Instead, I staggered hazily through the days until, a dreary Tuesday five days until I was supposed to leave this place behind, sitting in the car huddling waiting for it to warm up after an indeterminate not-really-work session staring at my computer at the café, I got a call from my mother, and I froze up—somehow even in my car, I felt cornered, and I stared at the phone like it was attacking me, but I had to believe it was just… logistics. She wasn’t the one for an emotional confrontation. It was just silent judgment. And it would be worse if I didn’t pick up the phone.
I took a long breath, and I steeled myself before I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said, and Mother’s voice was light.
“Could you come by the house?”
My blood ran cold. “Er… is something wrong?”
She spoke like it was obvious. “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” she said. “There’s a few things for you to pick up and take with you. Until the next time you decide to come around the neighborhood.”
“I…” I needed to refuse. I’d break if I had to see my family in person right now. But I couldn’t make the wordnocome out of my mouth. “All right. I’ll… I can be there in fifteen?”
“Good. Help yourself inside once you arrive.” And with that, she hung up, leaving me feeling sick to my stomach as I put the car in reverse, pulled out of the parking space, and in a split-second decision, turned on the music—one of my old albums I used to play on the interminable drives to work, trying to cover up the voices in the back of my head telling me the most horrible,heinous things. Bad idea. Just brought those voices back, telling me I was going nowhere, doing nothing, that I’d disappear one day and it wouldn’t matter. Didn’t get me to turn it off, though.
I drove to Mother’s house and found myself a child again as I got out of the car, small and meek and putting on a brave face pretending to be okay as I headed for the front door. I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat as I unlatched the door, kicking snow off my boots and stepping inside.
“Hi, I’m here,” I called inside, and I think I’d gone clinically insane, because Mother came out of the dining room towards me, and she gave me a hug.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, her voice strained. “I love you.”
I tensed up. “Oh my god, Mom, is Nan dead?”
“What—no, dear, she’s—your Nan is just fine.”
“Is Grandma dead?” I admit I sounded a little less concerned about that one.
“Nobody’s dead, Victoria, sweetheart. I just wanted to see you before you left. I’m… well, you know. I’m going to miss you.” She looked a little like saying this was going to kill her. I understood. I felt like I was going to die too. “Do you want coffee? I went to the café on Cedar Avenue and got those light-roast beans from Brazil that you liked.”
I… I liked the light-roast beans from Ethiopia, but I wasn’t about to correct her. I didn’t expect her to have even noticed that I had a specific bean I preferred. “I… okay,” I said, walking stiffly along behind her, like I was being walked to the firing range. The kitchen smelled warm and sweet, cinnamon and orange in the air, and I stopped at the sight of cinnamon rolls, fresh-baked, on the table. Those were reserved for Christmas morning, exactly one day out of the year we would have cinnamon rolls. Not for the first time since I’d gotten back, Mother had me wondering if I’d had a stroke.
“Do you want your coffee with cream, darling?” Mother said, taking a pot from the coffee machine and pouring a cup.
“No… no, just black is fine.”
“We have oat milk, if you prefer.”
Right. Because Mother had oat milk at home now. And any second now, a leprechaun would show up riding a tiny unicorn, and I’d eventually find out what kind of intense acid trip I was accidentally taking. “That… well, if you wouldn’t mind, that would be perfect.”
She sighed, opening the refrigerator and taking a carton of oat milk out. “You always said you could take it black, and I had to learn from Sam that you prefer it with oat milk. You could well have said.”
“Sorry.” I’d never have lived down asking for oat milk in my coffee. Or at least, I’d have thought I wouldn’t have. Also, was shelisteningto Sam?
She brought two mugs to the table, and she took out a pair of plates, serving up cinnamon rolls. I think I was having a low-level panic attack, standing at the table, my hand clutching the back of the chair. Breathing was getting harder. I was supposed to turn down cinnamon rolls. But she’d seemingly made them for this, so that would be rude, but I couldn’t accept them, but I couldn’t…
She made a face at me. “Victoria, sweetheart, are you all right? You can sit down.”
“What happened?” I blurted, my voice shaking embarrassingly. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
She stared at me for a second before I saw the moment her heart broke, and she looked down. “I guess Bridget was right.”
“What—about what?” I gripped the chair tighter. The one thing I couldn’t handle right now was adding Bridget into this.
“I call you around to make you a damn cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll, and you look like I’m about to hit you. I didn’t think I was doing that badly.”
“I… beg your pardon?”
“What, she didn’t say? She told me how I was… I don’t know,” she scoffed, looking down at the table. “Emotionally neglectful. How maybe things would have turned out better if I’d told you growing up that I love you.”
“I—I don’t know if that’s…” I forced a nervous laugh while, underneath, my insides churned. Bridget had talked to her? About that? She’d just gone and tried to face the biggest and scariest thing I’d ever known, and apparently it was… working?
