When I glanced back, Mom’s bed was gone. Dad’s chili ribbon hung from the Ferris wheel, flapping in the wind, barely holding on.
I reached for it, but my hands were slick with cider, and when I looked again, it wasn’t a ribbon anymore—it was just a thin red thread falling through my fingers, unraveling.
???
When I gasped awake, the first thing I noticed was the poster from my door that now sat rolled up and leaned against the wall. I gripped the bedsheets wet with sweat, chest heaving, staring at nothing until my mind slowly grasped reality again.
I couldn’t remember the last time I dreamt.
Shaking my head, I kicked my covers off and hastily turned my bedside lamp on. The clock read four o’clock in the morning. A headache pounded behind my eyes, as if reminding me that I fell apart in Teddy’s arms ten hours ago.
I peeled off my tank top and reached for a fresh t-shirt. Sunrise only a couple hours away, I needed to clock some more time reading through my manuscript or staring at a blank page.Truthfully, I had no idea what I thought I’d find. Maybe I would discover the glaring issue that eluded me for months. Or maybe I’d finally suck up my pride and call one of the agents I worked with.
Getting represented was as easy as unlocking my phone and picking from a handful of people that Iknewwould be happy to work with me. I didn’t want them to say yes because of a favor they owed me, though. I wanted them to love my story as much as I did.
And after getting rejected by my own firm, I wasn’t sure how much I loved it anymore.
Shrugging on a cardigan, I snatched my laptop from the nightstand and padded out to the kitchen. My stomach had been growling since the second I woke up.
I heard the clatter of pans before I saw her.
Standing in the warm glow of the cooktop light, wrapped in a fuzzy robe I hadn’t seen in years, my mother hummed quietly to herself as she fried an egg. It was like being transported into a forgotten memory—worn around the edges and shoved into a shoebox, so faded that I could barely see it. Instinctively, I wanted to retreat to my bedroom.
I didn’t know why I found myself setting my laptop down and taking a seat at the rickety dining table.
She turned slowly, as if she already knew I was there. “You’re up early, darlin’.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I replied, hugging my cardigan tighter as my gaze flitted to the dark circles she normally hid well beneath a layer of concealer.
“Hungry?”
“Sure.” The word came out strangled. I couldn’t remember the last time she cooked something for me—not at the diner, buthere. At home.
She cracked another couple eggs into the pan, leaning her hip on the stove and crossing her arms. Silver streaks of hair bundled sloppily atop her head caught in the light and cast a halo. “Heard you got dinner with your dad,” she said. The question was implied.
“Where were you?” I asked, rubbing the residual sleep from my eyes. They still burned from all the crying.
She seemed to study me for a minute before replying, “I’m sorry, darlin’. I saw you and I… just couldn’t do it.”
I bristled. “Do what?”
The spatula hung loose in her hand. “Fake it,” she said, barely audible above the crackling eggs. “I s’pose I didn’t remember how much it hurt until I saw him again. D’you know what I mean by that?”
I tried to dredge up whatever anger was left in my tank that hadn’t been spewed at my father. As she looked at me, lips pressed in a thin line and shoulders slumped, I couldn’t help but realize that I knewexactlywhat she meant. His words ricocheted through my mind like a bullet: “There are always two people in a relationship.”
He was right, but not in the way he intended.
“I do know what you mean,” I murmured. Staring at my cuticles, I added, “Sometimes it’s easy to forget that it hurt you too.”
I didn’t know she was crying until she sniffled. My chair scraped across the floor as I stood, but she waved a hand and dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. I froze, stuck in an awkward limbo, realizing with a pang of nausea that I never even saw her cry after he left.
“You don’t need to be feelin’ sorry for me,” she said. “You’re my child, Margaret. My only child. And I failed you.”
Tears stung the corners of my eyes. I tried to force it down, but the dam was broken, and suddenly it felt much easier to cry than it had in years.
My mother crumpled in on herself. She sobbed silently, the kind that wracked her spine and rattled the stove. It was like staring at a mirror image of myself—holding it all inside while being crushed by every tiny perception of failure. Deep down, I was no better than her. We were exactly the same.
“You did the best you could,” I whispered, voice breaking. Then I repeated it louder.
