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Camille
I lovePhilly in the spring, the way the city hums with excitement as the temperature climbs. The sun burns away the dull gray of winter. Everyone sheds their winter layers like butterflies bursting from their cocoons, then pours onto the sidewalks to feel the sun warming their skin.
I gaze out the coffee shop window, trying to summon up the joyous anticipation that April always brings me, but I can’t. Planning my upcoming wedding in June is turning out to be a minefield of stress and guilt, and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be feeling guilty about most of the time.
But I’m sure my mother’s about to tell me.
It’s lunchtime, and the café swarms with the kind of people she hates. They have nose piercings and gorgeous tattoos and hair in colors not seen in nature. That’s why I picked this place when she called me up, shrill voice stabbing at me, and ordered me to meet her for lunch—it’s one of my tiny rebellions against her crushing grip. It’s right across from the building where I work for a large behavioral health practice, but I could have picked a more refined meeting place. Passive aggressive, me? Just a tad.
My mother grabs a chair from another table even though there are already two chairs. It’s a weird thing she does—she always pulls up an extra chair for my late father, who died of a heart attack eight years ago. Every time we see each other, my mother reminds me that the stress and shame of what I let Bastien do to me drove Father to an early grave. I literally broke his heart.
The irony of my going into therapy as a profession is not lost on me.
My mother sweeps the room with a look of disgust and then settles into the chair opposite mine. I can see by the look on her face that I’ve done something to make her unhappy.
My gaze wanders the room, and I get a sympathetic look from Pandora, one of the servers. Pandora helped get my artwork placed with a local gallery. She’s a single mother, a total sweetheart, and one of the few people I confide in. I mean, I don’t tell her everything—she’d run screaming. Any sane person would. But she knows how much my mother harps on me all the time.
“Really, Camille,” my mother says severely, jerking my attention back to her.
My heart squeezes, and I feel a dull throb of resentment. This should be the happiest time of my life.
I’m marrying Landon Hollingsworth, the son of one of my mother’s church friends. Last year, my mother forced me to go on a date with him, and amazingly, we clicked. He ticks off every box. Blond, blue-eyed, all-American good looks. Successful investment adviser. Adores me. Incredibly sweet and attentive. And best of all, he’s the complete opposite of… no.
I won’t think abouthim.He takes up too much headspace already.
But my mother is getting angrier and shriller as our wedding date approaches. She’s so sure I’ll ruin everything and scare Landon off that my stomach twists itself into increasingly tighter knots. I can barely eat these days.
“Are you listening to me?” Her voice slices through my nerves.
I’ve already had a bad morning. I woke up to find that two of my tires were flat. The car was parked inside of my locked garage, and after my house was burglarized a few months ago, I put in an alarm system, so it’s not like anybody could have punctured them on purpose. But how could two brand-new tires be flat?
It rattled me badly and made me late to work when things were already tense with my boss.
“What is it now?” I say with a little more snap in my voice than I meant, and her look of wounded martyrdom tells me I’ll pay for that. “Sorry.” I force a bright smile. “Bad morning.”
“What on earth were you thinking, posting that on Twitter?”
I give her a puzzled look. “I don’t have a Twitter account.”
She thrusts her phone at me accusingly.
An electric zap of dismay shocks me. There’s a Twitter account with my name on it, and my picture—the professional headshot that’s on the therapy group’s website.
What the heck?
I look at the posts. There are several tweets in a row that make up a long rambling free verse poem about doubt. The poem hints that I’m making some kind of terrible decision I’ll regret for the rest of my life.
It’s clearly hinting at my upcoming wedding.
Alarm squeezes the oxygen from my lungs, and I suck in a desperate breath. I didn’t do this, but it doesn’t matter. “I didn’t create that account, and I didn’t write that.”
My mother looks at me as if I’m crazy. “Riiight. The account with a picture of you, and your name on it.”
“Someone created a fake account!” My voice rises defensively, and I’m hugging myself, just like I always do when my mother goes on the attack. I force myself to straighten up. Power posture! Act confident! If you act it, you’ll be it! That’s what I tell my patients.
Damn, damn, damn. I have to call Landon.
“Who would do that? And why?” Skepticism drips from every word she mutters.
