"Mom?" 

My voice was weak and shaky. My knees were starting to give way. She didn't even have to answer me. I knew it was her - who could forget her own mother's face? I staggered to a bench in the powder room, trembling in surprise. I suddenly felt dizzy and nauseated and my ears started ringing. No, no, no! I couldn't faint, not right now. 

Her voice jolted me out of my downward spiral. "Harper." There was no hint of a question - she knew it was me, too.

I looked up at her with wide eyes and nodded, feeling like I was moving in slow motion. My emotions, on the other hand, were traveling at the speed of light - from anger to grief to happiness to sadness and back around to anger. It was a dizzying merry-go-round and the nausea was crawling back up my throat.

"Harper, I'm so sorry," she began.

That's when I snapped, the overwhelming emotion of fury clearly taking over while the others hung back and observed. "Sorry?" I fumed. "You're sorry? That's it?  That's all you can say for walking out of my life without even a good-bye or an explanation? Sorry isn't nearly enough. I hope you don't expect forgiveness because you don't deserve it!"

"Honey, let me explain," she said, and it was then that I noticed a bit of an Irish accent to her voice. 

"No!" I shouted. Another patron came into the bathroom, but upon hearing me yell, she backed out quietly. "There are no explanations for leaving your ten-year-old kid and never coming back!" My entire body was quaking with pent up emotion; I feared that I might literally explode with all the energy inside of me. "And it wasn't enough to destroy my childhood. You broke Dad's heart, too." I tried to stop my chest from heaving before I hyperventilated. 

"How is your father?" She asked softly, saying his name in an endearing way, almost making me think she cared at all. 

"My father is an absolute hero, thank you," I said with bitterness in my voice. I was struggling to stay in control, still very close to the edge of losing it again. "He had the courage to stay and pick up the pieces you left behind. He made sure to tell me every single night and day, for years, that he would never, ever leave me, that he would never do what you did to us. And it took me a long time to believe him, but I finally did. We were there for each other, all this time. And he's doing fucking great!"

"I know I deserve all of this," she said in almost a whisper. "I just wish you'd hear me out-"

Just then, two girls in their early teens bounded into the bathroom. "Ma!" They shouted. "Da just picked us up from the shops and you'll never guess who's here! Harry Styles!" They both screeched and jumped like crazy. "He talked to us! He asked us to come in and find someone."

Of course, when "Ma" hardly seemed to notice them, they looked confused. Then they looked from her to me and back to her, forming questions that remained unspoken.

The anger was gone and heartbreak took center stage. 

She started a new life? 

A different life? 

Without Dad and me?

I wasn't stupid. I had come up with all sorts of scenarios over the years. Perhaps she had a psychotic break or a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental facility somewhere, and she couldn't remember who we were. Maybe she was homeless and crazy. It seemed possible that she was dead, since it's rare for someone to just disappear without a trace as she had. Sometimes I wished evil things upon her, but it never felt right, even after what she did to us. A very unlikely possibility was that she had been kidnapped, but my father seemed quite certain that she had simply walked away. Obviously, he was privy to a lot more information about her than I was. 

The possibility standing right in front of me, which I never really wanted to consider, hurt the most. I breathed deeply to keep from crying. "So I wasn't enough?" I asked, shaking my head.

"Harper, please don't-" She began, but I didn't care. I didn't care whether her precious daughters knew what a terrible thing she had done.

"I was such a terrible child that you had to leave me and start over?!" I mourned. "You had to leave us and start over?" 

The younger-looking girl asked, "Ma, what's she talking about?" 

I closed my eyes. It felt like the world was closing in around me. I was being suffocated; I was in a bad dream where things just keep getting worse and worse and I hoped and prayed I would wake up soon.

"Máire, Niabh, please go out and tell Da I won't be long. I'll explain later," she commanded them. The younger one looked as if she wanted to argue but her mother said, "Now." I remembered that tone of voice. Strange that this woman was now a stranger to me, and a mother to someone else.

The girl defied her Ma briefly by looking back and asking, "Are you Harper? Harry was fretting about ya."

My mother turned and looked at me after they'd gone and said, "They're you're sisters." She was getting a emotional, sniffling back tears. "Maybe you'd like to get to know them." 

I had no more words. I couldn't believe she was acting like this was a happy occasion, like we had just planned a spontaneous family reunion in a bathroom at a brewery.

"Just go away," I whispered, looking down and hoping she would be gone when I looked up again. 

A few minutes later, she shoved a piece of paper into my hands and said, "Are you in Dublin long? Perhaps you could...well, give us a ring or we could have coffee." 

Her stupidity didn't even deserve an answer, but I replied anyway. "Harry and I are heading back to London in the morning."

"Harry? The celebrity the girls were going on about?" She asked, sounding quite surprised. I didn't blame her.

"Yes, I'm here with Harry Styles. And I'm leaving tomorrow morning," I repeated. "Now, please go."

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I was numb, even though an old wound had been violently reopened; and worse yet, what used to be a gaping hole was now torn even more because my mom truly, and in her right mind, walked away from me. Abandoned me. Rejected me.

There was some commotion outside the bathroom, then I heard the door open. I believe it was the other daughter, asking again, "Are you Harper? Harry Styles is asking if you're all right." 

"I'll be out in a minute," I mumbled. I didn't want to go out until my mother and her stupid new family were gone. 

Just a few minutes later, I heard the door open again. I hoped to God it was just someone who would use the restroom and leave quickly. Instead I saw Harry's boots on the floor in front of the bench. And when he knelt down, I saw his face through my stringy hair, which he pushed away when he cupped my face in his warm hands. "Baby," he whispered. "Are you okay?" 

"I don't know," I sniffled, and fresh, hot tears trickled down my face, covering the salty tracks of those that had already dried. Harry grabbed a few kleenex from the counter and handed them to me. "Did she talk to you?" I asked. "Did she tell who she was? And who those girls-" The words caught in my throat.

"She did," he said. "I'm so sorry. I never expected something like this."

"Of course you didn't, Harry. How could anyone?" I said, wiping my nose for the tenth time. "It's not your fault in the least." 

"Let's get out of here, right? We'll go back to the hotel, and I'm never leaving your side," he soothed.

I let my feet fall to the floor and I practically flopped over onto him, letting him hug me and shush me for a few more minutes. Then he helped me to stand up and led me out of the bathroom. 

Terrence and another guy were still running their cameras and the moment we stepped out, Harry said, "Turn them off." The bodyguards flanked us but the cameras kept running while Harry sheltered me the best he could with his body. He stopped and shouted, "I said turn them off! This is not part of your fucking show!" 

He hurried us to the car waiting outside. I climbed in, waiting for Harry to follow. When he got in, I laid my head on his lap and he fingered through my hair, scratching lightly at my head. "Sshh, Baby. It's gonna be okay." 

I wish I could have convinced myself that it really had been a bad dream and now I was waking up to Harry comforting me. But it wasn't. I had no idea how to even process what had just happened. 

_____

Yeah, this is where I was crying while writing :'(

FYI, the name Niabh is pronounced "Neeve," and Máire is pronounced "Moy-rah."