Page 24 of Thorns of Deceit

“Umm, no. She’s here in the city with her mom.” Before she could ask another question, I asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. I’m just anxious.” She let out a heavy sigh. “We should probably move before summer is over and you’re off to college.”

Surprise washed over me. “But it hasn’t been two years yet.”

“Just about,” she retorted.

I sighed. “Don’t you think it’s time you stand still, Mom? It cannot go on for another two decades like this. It’s not living, just floating without any real connections.”

I could hear her shoes clacking against the floorboards through the phone line. She had to be pacing, and then she stopped.

“Attending the boarding school ensured you have some real connections,” she rasped. “You made some good friends there and you’ll be off to college soon.”

“I’m still trying to get the funds I need for the flight and months of living expenses,” I muttered, feeling like shit for lying to her.

“We’ll find a way,” she claimed. “We always do.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.”

I didn’t know what else to say or do. Maybe honesty would be best, maybe I should admit to her what had happened. But then she’d realize I’d been lying to her about my coffee shop job. Dammit. I opened my mouth when her voice came through, “I have to go to work. Spend time with your friend, but when you get home, we have to talk.”

“Yeah, Mom… I know,” I said, stirring the pot of tomato sauce and only now realizing it had turned a weird brownish color. I headed for the spice rack, but then stopped at the window overlooking the city. I imagined I could see my mom across town, in the apartment too close to the slums and dirt. “I have much to tell you too.”

“We’ll move, and then you’ll be off to Paris.”

“I worry about you,” I whispered. “You’re alone too much, just existing and not living.”

“I haven’t been a good mom.”

“No—”

“Baby, don’t lie. We’ve both witnessed my parenting. My drinking. My failures.”

I leaned forward, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. “You did the best you could.”

“You, away from me and with your friends, is the way it should be. Seeing you happy and living is what’s important. Everything I’ve done… it was for you. You live and be your own person. We don’t need men.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I just… Everything is happening so fast.”

“One step at a time, baby,” Mom said calmly. “I have to go.”

“Okay.”

The line went dead, but I stayed frozen, the phone still pressed to my ear. A dull ache spread through my chest, along with worry for my mother, my only parent. My only family. She had no one else but me. Her parents had died when she was justa child, leaving her to grow up in the cold walls of an orphanage. And now, after everything she’d already endured, life had dealt her another cruel hand, binding her to a man who broke more than promises. He should have given her a warm home and a family, not cruelty and fear.

The sharp, piercing beep of the smoke alarm shattered the quiet, jolting me out of my thoughts. My heart lurched as I spun toward the stove just in time to see a thick, black cloud billowing from the pot. The smoke curled upward like a sinister little ghost, twirling lazily toward the ceiling before spreading out in a hazy, choking veil.

“Oh no, no, no…” I sputtered, waving my hand uselessly through the air. The acrid smell of burning filled my nose, making my eyes water as I coughed and fumbled to switch off the burner. The dinner had transformed into a scorched, bubbling disaster.

The alarm shrieked again, a relentless, accusing cry. I grabbed a dish towel and started fanning it toward the ceiling, muttering a string of apologies and curses, as if that might calm both the alarm and my racing heart.

“What the hell is going on?” A deep man’s voice had me nearly jumping out of my skin. The dish towel slipped from my hand and landed in the puddle of something unidentifiable on the floor.