I didn’t recall ever putting it on.
“I-I I don’t know.” My eyes snapped back to Mom. “She was looking right at me. In the mirror. She was sitting up and looking right at me in the mirror, Ivy.”
“You have the most colorful imagination.” Ivy glanced around at the broken glass scattered like glitter, and this was it.This is the moment Ivy thinks I’m crazy, too.
I grabbed Mom by the ankle and shook her leg.
“Get up!” I shouted, desperate to prove I didn’t imagine it or make it up. “I know you’re awake, and I know you can hear me. Now get up!”
Mom didn’t move. Of course, she didn’t move.
I dropped her ankle and faced Ivy.
“I’m not lying to you,” I whispered, defeated.
Ivy walked to the side of the bed and studied the monitor. “Everything’s fine. Maybe you saw what you wanted to see.” She looked at me with a shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
My fists clenched, but before they could pierce, I sprang them open. “I didn’t imagine it, Ivy. I know what I saw.”
She left the room with a shake of her head.
I stood shocked. My back was stiff, and my heart thrashed in its cage like live wire. It was impossible to escape the haunting image of Mom staring back at me. It was all I could see the entire way to the kitchen.
I sat down at the island, still wearing Mom’s dress. It fit me like a glove. The strap was still broken and dangling down my side, but the other fit perfectly around my shoulder.
Ivy flipped on the coffee maker. “So, you’re sleepwalking,” she said with her back to me. “You haven’t done that in a while. With Cyrus’s hyper-sensory abilities, he must be losing his mind over it.”
“I’m living in a different house, with different walls and different sounds. I’m adjusting, that’s all.” I pulled the skirt of the dress into my lap, desperate to change the subject. “Remember when I was a little girl, and I wore this dress, and Mom hated it?”
“Yes,” she said, not laughing, but air blew through her nose. “You were obsessed.”
“I never understood why she kept the dress if she hated it so much.”
“Sometimes people keep things to remind them of where they’ve been. Emotional scars. It keeps them strong.” She turned, splaying her hands behind her on the countertop. “Kind of like how you keep all those knickknacks in the wall behind your dresser.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“What?” She lifted a shoulder. “I needed something to take the edge off, and that’s where you keep fuil and deòir.”
Mermaid blood and Heathen tears. Uppers and downers.
“Don’t change the subject. Tell me why this dress was so important to Mom.”
The coffee pot gurgled. Ivy grabbed two mugs from the cabinet and poured in rich caffeine. She passed me a mug and leaned over the island until she was resting on her elbows, cupping her mug between her palms. The heat from the mug swirled from our coffee and into the air.
“Did Dad ever tell you about the time he and Mom met?”
“No,” I said, spooning sugar into my coffee and watching it dissolve.
“It happened at the Founder’s Day Ball. 1994.”
I brought the mug to my lips, not surprised. “Founder’s Day Ball, just like everyone else in this town.”
She took a sip, too. “Not exactly. Mom was dating Mr. Cantini.”
I choked on my swallow.
She expected it and continued, “Mom wore that dress, and Dad couldn’t take his eyes off her. But what happened that night wasn’t a fairytale, and certainly not something you’re going to repeat to Fable. She still has a light in her eyes, something we’ve lost. I don’t know, maybe I’m selfish, but I want Fable to keep that light for as long as possible.”
