"Mom?" I blinked at my mother, standing there watching me with surprised eyes and clutching several bags of groceries. "What are you doing here?"
"Caroline asked me to look after her mom while she was away on a research trip." My mom joined me at the door. She was shorter than me, with warm brown eyes and blond hair that had reddish highlights when the sun hit it just right. She was a bundle of energy wrapped in a small package that belied the backbone of steel she possessed. She aimed a kind smile at Caroline's mother. "Hello, Grace, I have the groceries you asked for."
"Who’s that?" Mrs. Bradley asked, squinting at my mom.
My mom's sigh was quiet and sad. "It's Elise Travers, Aileen's mother. I was here last week."
"Last week?" It was clear by Mrs. Bradley's tone that she didn't know what my mom was talking about. She eyed my mom suspiciously.
I grabbed my mom's arm to prevent her from stepping inside.
"What are you doing, Aileen?" My mom had the tone of voice that I remembered from my childhood—the one that said I needed to think very hard about my answer, because she was about to rain down a mother's wrath. Only difference was, I was no longer a child, and her wrath didn’t contain quite the level of threat it once had.
"She has a poker in her hand, Mom, and she seems very confused."
"Oh, Aileen." Her voice was sad, but this time it was me making her that way. "She's not a threat. I've been coming here for the last few weeks with no problem."
I didn't let go of her. She might not have had a problem before, but the way Mrs. Bradley was looking at me said she might now.
My mother sighed. "I thought the facility was supposed to help you with this paranoia."
I blinked back at her, shocked, and remembered that she thought I'd been in a mental hospital dealing with my nonexistent PTSD and alcohol problem. It was something Liam put in her head to explain my absence and something I'd let her believe to protect her and my family.
In the darkest part of night, I sometimes wondered if the other reason I'd let the belief stand, was because it was just too hard to be around them and their constant well-meaning judgement. They thought they knew the world, and they didn't. Trying to explain that to them, was like standing on top of a mountain and shouting a warning to the town below that an avalanche was coming. Frustrating and heartbreaking.
"Mom, this has nothing to do with that. She threatened me with a poker before you showed up. I don't want you going in there alone."
She huffed at me and shook her head, making it clear she didn't believe me. "I'm going in there to help her. If you're so worried, you're welcome to join me."
With her invitation, the invisible force keeping me out disappeared, leaving me free to follow her inside. Despite that, I almost blocked her entrance. Mrs. Bradley watched us with suspicious eyes, not at all convinced we weren't monsters.
"You've given the monster entrance," she said, flicking an angry glance my mother's way.
My mother's laugh was humorless as she headed for Mrs. Bradley's kitchen to put away the groceries that she'd bought. "I can vouch for the fact that my daughter isn't a monster."
Mrs. Bradley didn't take her eyes off me, her hands moving over the poker in her lap. Her preoccupation with that thing had a sinister edge to it, and I made sure to stay close to where my mom made herself busy in the kitchen washing dishes.
"I don't remember her being this odd when I was a child," I said, not taking my eyes off Caroline's mother.
My mom looked up from the cleaning she'd undertaken. The house had an odd, musty smell, and it was easy to tell that the trash hadn't been taken out in a while.
"That's what happens when you're gone for years," my mom said, a hint of disapproval in her tone. "People change, circumstances change."
I ignored the disapproval—it had gotten easier over the years, though it always stung, like a splinter you just couldn't dig out of your hand. She hadn't approved of my decision to join the military, and my lack of focus—her words—since I got out hadn't helped matters.
"Why wouldn't Caroline tell me she was so bad off?"
Mom busied herself scrubbing the counters free of an odd sticky substance. "My guess is she was ashamed and didn't want anyone to know. Her mom's mental state has been deteriorating for a while now. This is a bad day for her. Normally, she's a little better."
"Still."
"You have no one to blame but yourself." Her voice was crisp. "You made it clear when you came back that you wanted to keep a distance between yourself and everyone else. She respected that distance."
I flinched at her words, unable to argue. I had made an effort to keep myself away from everyone, even as I couldn't bring myself to cut off contact entirely. It didn't make it any easier to hear.
"Why are you here, Aileen?" my mom asked after a long moment. Finished putting the groceries away, she rested her hands on the counter and gave me a hard stare.
"Caroline hasn't been answering her phone and wasn't home. I was hoping her mom could help me figure out where she'd gone."
My mom's smile was hard. "Her mom isn't likely to be of help to anyone. Not even herself."
I saw that. This trip was going to result in a dead end.
"I assumed you would be at the facility for longer," she said, not taking her eyes off my face.
I went very still, fighting to keep any expression off my face that might give away my guilt. "They said I was all better and free to go."
I met her eyes and tried to project sincerity. Unfortunately, this woman had changed my diapers and seen me through my troubled teen years, as well as a short phase in middle school where everything out of my mouth had been a lie. She could smell my fabrications from a mile away with her fine-tuned mom sense.
She arched one eyebrow. "I was under the impression that it was a year-long program."
A year long? What had Liam been trying to pull? And who would have the money to send anyone to a facility the likes of which Liam had pretended to work at? It was the type of place only the filthy rich would have been able to afford. Something I was decidedly not, and neither were my parents.
"I guess I wasn't as bad off as everyone assumed." This was true, since I had neither PTSD nor an alcohol problem. My issues were of a more permanent nature, but tell that to my mom.
"You didn't go, did you?" she asked, her voice flat.
Damn. She was like a lie-sniffing dog.
"I can't believe this, Aileen." She slammed the rag in her hand down in the sink. "How could you do this?"
"Me? I'm not the one who ambushed their daughter and accused her of being mentally unstable and an alcoholic. Neither of which have any merit."
"Don't you lie to me," she snapped back, her voice ugly as her eyes flashed. "You know you're not right."
My chest heaved at the unfairness of that statement. "I’m different than I was before, yes. That doesn’t mean there’s something inherently wrong with me. Just because I don't do what you want doesn’t mean I'm flawed. It means I'm an adult capable of making my own decisions."