It would be nice, for once in her life, to receive her mother’s love unconditionally.But you already know what’s going to happen. And all you can do at this point is learn from all her mistakes.
Silva
“I’ll feel bad that I’m not going to have any time to spend with you.”
Tannar paused his protestation, pulling his shirt over his head, picking back up as soon as his head popped free, frowning across the bedroom at her. “I’m literally going to be in meetings both days, Silva. And dinner, you know nothing gets accomplished in the office that isn’t hammered out at dinner first. I’m going to come back to the room late and be gone early again the next morning. You’ll be all alone.”
“I’ll be all alone here,” she shot back, fisting her hands in the bedding.
Six months of marriage, and already she had to fight to get her way on the tiniest things. It seemed such a short time ago when all she had to do was push out her lip and widen her eyes, but her husband was impervious to her pouts.
“You’ll be leaving me all alone here with nothing to do.”
On the other side of the bed, his eyes narrowed at her words. Silva flared her nostrils, jutting her chin out a fraction, unwilling to back down as he pursed his lips, already knowing what he wasthinking.You have plenty to do. You can have lunch at the club, dinner at the club.Sleep at his parents’ house if she was afraid to be alone.Technicalities. She scrunched her nose slightly, daring him to make the suggestion.I’d rather chew glass.
“Please!” she begged, hating that she had to do so. “At least if I come, I’ll see you at night. I can explore somewhere new! It’ll be like a little vacation.”
“Fine,” Tannar relented, laughing a little. “As long as you know you’ll be on your own. The hotel is going to be geared toward business travelers. I’m just giving you a fair warning now. I have racquetball in an hour . . . are you ready to go?”
She’d had no intention of going to the club that afternoon, a fact he very well knew, but his voice was pointed.
He had begun to pick and poke, making suggestions for things she could do at the club, committees that could use her help, events for which she could volunteer. Her absence had been noticed, and Silva knew her days of easy coasting were likely coming to an end.
“Yup. Give me two minutes.” She bounced off the bed, letting her ponytail swish behind her as she flounced to the bathroom. She had to make concessions every now and again. Especially when she was trying to get her way on more important things, like joining him on this trip. She resented the fact that she had to make concessions at all, but recognized when it was time to fold her cards.
You can spend a Saturday at the terrible, boring club if you must. The steam room facilities were pitiful, and she refused to even refer to the sauna as such.It’s fine. You can just float in the pool the whole time.
Silva didn’t knowwhyit mattered if she accompanied him or not, only that she felt desperate for a change of scenery, if only to escape the pervasive feeling of that pendulum still swinging above her head.
She had a key and no way to use it.
She was no closer to finding him than she had been a month earlier, just with a more pitiful balance in her private bank account.Keys do not like to be held.She was running against a clock she didn’t understand, with no new leads or opportunities to be found. This life was suffocating her. She was desperate to breathe fresh air somewhere,anywhere else.
The news that she could potentially be somewhere elseandleft mainly to her own devices while Tannar was stuck in meetings all day and night wasn’t exactly what she considered disappointing.
She was bored.
Worse than that, Silva thought mournfully, she was boredandshe was lonely.
Her job in Cambric Creek had been laughable for as under-assigned as she always was, forgotten about entirely some days. She’d never been given any serious design jobs. Her daily agenda had been filled with menial tasks that no one else wanted, and she’d been able to complete the marketing mockups that were always on her to-do list with her eyes closed by the end.
Still, it got her out of the house every day, gave her a reason to get up and put on one of the pretty office-appropriate dresses she’d purchased shortly after she’d been hired. It gave her a routine and structure and access to grown-up conversations.
She’d been so excited to start that job, Silva thought back wistfully. Her first real job out of school, a proper adult for the first time. Orso you’d thought. It was hard to reconcile that it had only been a handful of years since her first day in that office, for she felt as if she’d aged a hundred of them since.
She’d attempted to recreate that structure in her first several months in the new house. She would pack herself a little lunch the night before, prepare her cold brew, lay out clothes, everything she would do if she had an actual purpose for risingthe next morning. She would get dressed while Tannar was in the shower, be ready at the door with his coffee in hand, face turned up to receive a kiss as he left, the perfect little Elvish wife living the perfect Elvish life, only missing one thing to complete the equation.
She would sag in relief once the car’s taillights turned the corner, free to stop pretending for the rest of the day . . . and then the echoing silence and unfamiliarity of the house would swallow her up.
She’d tried to take her lunch to the park, but the sight of cherubic babies and toddlers with pigtails and sticky faces was an uncomfortable reminder that she had nothing but a flutter against her ribs, an unexplainable one, at that.
Outside the enclave, the rest of the town was chiefly populated by goblins and humans. Growing up in Cambric Creek had spoiled her for species diversity, and she’d nevernotbeen a little afraid of humans, so the volunteer work she’d made a half-hearted suggestion of never came to fruition. The club was a painful, inferior reminder of everything she’d left behind in Cambric Creek, and the town itself was boring.
She’d at least had friends at work.
Thoughts of Ris, Dynah, and Lurielle brought a pang. She missed her work friends, even if some of them hadn’t felt much like friends by the end.Still. Distance painted everything with a rosy glow, and the hurt she’d felt before she’d left Cambric Creek had lessened with time, replaced instead with boredom and loneliness, and the worst part was that she wasn’t especially motivated to do anything about it.
She didn’twantto make friends here. Silva knew she needed to try harder, needed toblend, needed to suck it up and accept that this was her life now, but an increasingly obstinate corner of her brain simply refused. She didn’twantto make friends at the club. She hadn’t followed through on her plans to volunteeranywhere, hadn’t joined any committees, hadn’t joined any leagues.
