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“I wasn’t sure at first. If I’d keep it,” she says.
“I understand.”
“I wanted things the old fashioned way. Which apparently no one in my family can manage. Maybe Amy, but even that situation is –”
She shakes her head slightly.
“I wanted to date someone and have them fall in love with me and be married and have a dog first before a baby and then make it to my mid-thirties before becoming a mother,” she explains, head held high. “At the same time, though, it would feel like a slight to the universe to turn my nose up at the thing I want most in the world just because the timing is wrong.”
I feel my lips creep up into a smile. That’s a beautiful thing, that Kira wants to be a mother beyond a shadow of a doubt. Not everyone in her circumstances would be able to say as much.
“Especially because I don’t see someone falling in love with me. Not anymore.”
My mind screeches to a halt because she cannot be serious.
“How can you say that?” I’ve been fighting off loving Kira Solace since I left the cabin.
Kira shrugs. “I’m not sexy.”
False.
“I’m boring. A rule follower.”
God. Also false.
“I’m too serious. And quiet. And –”
“Don’t talk about yourself like that, Kira. You have no idea how people see you.”
My mouth dries. I want to tell her how I see her. Magnificent, beautiful, smartest woman I’ve ever met, full of secrets I want to unlock.
I hold it back. It’s not the moment. “None at all.”
Kira laughs sadly. “Maybe.” Her lips fall. “But I didn’t decide this lightly. I’m not someone who invests in the cosmic woo-woo energy of the universe like Gillian or –”
“No, you work with the data and the facts and the codes and –”
“Please don’t interrupt me right now,” she says.
I wish I could truly swallow my tongue. She’s right to call me out. Although I’m sure Kira a few months ago wouldn’t have been so confident to do that. She’s grown in her own ways too.
And I don’t mean that in just the literal sense, although there is that.
“My mother left my family. Completely and utterly. You know this, right?”
I nod although I don’t know the whole story. It’s just a fact of the Solace family that has somehow circulated within those on the periphery. No one talks about it because why would we? It sounds incredibly painful. An unspoken rule: do not speak about the matriarch of the Solace family unless one of the Solace girls speaks about it first.
Now, here I am. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
“Everyone acted surprised, but I don’t think any of us actually were. Maybe Dad. But…my sisters and I saw it coming in our own ways. That’s what I’ve come to understand in the past couple of years. And what I noticed was that when Dad wasn’t around, she couldn’t be bothered to be a mother. Once we weren’t little anymore, little in the helpless sense, she felt that we didn’t need her as much anymore. Which gave her the space to…break away.”
I want to say that I’m sorry for that pain but remember how Kira demanded I shut up and would rather not deal with being reprimanded again.
“My sisters and I thankfully had each other. Really, we had Dana. And Dana deserves the world for stepping up in the space our mother disappeared from. Over the course of a few years, we’d see her less and less. She always had parties and events, all in the name of public service or –” Kira clears her throat. “Itdoesn’t matter. She didn’t want to be our mom anymore. I know that now.”
Losing a mother is a terrible thing. I’m familiar with the subject. But my mother didn’t choose to leave. A cancer pulled her from me. She held on as long as she could before she had to go. Before I let her go. I firmly believe she held on as tight as she could for as long as I made it known I needed her. At one point, though, I was just making her suffer. It broke my heart, but she needed to rest.
Kira’s mother, however, didn’t feel the hands of her children holding onto her. She waved them away.
