No acknowledgment.
But maybe I didn’t want her to look at me. Dad had told her what had happened to me … about the curse … and maybe now she’d see me only as a monster. Maybe that was what she couldn’t accept.
“Mommy?” Tears pricked my eyes. “I don’t know what all Daddy told you, but it’s true. I know it’s hard to believe—what happened to Jude … and me. But I’m still your daughter. And Jude’s still your son. And he’s back now. And he needs you. We all need you.”
Nothing.
“James and Charity are staying with Aunt Carol—but they can’t stay there forever. And Dad’s been hurt. Really hurt. He needs someone to take care of him. But I have so much on my plate. I’m trying to find a way to turn Daniel back into a human. And Jude needs someone to help him, too. There’s a madman with a pack of demons that wants me dead, and another werewolf pack that wants me for heaven knows what reason. And then I’ve got my own pack of five—four—werewolf boys, who keep looking to me to be their leader … or mother … or something. But I don’t know how to do it all. And I can’t do it by myself. We all need you.” I stepped even closer. What I wanted to do was throw my arms around her and bury my head against her like I did when I was a child. Instead, I placed my hand on her thin fingers. “I need a mother. We all need one.”
She didn’t move. Not even a twitch of her fingers.
“Please, Mom. That’s who you are. That’s who we need you to be. That’s your reality, no matter how crazy any of this is. Be my mother. Please.”
Tears stung my face as they slid down my cheeks. Mom hated public crying just as much as I did, but I let them flow. She didn’t notice. She didn’t react. Just kept staring at that damn smudge. I don’t know how I’d thought this was going to play out, but in my imagination I thought she would at least care.
My muscles ached as I felt a deep rumbling surge up from a dark place inside my heart. The wolf in my head whispered for me to lash out at my mom—or at the shell of the woman who sat in front of me now. The impulse made me sick. I clutched at my stomach and took deep breaths, focusing on purging those emotions from my mind. I hadn’t come here to get angry. I’d come here to get my mother back.
I let go of her hand and left her room. Covering my tear-streaked face with my arm, I passed the nurses’ station and asked Latisha to buzz me out the door.
What I needed now was to get away.
I almost ran into an older couple waiting outside the elevator when I exited the psych ward. The woman leaned her weight into her husband, and he clasped his arm around her for support. I noticed she bore a striking resemblance to the young woman I’d seen when I’d first entered the ward. I wondered if these were that patient’s parents, and I couldn’t bear the thought of sharing the confined space of the elevator with them. Like I might absorb their pain on top of mine.
Instead, I pushed open the heavy stairwell door and let it slam closed behind me. I darted down a couple of flights of stairs, my echoing footsteps chasing behind me. I made it all the way to the landing that would take me back out to the ICU floor before I fell against the wall.
Sobs quaked inside my chest and sounded even louder in the isolated stairwell. I hated myself for thinking I could make my mother understand how much I needed her. Like I could snap her out of her catatonic state just like that. I hated the horrible thoughts that had raced through my head when I’d failed. Deep down, I knew I couldn’t blame her for being mentally incapacitated, just like I couldn’t blame my father for being unconscious in his hospital bed.
But all the same, it still meant I was completely alone.