I found my mom’s name at the top of my text messages and signed so heavily it felt like a breathing exercise.
Call me as soon as you see this. Like right now while you’re reading it.
I jabbed at her name on the screen and waited for the ringing to start. Heaven help me if I texted and didn’t call as instructed. It only rang twice before she was on the line.
“Alden, I need you home as soon as you can get here, darling. We have a situation with your father.”
Lucky that she hadn’t wanted to video chat, I shook my head and massaged my temple, where a sudden headache was beginning. “Mother, I leased this place until the end of the year. I still have a few months to go, and I’m not done with my book yet.”
I knew from the sniff and tone of her voice that this was going to be the beginning of a very familiar and extremely unwelcome conversation. “Dearest, how long have you been trying to finish this book of yours? If you’re not done by now, you never will be.”
“Mother, like I’ve said many times before, writing isn’t something you can just pull out of your ass. It takes time and talent and inspiration—”
Interrupting me before I could even finish, she asked the dreaded question, “Watch your language with me. You know I don’t like that kind of talk.
Pinching the top of my nose to soothe the ache in my head that was spreading, I gritted my teeth and tried to sound neutral. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you, dear. And yes, you’re talented and all that”—I could picture her waving her hand to the side like she was waving away a mosquito at a picnic—“but are you even making any money from these little murder books you’re writing? I mean, heavens, darling, when are you going to write something I can tell my friends about?”
And there it was. The proverbial jab to the heart every time we had these conversations. She didn’t approve of her darling boy writing crime novels and thrillers with blood and sex and action scenes. She wanted a son who wrote autobiographies of politicians throughout history, something with prestige and panache she could brag about at Bridge and Bunco. If I’d been a musician, it would have been like me choosing to be a pop singer instead of playing at the philharmonic.
“Mother, you can tell your friends about my books. I promise you would be surprised how many of them read my work and don’t even know I’m your son because of my pen name. And as for money, you know for a fact I’m doing okay in that department. I haven’t asked you and Dad for anything in years, have I?”
She sighed deeply, and I knew she was going to start down a different path that I knew equally as well. This was the one calledMartyr Mom.Knowing what was coming, I walked across the living room of the cabin, through the doorway of the main bedroom, and straight to the bathroom. I filled up the glass by the sink, then popped the lid off my bottle of pain relievers and shook two onto the counter. Holding the phone against my ear with my shoulder, I dropped the pills into my mouth and quickly swallowed them down with the water. I was ready for the onslaught.
“Oh, honey. I know you think I don’t love what you do. I just don’t understand how you can think I’m not as pleased as punch about your little career you started on your own. And you’re right, you haven’t asked us for a single thing, but don’t you think you’d be so much happier if you’d let us help you find a great job where you can have the best of everything? The publisher of Times was at a luncheon I attended the other day. I told him all about how well you did in journalism school, and he told me he’d set up a meeting for you next week. So, you see? I’m not ashamed of you at all. I think you have so much talent you’re not even using yet.”
I tried to hold it in. I really did. I squeezed the phone as hard as I could until I felt it bend in my hand. Then I put her on speaker, gently set the phone on the bathroom counter, and squeezed my fists into balls to contain my frustration and anger. I felt my owl fluffing his feathers and stretching his wings for an attack. My fight-or-flight instinct hit an all-time high for the first time in years. The talons were pinching through my fists when I unleashed all my frustrations at once on the most convenient target.
“Mother, just stop. No, don’t interrupt me. It’s my turn to speak. You’ve been trying to dictate my future since the first day I hatched. I understand how hard it must have been to marry into a human old-money family as a shifter. Hell, you had an egg instead of a live baby. I’m surprised Dad didn’t freak out and run! I know it had to have been so difficult to explain. You felt like you had to be perfect to fit in, the perfect hostess, the perfect wife, the perfect mother with the perfect son to fit the image you wanted to portray. But, Mom, that was your dream, not mine. I have the Kirk last name, and that’s all I want or need. I love you and Dad and don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of me or what I do. So, if you could please refrain from trying to get me a job you think is suitable or one you couldtell your friends about.I would really appreciate it. If not, you can just stop calling me and tell everyone I moved to Australia.”
By the end of my hissy fit, I could hear quiet sniffles on the other end of the line and immediately regretted taking my frustrations out on her. It wasn’t all her fault. I had gone along with her plans most of my life and probably would have wound up a corporate lawyer with Dad’s firm if I hadn’t taken my first creative writing class as an elective in college and fallen in love with words. Feeling like a complete asshole now, I started to apologize when I heard another voice, then a crackle on the other end.
“Alden, what did you do to make your mother cry?”
“Dad, I’m sorry. I really am. I lost my temper when she told me about talking to someone about a job she tried to get for me at the Times. I’m having a little writer’s block at the moment, and it hit a nerve. Can I tell her I’m sorry?”
“No, she’s gone to lie down. You know the drill. She’ll lie in her room for a while and sulk, then come downstairs and hatch another scheme to get you back to New York and under her wing again. She loves you, fledge, you know that. She just wants her baby near her. I wish we’d been able to give you some siblings, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us. It might have taken the pressure off of you being the only child.”
I nearly teared up when Dad used my childhood nickname, fledge. It was short for fledgling, and anyone who thought he hadn’t been thrilled to have a baby owl shifter as his son didn’t know him at all. He had loved me the minute I hatched and was still showing me.
“I know, Dad, I do. Tell her I’m sorry, but please help her understand I have my own path to fly now. If I ever find a mate, it might be me with a fledgling or two of my own, and I have to leave the nest behind at some point.”
“Well, that’s very true, my boy. Very true. Any prospects on the mating front?”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head, knowing I had walked right into this line of questioning. Mom always wanted to talk about my job. Dad always wanted to talk about my dating life. Or, in this case, the very desert dry wasteland that was my love life.
“Dad, I’ve lived on the top of a mountain in Western North Carolina for the last ten months. The only people I see are my grocery delivery guy, Chuck, and his wife, Kim, and maybe a lost hiker who veers off the Appalachian Trail by accident. And before you ask, no, none of the hikers were a possibility. One was a woman from Minnesota who was hiking to celebrate her fiftieth birthday with her boyfriend, and the other one was a twenty-year-old hipster from Oregon who was taking a gap year tofind his purpose.”
Dad chuckled but took the hint to change the subject. “Okay, okay, point taken. I read that there might be some severe weather headed your way tonight. Keep a watch out and be careful. I’ve got to go, but make sure you try to come home for Thanksgiving. Your mom is planning a delicious dinner, and I know she would be thrilled to have you here.”
“I promise I’ll do my best, Dad. And be sure to tell Mom I’m sorry for yelling.”
“She knows you don’t have a mean bone in your body, son, but I’ll tell her. Now, let me go and smooth her feathers.”
“Ewww, Dad, I don’t need to know these things.”
“That was a turn of phrase, Alden. If I meant something else, I would have said—”
