She drew herself up straight, all pretenses gone. “Zoey Elizabeth, I am so tired of this. I am so tired of your shit. I’ve been putting up with this nonstop attitude of yours for years now, and I’m so tired of it. I am your mother, whether you like it or not. I’ve apologized a million times, done a million things to get you to forgive me. You refuse to forgive me. And now, in the situation we are in, you can’t find it in yourself to forgive me now? Your dad is gone, and Caspar is probably gone too. We are all each other has left.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “Now can we do this, please? I will work harder to learn to defend myself, if that’s what you want. But only if you promise to try and give me a chance. Because I can’t be the only one who is trying. It’s not fair. Ash is changing, and I’m trying to change. It’s your turn.”
“You didn’t even know Ash,” I muttered, but I knew she was right. They both obviously were trying. They were still infuriating but they were trying. My mom gave me a look and I sighed, feeling frustrated. “It’s just not that easy. I’m asking you to defend yourself, to do something you should be doing anyway. You’re asking me to forgive you, like you forgot to pack my lunch for school or lied to me about Santa Claus. It’s not that easy. It’s not that simple.”
“I’m not saying anything about easy. I’m talking about necessary. This is not the time for us to be like this. It’s not the time for both of us to basically tiptoe around each other. What if I die? What if I die, what if you die, and this is how it is between us?”
I inhaled sharply, turning to glare at her. “Don’t say that. Don’t even say that.”
Her face softened at my words. “I still think we’re safe, but you’re right. We should do better to protect ourselves. I should take you more seriously.” She stood up and came to sit next to me on the bed, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. “I promise to try harder if you promise to try as well.”
A rush of sadness and affection burst through me at her touch. I wanted to lean into her, smell her scent (vanilla, always vanilla), and feel that safety that I had felt when I was a kid when she used to sooth away all the bad dreams. I was still wary, oh so wary, but she had a point. We couldn’t go on like this anymore, not with the world like it is. I knew, at the very least, my dad would want me to try. He sent me here for a reason, and it was to be with people who loved me.
“I can try,” I said finally.
Her face burst into a smile, and I had to hide one of my own. I don’t think she had ever expected me to agree. “Okay then.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
AS MUCH AS I WISHED for things to magically be fixed as soon as we’d had that talk, it wasn’t that easy. You couldn’t just make six years of pent up anger, upset feelings and resentment go away overnight.
But things did get better.
We fell into a routine. We woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, and then spent most of the morning and early afternoon working on shooting and self-defense combat. We would break for lunch. After lunch, we’d work on plans, plans what we would do if Constance didn’t work out. We stocked up things in the barn, ready to grab at a moment’s notice if needed.
We also released the horses. We couldn’t afford to feed them, and we felt better knowing that they would have a chance on their own. If Awakened hit the farm…well, let’s just say they wouldn’t be on my list of things to protect.
After we worked on that, we would drift apart. We each made our own dinner whenever we felt hungry and disappeared to different parts of the house. I often took a plate up to my room, eating with a book in hand. Ash took to joining me in the room and perusing the books on my shelves.
“I can’t believe you’ve read all of these,” Ash said one evening, running his fingertips along the spines. “Some of these are thicker than my arm.”
I shrugged, my eyes darting quickly over the words on the page.
“I think you especially like this one,” he said, tugging at one of them and opening it in his lap. “It’s falling apart.”
I looked up from my book and smiled slightly at the huge tome in his lap. It really was falling apart. What was left of the cover was ripped off the back and the pages were brown and soft from so many readings. The cover had lost its bright color. It was beautiful. “It’s my favorite.”
“Mists of Avalon,” he read aloud. “What’s it about?”
I folded the page down of the book I was reading and set it aside. I brought my knees up to my chest, my chin resting on them. “It’s all about those King Arthur legends but told from a different point of view. It’s strong on the female characters, which is what I like. A lot of the female characters of the original stories are so…one-dimensional, so lacking. This story changes that. Besides, I just love the Arthurian legends anyway.”
He raised his eyebrow at me. “Interesting. I don’t know how you read so much.”
I thought about it for a moment. “There’s just something about reading a book that makes life so much better. No matter how bad the world is, you can always escape into a different world. It’s a beautiful feeling.”
Ash looked at me, nodding as he slid the book back onto the shelf and continued looking. “Ah, yes. Goosebumps, some good ol’ R.L. Stine. This is much more like it.”