I wander through the house like a ghost, looking on projects I can’t bring myself to pick up again. How many days before Rap gets the time to tell me I’m fired because I'm too much of a disruption at the Poison Apple? Though my stalker is gone, I keep the crystals by the door. I’m not sure if it’s to keep people out or a reminder to keep myself in.
My reality shows are on constantly, blaring loudly as if I could get them to drown out my own thoughts and fears that pull me deeper down into the dark place.
Ted’s truck has been conspicuously absent the last couple days though I do my best not to notice.
When I finally get up the supreme effort it takes to leave the house and check the mailbox, I’m halfway there when I catch sight of Eli’s jeep driving up. But instead of veering over to Ted’s driveway, he turns into mine.
I brace myself for whatever new problem might be rolling up to my doorstep now. He unfolds himself from the driver's seat, a hand rubbing over his head in a sheepish manner.
“Hey Goldie, uh, I brought you something. I hope it makes up for the trouble I've caused.” As Eli speaks, he rounds the car to the passenger side and opens the door. Someone gets out and I instantly recognize the blonde bob though my brain doesn’t believe what I’m seeing.
“What? What is this?” I ask, my mouth flapping like a fish out of water.
Mom walks toward me with her arms stretched out and a wide smile. I practically fall down the steps before I end up in her arms, squeezing the bageezus out of her and inhaling the familiar floral perfume that’s her favorite.
I stare at Eli over her shoulder, still not letting her go. “What are you doing here, Mom?”
Eli pulls out her suitcase from the back of his jeep.
She holds me just as tight. “This young man showed up at the house and said his brother sent him on a quest of redemption which involved getting me to you because you were having such a hard time.”
“Where should I put these, Mrs. Locke?” Eli asks.
I’m forced to release my mom when she wrenches around to face him. “Eli, as I told you at the fifty mile mark, you don’t need to call me Mrs. Locke. I’m just Sabrina.”
He blushes and ducks his head before looking at me. “The primary bedroom, please,” I say, still in a daze. Eli grabs the bags and heads into the house. The crystals don’t bar his entry, since I put them away in a drawer. My stalker is dead, no need to waste magic.
“He’s a sweet boy,” Mom says to me in a hushed voice. “Doesn’t have any parents so he’s gone a bit astray, but we’ve had a good long talk the last two days as we traversed the country. I don’t think he realized how much he’s been trying to fill those empty parts of himself with gambling. He really misses his mother, poor dear. When he drives me back to Iowa, he’s going to stick around. I called your father and he’s already set up a job for Eli and talked to Pastor Jim about some counseling with the young man.”
Then threading her arm through mine, she leads me up to the porch. “But let’s talk about you. I think you’ve been leaving a lot out of the last couple weekly calls. You have a lot to catch me up on.”
Hours later after Eli left, I spilled everything to my mom. Everything from Eddie stalking me to Ted and his brothers being fae.
My mom waved a hand and said she wrenched the bear shifter thing out of Eli by the time they hit Illinois.
Of course, she did.
We round almost every topic, including the horrible repeat of history with Madison, now with Cinder and how she only sends me short, clipped messages claiming she’s too busy to talk. And we end on the house and how it’s been more than I can handle. That with my obsessive nature, I’m not stable, just like my aunt. Even after so many marriages, she died alone, after abandoning her house to pursue all kinds of ventures that never stuck. I don’t want to end up like that, and I’m moments from saying I want to move back home to Iowa. Where life is safe and stable.
“Goldie, baby, I realize I may have spoken poorly of Astrid in a way that affected you poorly. And if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I was always jealous of her. The way she followed her passions with abandon, the way she fell in love so freely. Maybe I did try to temper your admiration for her because I didn’t want you to turn out the same way. I viewed her life as fractured and rocky.”
A tear slips from her eye that she hurriedly wipes away. “It was the last time we spoke. We were in a screaming match that started over, I don’t even know what. I vividly remembering yelling that she was insecure if she had to keep finding people, places, and ventures to fill her up. Astrid became speechless as she looked at me with pity that made me feel so dirty and small.” Mom’s hands closed into little balls. “She said that she did what she did not because she was empty, but because she was so full of love for herself that she let herself grow and expand in whatever way she needed in whatever time she needed. Then she said a lot of ugly things about me being miserable and jealous of her life because I didn’t allow myself to go after my dreams.”
That took me aback. “Is that true?” A terrible blanket of guilt fell over me as I thought about that. My parents were. . . my parents. I hadn’t given consideration to what their dreams or ambitions were, they just. . . were.
I dug into everyone else for their innermost desires because I wanted to secure their affections, but I knew my parents loved me no matter what, so I didn’t have to put as much effort in.
“She was both right and wrong. There are things I did hold myself back from doing at times, but what she couldn’t understand is that I was living my dreams. Watching you and Noah grow up, raising a family, being part of my community with your father, those are my dreams. But Astrid and I, our dreams were so completely different we couldn’t understand each other. The irony is we desperately wanted to connect with each other, which is why we kept getting so frustrated and ended up in so many knock down drag out fights. We simply didn’t have the common ground to love each other the way we wanted.” Tears freely flowed. “Maybe. . . ” she hiccupped over a sob and I instantly pulled her in for a hug, feeling her pain as if it were my own. “Maybe if our common ground had been that we respected our differences and wanted the best for each other even if it looked different from our own vision of success, we could have built a relationship on that soil.”
“Oh Mom,” I soothed while squeezing her tight.
She returned the embrace before breaking away but held my arms as if to grab my attention. “You are more like Astrid than you were ever like me. You were meant to seek out new experiences and be admired by people from all over. I agree with your friends that this power is part of you, magic cookies or not.”
“Maybe. . . I’m like both of you and Astrid. I love exploring different interests and meeting people, but I also need a solid place to land.” Ted springs to mind as soon as I say it.
She pushes curls behind one of my ears. “Then you follow your heart. Try everything you want for as long or as little as you like until this world is just right for you. You want to spend your money on clothes that make you feel like a goddess, you do it. You want to play with makeup, you play away baby. You love working at a bar, talking to people, or starting a new business venture, you do that. You fall for a special man who knows when a girl needs her mother. . . ”
“Mom,” I cut off with an embarrassed groan.
