The Mistress's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

are like light boxes illuminating X-rays.
    From the outside, it looks as though he has it all and then some. The walls in one of the upstairs rooms are painted a deep forest green, with white trim around the edges. I imagine it as a library.
    I see a girl pull back the curtain and look out—is she my sister?
    There is a For Sale sign in the front yard. I imagine calling the realtor and taking a tour, moving from room to room like a true ghost, unseen, unknown, gathering information, looking in closets, cupboards, acquiring false intimacy by passing over their things, witnessing how they live, which way they unroll the toilet paper, what books are by the side of the bed.
    I sit outside the house until I have had enough and then crawl back to my parents’ house.
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    There is a message on my answering machine at home in New York—the voice raspy, accented, coarse. “Your cover is blown. I know who you are and I know where you live. I’m reading your books.”
    I dial her immediately. “Ellen, what are you doing?”
    â€œI found out who you are, A.M. Homes. I’m reading your books.”
    It is the only time in my life that I have regretted being a writer. She has something of mine and she thinks she has me.
    â€œHow did you get my number?”
    â€œI’m very clever. I called all the bookstores in Washington and asked them, ‘Who is a writer from Washington whose first name is Amy?’ At first I thought you were someone else, some other Amy who wrote a book about God, and then one of the stores helped me and gave me your number.”
    She stalks me. I stop answering the phone. Every time the phone rings, every time I call in for messages, I brace myself.
    â€œDo you live with someone on Charles Street? Is he there? Does he not like it when I call?”
    â€œHow do you know I live on Charles Street?”
    â€œI’m a good detective.”
    â€œEllen, I find it very upsetting. How do you know where I live?”
    â€œI don’t have to tell you,” she says.
    â€œThen I don’t have to continue this conversation,” I say.
    â€œWhy won’t you see me? Do I have to come up there and find you? Do I have to come up to Columbia University and hunt you down? Do I have to wait in line to get your autograph?”
    â€œI need to be able to do my job. I need to teach my classes and go on my book tour and do all the things I’m supposed to do without worrying that you are going to hunt me down. You can’t do that. I have to be able to lead my life.”
    â€œI need to see you.”
    There are no limits. It is all about her need, incessant and total—she wants more and more. I am not allowed to have any rules. I am not allowed to say no.
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    Sometimes as a child, I would cry inconsolably. I would bellow, a primal cry, so deeply guttural, cellular, and thoroughly real that it would terrify my mother.
    â€œStop, you have to stop. Can you hear me? Please stop.”
    If I was able to speak at all, the only thing I would say was, “I want my mom. I want my mom.” Again and again—an incantation. I would repeat it endlessly, comforting myself by rubbing back and forth over the words. “I want my mom, I want my mom.”
    â€œI’m right here,” she would say. “I’m your mother. I’m all the mother you’ve got.”
    After Ellen came back, I never cried that way again. I was longing for something that never existed.
    The lack of purity became clear to me—I am not my adopted mother’s child, I am not Ellen’s child. I am an amalgam. I will always be something glued together, something slightly broken. It is not something I might recover from but something I must accept, to live with—with compassion.
    I want my mom.
    â€œDo you wish she hadn’t come back?” my mother asks. “Do you wish we hadn’t told you?”
    â€œIt wasn’t your secret to