who swore they would be there for my daughter in my place had been planning this betrayal the whole time. I was dying, I was alone, and there was no one I could trust.

But I couldn't go down. I was going to clear a road for my daughter with everything I had. "Honey, what's wrong?

Are you not feeling well?" Powell had finished with the papers, and I still hadn't moved off the floor. He reached out to feel my forehead. I jerked my head away from his hand.

He froze there, and something in his eyes went darker. "Honey, I don't know. Something about you seems different." "And I thought I heard somebody in here calling for their mom.

Is there anyone else in this house?" He was already scanning the study, on his guard.

I denied it without thinking. "No!" Chapter 4 Powell's eyes narrowed. "Honey, you seem awfully nervous." My chest tightened, but I kept my face steady. "I dozed off and dreamed about my mother." I let my eyes drop, and my voice caught a little without my meaning it to. "She was upset with me for not taking better care of myself.

For being this young and already—" That seemed to do it. The suspicion faded out of his eyes.

He took my hands and helped me up off the floor, and when he spoke it was gentle. "Honey, you heard the doctor. The most important thing right now is rest.

Don't wear yourself out, and try not to let yourself get worked up." "However much time you've got left, I'm going to be right here with you." I made a small sound of agreement and leaned against him, obedient, the way I always had.

But I couldn't sink into it the way I used to. My body stayed tight. "Honey, where are the keys to the old house?" "I miss my mom and dad.

I want to go back and see them." Powell stroked my hair. "The water and the power have been off out there for years. It's full of dust, it hasn't been aired out.

That's no place for you in your condition." Before, I would have listened to him. But looking back on it now, every sign had been there.

Under the name of caring about my health, he had been shrinking the space I was allowed to move in, a little at a time. Keeping me where he could see me, right up to the day I died.

I kept my eyes down so he couldn't see what was in them. "I want to go back," I said. "That house still smells like my mom and dad.

It's the only place I feel settled." Powell coaxed me, patient as ever. "All right. I'll drive out this weekend and clean it up, air it out, get the water and power turned back on.

Then I'll take you." "No." I said it again. "I want to go by myself." "Just quiet, with my mom and dad.

The three of us." Powell's brows knotted up the instant I said it, and the look in his eyes turned sullen. "Linds, come on. You're a sick woman.

How am I supposed to be all right with you going out there alone and staying by yourself?" A dying woman. And by the end she didn't even have the freedom to walk out her own door.

But I didn't dare go at him headon.

I swallowed the nausea rolling up out of my stomach, took both of his hands and rocked them gently, tipped my head back to look at him the way I used to, and used the old voice, half teasing, half begging. "Then what if Brittany comes with me?" Powell