A Known Stranger

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

                The next morning, as I prepared my morning coffee, my mother had walked into the kitchen in her work uniform. I hadn’t seen her in a week, and last night when she had gotten home, I was already fast asleep after crying out everything that I had held back for so long. She wore a pair of Caribbean blue scrubs, her badge handing from her neck, hair pulled up into a tight bun.

                She was rummaging through her purse as she walked in, her attention centered on finding whatever she was looking for. She hadn’t even noticed that she had walked right by me until she bumped into me as she reached for the sugar that was sitting in front of my coffee mug.

                “Fae!” she gasped, hand over her heart. She looked up at me, brown eyes wide with shock. I had often wondered how I had gotten colored eyes when both of my parents had brown eyes, but according to Paisley, my grandmother on my father’s side had colored eyes who she inherited from her mother and so-forth. “You scared me, honey!” she chuckled.

                I blinked once, then twice, before replying. “Sorry.”

                My mother’s smiled wavered a bit, but she kept it in place as she fixed herself her cup of coffee. “How did you like having your Uncle Adam and Aunt Auburn and Ian around?” she asked. “Did Aub refer to her baby as an alien again?” she laughed.

                Capping my stainless steel Starbucks to-go coffee mug, I took a sip and nodded. “She also referred him to as an ‘it’.”

                My mother laughed and mixed her coffee with a spoon. “She hasn’t changed a bit, huh?”

                I shrugged and slung my back over my shoulder, holding my mug in my hand as I sighed and stood in the archway of the kitchen. “I guess,” I replied running a hand through my messily curly hair. “I got to go,” I told her. “I’m gonna be late for school.”

                Looking up from her phone that she had picked up sometime in the time I had grabbed my bag and walked towards the archway, she gave me her motherly smile. “Alright,” she nodded. “Make sure to be home for dinner, we’re all going out to celebrate.”

                “All of us?” I asked a bit confused. What did she mean by that? Hadn’t Adam already left? What about Auburn and Ian? They had mentioned traveling to the neighboring towns to look for the ‘perfect’ house they wanted to buy.

                “Adam, Anna, Auburn, Ian, Paisley, Nick, Noah, your father, you and I, will be going to dinner tonight.” She said, clearing up my confusion.

                “Why?”

                “We’re celebrating,” she repeated.

                “I heard you the first time, but why? What are we celebrating?” I asked.

                “We’re celebrating Auburn and Ian’s move!” she replied.

                  I nodded, and walked out of the kitchen, heading towards the front door.

                “Be home by five!” she called out just as I slammed the door behind me.

                Walking towards my car, I laughed, it wasn’t one out of amusement, it was more like out of shock. My mother had been gone for a week. Enjoying herself on a well deserved vacation, yet the moment she arrived back at home, she went back to acting as if nothing had happened while she was gone. As if Kimberly hadn’t had an accident out on our front porch, as if I hadn’t caught Ryder cheating on me, as if I hadn’t lost someone I thought would never turn her back on me. Sure she didn’t know about those things, but couldn’t she have of asked? Instead of jumping into a conversation about Auburn and her weird thoughts about the baby she was carrying actually being an alien?