The journey to the kitchen took longer than I remembered. The house had been built two hundred years ago, during a time when excess and extravagance was the thing to do for those Southern families with money and a good name. Over eight thousand square feet and with so many rooms I couldn’t recall half of them, this place might have seemed like a palace for a young girl to grow up in. For me, it had been a prison keeping me jailed from the things I wanted to do and the people I wanted to be with.
“The Abbotts had all been cut from the same cloth” was the way people around here phrased it . . . save for one soul. Me. I’d never been one of them, though I might have shared their last name. Even from the time I was a child, I’d known that. Their goals weren’t mine. Their ambitions weren’t mine. Their outlooks on the world and views of people deviated drastically from my own.
I hadn’t just been the black sheep of my family—I’d been the wolf. The very thing that threatened their existence.
At first I put up a fight when they tried to mold me into something that more closely resembled my mother and younger sisters, but after exhausting myself, I got sneakier. I played the role they wanted me to act when they were around, and I picked up the person I really was when they weren’t looking.
I’d played their game for so long though, parts of me started to become like them. It had taken me a while to recognize that, but when I did, it became a big part of why I crossed the country to get away.
A big part, though not the only one.
When I reached the kitchen, I found it just as quiet as the rest of the house. I was about to slip back into the foyer and escape up the stairs to my bedroom when I heard it. That sound had been a staple in my childhood, responsible for making me want to run in the opposite direction. Given it was my mother’s voice, I should have wanted to run toward her.
“Where is she? Where is that beautiful firstborn daughter of mine?”
The hair on the back of my neck rose on end. From the sounds of her heels echoing, she was just crossing the foyer, successfully cutting off my escape route. I was considering turning and running . . . somewhere, when my opportunity disappeared. My mom had noticed me and come to a stop in the middle of the foyer, holding that all-too-familiar smile in place like it was all that kept her anchored to the world.
Past most people’s bedtimes, my mother was still dressed in a stylish light blue skirt suit and ivory heels, her makeup looking as if it had just been applied and her jewelry sparkling as if it had just been polished. She was pristine. That was my mother in one word. Pristine . . . but that only applied to the surface layer. What resided below that wasn’t quite so flawless
“Clara Belle,” she said in that voice that held both a gentle and a sharp edge to it, making a person unable to decide whether they were being insulted or complimented. “It has been too long since we’ve seen that gorgeous face of yours around here. Get over here and give your mother a hug.” She outstretched her arms, waving her hands inward, waiting for me to come to her.
That was the way it was with my mom and me—I went to her when she wanted, how she wanted. Never the other way around. This time included.
“Hey, Mom.” I headed her way and put on the face that said this was no big deal, coming home with years of bad history in my room right now. “Sorry I’m so late. Delays at the airport.”
Giving the cinnamon mint a hard suck right before I stepped into her arms, I lifted mine and wrapped them around her. The motion was stiff, forced. Hugging my mother came as unnaturally as breathing under water.
“But I checked your flight status all night. Not a single delay to be found.” She patted my back a few times, honey in her voice, vinegar behind her words.
My shoulders tensed, but they relaxed a moment later. I might have been out of practice, but stretching, manipulating, and all-around evading the truth came right back to me. “Baggage claim hold-ups. They thought they lost my bag in Phoenix only to find out another passenger had mistakenly taken it. Thank goodness they realized it before too long and ran it back to the airport for me.” I was talking too much, explaining more than needed. So maybe I was a little out of practice.
“What an unfortunate inconvenience,” Mom said, winding out of the embrace and stepping back. Distance was as important to her as it was to me.
We stood like that for a minute, quiet and watching each other, waiting. Waiting for what, I didn’t know, but something we’d been waiting for for years. Mom gave me a careful investigation, the one I was used to getting every time she saw me for the first time after a long stretch, and though she kept her thoughts to herself, her expression laid them all out to be read.