Chapter 11: Interlude: Detective Mom

Viola's POV

Hospitals always smell like too much bleach.

I push through the door of my mom's room with my hip, my arms full. 

A tall bouquet of peach tulips in one hand (her favorite), and a brown paper bag with exactly three slices of lemon loaf from the corner café in the other. 

I call it "offering tribute," because if I show up empty-handed, I will be roasted alive. 

I haven't really had time to visit my mother, what with all the gigs I've been landing and crazy shoots hours. 

Most of the time, by the time I get home, I'm so exhausted that all I do is take off my shoes and face plant on my couch, unable to even twitch for the foreseeable future.

Consequently I'm not able to spend much time just sitting and chatting with my mom.

Hence the guilt. Ergo, I decided to cure that guilt with bribes.

"Mother dearest," I announce loudly, sashaying into the room.

"Your angel has arrived, bearing overpriced pastries and emotional baggage." I finish with a small wiggle of the paper bag.

"I knew that was you on the cover!" Grace cries with a finger pointed at me.

I blink, a little taken aback by that. "Okay, not the greeting I was expecting." I mutter in disbelief.

Grace is sitting upright in bed today, looking entirely too pleased with herself, her cheeks more flushed than their usual wane parlor and her oxygen mask looped around her neck.

There's a glossy magazine open in her lap, Vérité Vogue, naturally, and on the page, looking alarmingly like I know what I'm doing, is me in a ridiculous emerald gown that cost more than our old car.

My mother adjusts her reading glasses giving me a patented wounded look. "Why didn't you tell me you were famous?!" she nearly squeals, her hands flapping in my direction.

"I'm not" I place the tulips in the vase beside her bed and toss the pastry bag at her lap, hoping it will distract her. "That is a stretch." I say weakly.

She gasps theatrically. "So you're telling me this isn't you posing like a high-fashion gazelle on page six?" She holds it up dramatically like she's about to read a court transcript. 

"Because her nose is suspiciously familiar."

I groan. "Okay, fine, yes. But I wasn't trying to keep it a secret. I was just... I don't know. Processing." I say, exasperated.

"You were processing becoming a fashion icon?" she sounds incredulous 

"I tripped walking into my last shoot, Mom. My shoe flew off and almost knocked out a lighting assistant. He ducked like it was a war zone." I whine.

She wheezes laughing, mouth full of lemon loaf. "Now that's the Viola I know." she chortles, nearly choking on the pastry.

It would serve her right. 

But my love for her is stronger than my pettiness so I pass her a bottle of water, which she takes with a beaming smile and a chirip of, "Thank you Lovie!" 

Ugh. The manipulator.

Pouting, I collapse into the chair next to her bed, feeling my limbs finally uncoil. 

Being here is like a sigh I've been holding in all week. The outside world, the shoots, the stylists, the camera flashes, it's all so shiny and loud. 

But in this pale green room, with the hum of machines and the smell of her peppermint lotion, it's just... quiet.

Safe.

"I didn't expect any of this," I admit. "One minute I'm holding waiting tables and the next I'm strutting down a runway in six-inch heels wondering if my knees are going to betray me."

She pauses mid-swallow. "six what now?"

I laugh. "Dont worry 'bout it." I say gently.

Her eyes twinkle in that way that spells danger. "soooo….. have you found any hot model boyfriend's, or are you more into photographers?" she says lewdly.

I shoot her a look. "Don't start."

"I'm not starting. I'm simply observing that your a single attractive female. Anyone would be blind to not see your worth!"

I stare at her. "why can't you just let go of my love life?"

She sniffs. "please. Its way too boring here. I have to find my entertainment somehow."

I groan again and cover my face. "Oh my god."

She chuckles, but there's something in her gaze—deep pride laced with the softness of love only mothers possess. "I'm proud of you, Lovie. So proud."

That tiny sentence hits me right in the sternum. I lower my hands slowly. "I don't always feel like I deserve it."

"Why not?" she asks, tone gentler now.

I shrug, fiddling with the edge of her blanket. "Because sometimes it feels like I only got this far because I asked someone. Like... maybe it's not me they actually wanted. Maybe it's just because of them."

My mother becomes serious immediately. She takes a hold of my hand on the blanket and squeezes. "Lovie… don't confuse the door with the road. Maybe someone opened it, but you walked through. You did the work. You got chosen. You kept showing up. That's what matters."

Her words hit somewhere deep, somewhere I hadn't realized I'd been aching.

I shrug, trying to act unaffected, but my voice is too soft when I say, "I guess."

"You guess?" She tilts her head. "Did you or did you not do those photoshoots? Did anyone else stand under those hot lights and hold poses for hours?"

She gives me the patented Mom Stare. "Viola. Baby. You did all of those things . Hell, you could be made entirely of string cheese and people would still want you for their campaign because you've got something they can't teach : presence."

I laugh through my tight throat, my mind whirling at the fact that my mom had said the almaot exact thing Garret imhad said to me that day.

Clearing my throat, I adopt a skeptic look. "String cheese? Really?" I ask.

Grace relaxes at my teasing, leaning back with a satisfied hum.

"Don't question my metaphors." she says imperiously, nose tipped up in the air.

I have to bite my lip now not to smile. "I hate how smug you look right now." I mutter but the older woman just pats my head condescendingly. "I'm your mother. I invented smug."

I swat her hand but rest my head on her shoulder anyway. 

She's warm and smells like chamomile and lemon and somehow still manages to have the softest pajamas known to man. 

Obviously not the hospital ones. She brought her own because she insists the ones they provide are "medieval torture devices sewn by Satan himself."

"I just feel like I'm barely treading water some days," I admit softly, "Like any minute now I'm going to faceplant on the runway or get caught calling a fashion editor by the wrong name. Again."

She snorts. "Viola, you once called our former landlord Greg. His name was Giselle."

"In my defense, we hadn't made rent and I was panicking."

"You panic a lot." She says wisely.

"Thanks, Mom."

She squeezes my hand. "But you keep going, and that's what matters."

I sit with that for a moment. Let it melt into the anxiety swirling in my stomach. Let it soften the sharp edges.

I don't know what the future holds.

I don't know what Garrett really wants, or why he chose me to be his fake girlfriend. 

But I know one thing.

Right now, I'm okay.

Right now, I'm loved.

And even if the fashion world is terrifying, my mom thinks I can survive it and th

at's enough for today.

"Do you think I could pull off bangs?" I ask randomly.

Mom bursts out laughing so hard she snorts lemon loaf.