It was late afternoon before Tabi and Esther dropped me off at my house. The good thing about shifting into a mouse was my clothes hadn’t torn into pieces this time. I didn’t have to borrow anyone’s clothes or go home naked. Again. Woohoo!
I walked into the house with a mission. Tilly and I were going to have a long, adult conversation. I wasn’t hopeful that my daughter would be home, but that didn’t stop me from going straight to her room anyway. I needed to make her understand the ramifications of her new way of thinking. No matter the cost. This was not the time to let her make her own decisions.
She was being influenced by the alpha of a bad pack.
I couldn’t force her to do anything, but I could try as hard as I could to convince her to do the right thing.
I walked into her room, more sentimental about my baby girl than I’d ever been. She’d been an absolute joy as a child. We’d been best friends. A Lorelai and Rory in real life. It hurt me to see her taking such a wrong path in life and being unable to stop her.
Her closet door was open, and I pushed it shut—then opened it again. Miss Marnie, her stuffed animal, which had long ago lost both eyes, had a tuft of hair missing, and she had some stuffing sticking out of her left leg, but she was still here and that meant something. It meant she had value to Tilly, so I pulled her from the closet. This thing had been through many tear sessions, some tantrums, a few trips, twelve years of school, but she’d been left behind when Tilly went away to college.
I hugged Miss Marnie and said a silent thank you for giving my girl comfort through those awkward childhood years, then I walked to the hallway closet, pulled out the sewing box and got to work. I needed to be busy, tostaybusy.
It didn’t take long to fix the doll and by the time I finished, Tilly still wasn’t home.
Taking a deep breath, I texted her.When do you think you’ll be home? We really need to talk.
A minute later, I saw that she’d read the response, but no reply came through.
Releasing a slow breath, I tried again.I’m your mom. I love you. Just, please, be careful.
When she read that message too and didn’t respond, I sighed and stuck Marnie on her bed then headed into the shower. It wasn’t like I could call the police and tell them my daughter had fallen in with a pack of bad shifters. All I could do was try to nudge her in the right direction and hope she found her way back to me.
By the time I’d belted out the chorus of some baby Bieber song, I felt better about everything. I could speak to Tilly. And she would listen because she was reasonable and smart, and she knew the importance of using common sense and logic. I was almost positive that once she really sat down and thought about the hate speech, she’d actually repeated to me, she would hear how bad it sounded.
I stepped out of the shower and dressed in my mom-uniform of jeans and a tee, then sat at the table with a cup of tea. Half a cup in, the doorbell rang, and I went to answer. I wasn’t expecting anyone but there were a lot of unexpecteds these days, so I was cautious enough to look through the formerly unused peephole.
Tabi stood on the porch, a Prada bag on her shoulder and a bakery bag in her hand.
“Hi.” I pulled the door open with an awkward smile.
“Hey.”
I wasn’t inviting her in yet, but she breezed past me before I had the chance. That, I was starting to think, was just Tabi. She wasn’t rude, but she didn’t waste time. She was just the kind of woman who seemed to get things done, which is probably the reason she was Esther’s right hand woman.
I closed the door and turned, followed her to the kitchen as if this was her house, and I was just a confused guest. Of my own home. Eh, whatever.
Her hair looked freshly blown out, and she wore a pale blue blouse and white slacks. Her shoes, white flats, weren’t as practical as her boots, but it complemented her outfit well.
And made me feel unbelievably underdressed.
She set the bakery bag on the table and pulled out a chair. Sitting in it, her gaze swept over me, and a slight frown twisted her lips. “What do you have to wear to the charity benefit at the mayor’s house?”
Not that I cared about such things right now, but I had a wedding dress I’d used as a Halloween costume, but it was spattered in blood on one side and had a fake knife sticking out of the shoulder. And I still had all of Tilly’s prom dresses, but she was younger and thinner, with longer legs, so by no means were they appropriate or a look I wanted to go with.
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Nothing?” She lifted a brow.
Most women said the word nothing when they had a closet full of outfits, but none that they wanted to wear. I, quite literally, didn’t have one outfit suitable for an event like this one. Nothing at all. And that was a little embarrassing.
“I suppose I need to go shopping.” Although the finances weren’t really padded enough for a gown I would only wear once. I didn’t have luxuries built in my budget. And I didn’t have any new temp jobs lined up except this gala one. Granted, it paid very well.
“Or you could come to my house. I have a closet full of dresses for these kinds of things.”
A rush of relief ran through me. That would be way less mortifying than trying to pay for some fancy dress with three different credit cards and change from the bottom of my purse, and I still would’ve ended up with something that wouldn’t fit in at a fancy party. Tabi and I were probably near the same size, so that worked.
She insisted on driving me to her place, even though it made more sense for me to just follow her in my own car, so she didn’t have to bring me back. Of course, her house was only a few blocks away, so I could walk back if necessary, so I rolled with it. Ever the peacemaker.
