Mom places the last bit of clothing into the suitcase and gets started on the weapons. I crane my neck to see what is on the bed. Knives, pistols, ammunition, zip ties, and earpieces are all perfectly lined up. Seeing them, knowing what they’ll be used for, makes my stomach hurt. I look up at my mother’s face. Her body is here but I know her mind is very far away. When it comes to missions, she’s usually unemotional and detached—she has to be or she’d crumble. But I can tell this one has gotten to her. It’s seeped underneath her skin.
“Why do you do it, Mom?” I ask, my voice barely audible. I watch the muscles in Mom’s neck tighten. She looks up from packing and our eyes truly connect for the first time in a while. Sometimes when she looks at me, I feel like she’s looking through me. I’m guilty of that too. I don’t always see her. We see each other now.
“Why do I do what?” she asks even though she knows exactly what I’m asking.
“Why do you do all this?” I say and motion toward the weapons on the bed. “You’re risking your … I mean you’ve never even … you don’t know her. You don’t know anyone you rescue. So why do you do it?”
We hold each other’s stare and I wait for her to say something. The silence between us is heavy with the question I’ve always wanted to ask and the answer she wasn’t sure she’d ever have to give.
She clears her throat and finally speaks. “She’s somebody’s daughter. The other people I’ve rescued…” Mom pauses and raises her hand to her chest. “They’re someone’s mother or brother or aunt. They mean something to somebody. And I don’t want them to die like that. I don’t want them to die alone and afraid and begging for their lives. Not if I can do something to save them.”
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask. My voice is thin, like the words aren’t even coming from my body.
“I’d be lying if I said no. But I know more than anything else in my life, this is what I was meant to do. This was my life’s purpose.”
A short and shallow breath fills my lungs. Of course she’d say that. She’ll always pick them. I look away, breaking our connection.
When I finally look back, her face has fallen and I wonder if it’s because she can read the hurt on my own. I know she loves me. I hear it in the way she says good morning and good night; I feel it in her hugs and the way she strokes my hair when I’m upset. It’s love, but it’s a different kind of love; one that has competition. A second-place kind of love.
I clear my throat. “You’re very brave, Mom,” I say, going back to the script.
“So are you,” Mom replies. “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
“Yes. I know,” I say with a nod.
“It’s a calling, Reagan. One few hear and one even fewer have the talent for. You’re one of the lucky ones, aren’t you?” Mom says, picking up her weapons case. She holds my gaze as the words wash over me again and again, knocking me back like a tidal wave. It’s a calling. It’s a calling. My stomach compresses its painful knot.
It’s the closest she’s ever been to asking me if this is what I want. But her tone is rhetorical. She expects a one-word answer. Yes. I open my mouth to reply then close it. She stands there frozen, her arms hugging a black weapons case to her chest, waiting for me to respond.
My phone buzzes loudly and I have never been so thankful for a text in my entire life. I pull my iPhone from my bag. Luke.
On your way?
“Who’s that? Luke?” Mom asks, lowering her eyes as she lays her weapons case back on the bed, tucking her knives and pistols inside.
“Yeah,” I answer and slide the phone back into my bag. “Just wanting to know if I’m coming over.”
“You know I like Luke,” Mom says, quickly glancing up at me and then back down at her weapons. “I just want you to be careful. You guys are from two different worlds and … I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Either of you.”
Me too, my mind whispers but I force a smile.
“We’re just friends,” I say for what feels like the tenth time today. I jump out of my seat and cross the room to where Mom is still packing weapon after deadly weapon. I put my hand on her shoulder. Her robe feels like a cloud on my skin as I lean in and kiss her cool cheek. She puts her hand up to my face and pats the side of my head. I pull away and wait for her eyes to meet mine. They don’t.
“Aunt Sam will be checking in on you,” Mom says, methodically packing rounds of ammunition in her case.
“Okay,” I say and turn around, walking toward the doorway.
“Be careful while we’re gone, okay?” she calls after me.
“You be safe too,” I answer.
As I reach the hallway, I raise my hand to the door frame and look over my shoulder as Mom slips her last remaining round of ammo in its holder. There’s something about her that seems so small tonight, like she could be folded up and fit inside the tiny silver box that holds her wedding rings.
“I love you, Mom,” I say softly, just as I’ve done before every mission. Mom finally lifts her head, her eyes meeting mine, and there’s something about them that makes my bones ache.
“I love you too,” she says, then looks back down at her case. I watch her for one more moment. I take in her faint smile lines and the way her blond hair brushes along her jawline when she moves. I hold on to that image and file it away. I turn back around and walk down the dark hallway, skip down the steps, open the door, and run the fifteen steps to Luke’s house.