Blizzard

chapter 22

Angela looked Toni up and down. She smiled hesitantly. "Hi, Toni. It's good to see you."

Toni stood frozen in the doorway, barely able to form a coherent thought. Her mother was here. Right in front of her. In person. She was actually here. After years of having had zero contact with her, Toni didn't know how she was supposed to react to the unsolicited surprise visit of her mother. Instead of greeting her like a normal person would, Toni asked bluntly, "What do you want?"

Angela didn't seem put off by Toni's standoffishness. "I–I wanted to come see you," she said. Toni's mental image of her mom had faded over the years since she'd last seen her, but still, she was able to see a difference in her appearance from how she remembered her. Her mother's eyes looked less sunken, her skin less pale and her dark brown, almost black hair less lifeless–like she was actually taking care of her body now instead of her feeding harmful cravings.

"I thought you were supposed to wait for me to call." Toni hadn't agreed to see her.

"Well, I was going to but I–I just really wanted to see you. It's already been such a long time, I didn't want to wait any longer."

Toni didn't know how to take that, how to deal with it. Seeing her mother for the first time in almost five years, she didn't know whether she wanted to hug her for finally showing up or slam the door in her face for taking so unbearably long. Right now definitely wasn't the time to be doing this, whatever 'this' was. She couldn't be sure of what the woman really wanted. It seemed very unlikely that after all these years her mother suddenly couldn't wait to see her. There had to be an ulterior motive. Toni crossed her arms in a way that hid her fists–hid how hard she was clenching them. She didn't want her mother to know how much her unforeseen presence unsettled her. "Um, I don't think you're supposed to be here without Camille and Derek present. You should go."

"Oh, well, I thought they were home." Angela said.

"The driveway is empty." Toni said, giving up on trying to maintain eye contact. Letting herself look anywhere but at her mom brought a small sense of relief, allowing her frozen brain to thaw and think properly.

"I thought the car was parked in the garage."

That was definitely plausible. But just as Toni was starting to believe what the woman was saying, she saw the beat up, black car parked on the other side of the road.

It had a large dent in the driver's door.

"Is that your car?" Toni asked, trying to make her tone as indifferent as she could so as to not give away her increasing anxiety.

Angela briefly turned to look at the car Toni's eyes were trained on. "Yes. It's a little beat up right now but I'm working on getting it fixed."

"Right." Toni's voice cracked. Her heartbeat was speeding up. If Shelby had been right, Angela had been circling the house the past couple of hours or maybe even longer. For all Toni knew, her mother could have been keeping tabs on the house for days. There was no way she hadn't been aware of her foster parents' absence.

"I, um–I still think you should go." However much Toni tried, she couldn't keep her voice from trembling this time. There was only one reason she could think of as to why her mom would want to make sure her foster parents weren't home before coming by, the realization of which made Toni's heart sink. All Toni was good for was a way to get more drugs. It was good to be reminded of how much she was worth, lest she forgot. Being around Shelby had almost made her. However, technically there was the possibility Angela had been driving by, waiting for her foster parents to be home and just couldn't wait anymore to see Toni, but that seemed incredibly unlikely. If her mom really cared about her and wanted to see her, she'd had years to do so. Toni was pretty sure her mother shouldn't have even known what her current address was. Especially since Toni hadn't agreed to call her yet, much less to meet with her. About to bring it up, Toni opened her mouth but was cut off by her mother before she could get another word out.