Homewrecker

12 - 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓿𝓮

It hadn't felt like I had fallen asleep until I was stirred awake, my legs tangled in the sheets I wasn't used to having under a duvet, and sunlight warmed the bare skin of my arms as it stretched through the window pane over the bed, and I realized I had been awakened by a sound coming from outside. Metal clunking together, the deepened rumble of a loud engine, doors opening and closing.

I turned my head, glancing over at the bed across the room from me, seeing that Natalie and Andi were still asleep, the covers crumpled around Natalie with nothing but a corner draped over Andi's shin. Then, without warning or reason as I sat up, I remembered everything that happened the night before. Why I was in Andi's bed instead of the floor, why I was in the Solidays' lake house instead of my double-wide, why I could never go back.

My mom was dead.

The familiar blackhole reappeared in my chest, dragging down the air I tried to breathe in, the thoughts I tried to reassure myself with, the memories I had of her, until all I was left with was this sense of fear, so palpable I felt it vibrating my bloodstreams and whirring my thoughts together into breathless unspoken words.

She was just gone. It felt eternally unfair that she was just gone, in a way I had never expected her to leave. I never thought she would die in a tornado, winds throwing her out of my reach.

I was prepared for warnings, signs, inclinations. I was even prepared to find her in the bathroom, slumped against the fake tiles, seizing from an overdose. That was something I, at least, knew was possible. I learned what to do if someone was having a seizure, wrote down all the medications I had seen her take before, kept her insurance information in my bag. I was prepared for that.

One night, when she was drinking and taking pills, I got angry and I started shouting at her, asking what would happen to me if she overdosed. She was barely paying attention to me, purposefully ignoring me as she watched an infomercial for a cylinder-shaped pillow, and I assumed then that she knew I had a point. Now I wondered if she knew I would be sent to live with the Solidays, with her former lover and the wife he left her for, the children he kept having without supporting the one he left her with.

And now here I was, and there she was, dead.

But none of it felt real either. Fear coiled around me like a heartbeat that drained life from me instead of giving it, but there was still this part of me that expected everything to undo itself, somehow. I felt like I was in the dark, fumbling for a way I knew didn't exist but still, I was reaching out my hands, feeling for something tangible to grab onto and finding empty air instead.

There was another clunk from outside, the sound of hinges easing loudly through the walls, and I didn't want to think about this anymore. My mom was dead. Completely dead. Cold dead. I wanted to blame medical dramas for making me think that someone could be dead, but still kind of there. Just in need of a resident with a chip on their shoulder to try a little harder. Or just TV dramas in general, for making death feel like a plot point instead of a real thing. Because now I was sitting in someone else's bed, in someone else's house, thinking that maybe her death wasn't a real thing.

Maybe this was a plot point, for me to realize how much she had done for me, even when it didn't feel like it. Appreciate her more. But it wasn't. It was a real, actual pointless thing that happened. No going back. No purpose. Just dead.

And I needed to get out of the room, out of my head, because now I was blaming television networks for my own denial.

The scent of brewed coffee drifted out into the hallway as I ambled into the kitchen, glimpsing a carafe filled with dark coffee on the island beside a white plate of blueberry waffles stacked together. They hadn't noticed me yet as Amy poured batter into the waffle iron near the sink, already dressed with her hair straightened against her shoulders, and David had his back to me, cutting fruit.