CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

My mum laughed and drew me closer, "My daughter. It's so good to have you home again." I could hear the thread of beration in her voice, but I ignored it.

My mum released me. "Why are you here?" She gestured to my room and I shrugged. "I just wanted to see what it looked like again, after all these times."

She narrowed her eyes at the vacuum cleaner with me. "Were you planning to clean again? Why bother cleaning if you are not going to stay here."

I turned to her, curious. "If you can't bear staying or looking at the room, how did you manage staying here. Others would have moved immediately or as soon as they were able, you know?" It had always been a question on my mind. My mum had come to see my father lying in his own pool of blood and me passed out in my room, and the next few years had been one of horror for both of us.

She shrugged. "I didn't really have a choice after it happened. Even before, it wasn't like we had that much money lying around. Nobody was going to buy a house where someone had been murdered, and I didn't even have the money to renovate it. Did that really affect you? She asked, fear injecting her voice.

I caressed her hair. "After the first few years, it didn't. I knew we had no choice and I could live with it after a while." I hid my face from her scrutiny and looked at the place where, for the longest time, the trace of unwashed blood had remained. While we had stayed together in my mum's room, she had eventually been unable to live with my nightmares. It felt like every time I had a nightmare, she was broken up a little more, so I'd made the choice to move back into my room and I didn't regret my decision, not one bit. It meant I could still have my mother with me, something I'd been terrified of my whole life.

She grabbed my hand. "Are you hungry? Let me make something for you to eat. It's not so often that you come home, I want to enjoy it." I held her hands tighter as we moved to the tiny kitchen in the house.

When I had been younger, before it had happened, I had thought everyone lived like I did, obviously from paycheck to paycheck as my mother had been critically ill and most of dad's finance had gone to that. I had thought everyone barely had their own rooms and their kitchen had been a small extension of their living room, but that had been before I'd started elementary school and as part of a way to escape my own room, I'd had a lot of sleepovers. I'd then realized, ah, not everyone lived like we did, and we were in that tiny percentage that were poor.

My mum dropped two glasses of orange juice and some cookies on a tray and I carried it to the living room where we cuddled into each other. I took a bite of the cookie and moaned. "Wow. This is so good."

mum smiled. "I knew you would like it. I started going to that baking academy I've always wanted to and baked a lot a few days ago. I'll pack a few for you to take home."

I nodded and bit into the cookie, enjoying it. "I'm so lucky."

mum fingered my hair, "Of course you are, but your hair is saying otherwise. Did you cut it yourself?"

I nodded and moaned again, pointing at the cookie. "This is so good. You can start selling these."

mum laughed. "Stop trying to change the subject."

I fingered my hair, "Still it doesn't look that bad when I tie it into a bun. I didn't have a lot of time and the length was beginning to annoy me, so I cut a few inches off. How will the daughter of a hairdresser be this horrible when it comes to cutting hair. I still haven't been able to understand it."

mum laughed. "You were never interested, and I'm not interested in forcing you to do something you don't want to. Are you staying the night? I can help you fix it tonight."

I shook my head. "Uh huh. I have to go to work tomorrow, so I'm going back home. I think it can be done before I leave."

mum dropped my hair and looked into my eyes. "That's true. You mostly come during the weekend. Why are you here so late? Is something going on?"

I shook my head and cuddled into her again. "No. I just missed you and I had a little time to spare."

After I'd seen the woman in my boss office, I'd suddenly missed my mother and thankfully, Jonathan had cancelled our meeting, so I'd decided to make the spontaneous drive to see her."

"Are you sure? How is your job treating you? If you don't like it, you can change it to something else. You know, all I want is for you to be happy. You've been through a lot to not have a good career life."

I shook my head with a laugh. 'And start from scratch again? I like my job a lot, and I'm happy. I also need you to be happy."

She nodded. 'I am. I'm happy if my daughter is happy. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

I frowned at her, how did she know what was going on in my life? "Did anybody tell you anything?" I asked suspiciously and she laughed.

"Are you hiding something from me?"

I shook my head. "Not at all. You just sounded like a sorcerer. Any new thing with you? You look good."

She started shaking her head when she clapped, remembering something, and pushed my head away so she could look at me. "That's true. I totally forgot to tell you I ran into one of your friends."

"From high school?" That wasn't very strange since I had attended school in this same area.

She shook her head. "No. From college. I went to get grocery the other day and one young man paid for all I bought. He said he recognized me from looking at you. You always denied that I could pass for your sister, I knew you were wrong." She laughed, pleased.

"Don't you think you're going too far? You obviously look like my mother." I joked and she frowned playfully. "It was the guy that said so, not me. He first assumed it was because there could be people that looked like you, and he was so surprised that I knew you and was your mother. You should take care of yourself like me, so people can think you're still in your twenties when you're nearly fifty."

I rolled my eyes. 'Who was this person? Let me let him know that he needs glasses."

She squeezed her brows, trying to remember, one gesture I'd taken from her. Actually, if it were by face alone, I was almost my mother's clone. We had the same brunette hair and similar winged brows, with the same shade of blue eyes. Our faces were also ovally shaped, but it was always good to keep each other humble. Our style of fun.

"I don't remember if he told me. He just came to me and told me I looked like someone he knew." If I didn't know him, I would have assumed he was your boyfriend or someone like that.

I laughed. "What does that mean? I had my own share of boyfriends."

mum hissed. "Yeah right. I'm going to win the bet about you getting married in your twenties. You are not going to."

I went silent, there was no way I could tell my mum the story I'd come up with that she could believe me. Everything had been a lie, obviously, and I couldn't drop the ball now. Besides, the arrangement was just for a year and my mum was as tied to this house as I wanted to leave, so there was no fear of her coming to look for me. She didn't even have my address and had never asked for it. Different people, although grieving the same person, did that in their own way, and I couldn't blame her for choosing to grieve my dad by staying in the only home they'd lived together.

mum glanced at me and covered her mouth. "Wait, are you considering it? Do you have someone you want to marry?"

I forced a playful look into my eyes and nudged her shoulder with mine. "Of course not. You know me, I'm going to die a single woman."

Mum nudged me back. 'And I'm happy with that. As long as you're happy."

We fell into a comfortable silence, me going through the things I needed to get ready for the one year I'd sold my soul for and her, I couldn't guess. We rarely asked each other what we were thinking. I could guess it was because we knew we couldn't be honest with each other. My mother and I had what others would call a codependent relationship. We both knew we were alive simply because the other person had not chosen to give up first, which was the main reason I couldn't let the murderer go. I'd gotten a hint, a whisper of hope, and I couldn't bear to part with it regardless of what my mother felt. We both needed justice to really heal, whether she knew it or not, and I was going to do my best to get that justice. In one year.

mum gasped and stood up, startling me. "Your hair. The day is already gone. I don't want you driving home in the dark."

I burrowed closer to her. "Not yet. Give me ten more minutes. Hmmm, I love the way you smell."

She huffed and laid back down. "Take as long as you like." She whispered.