Page 103 of My Orc Has Big Tusks
She stood with her arms at her sides.
“Would you like to walk?” she asked.
“Just us?”
“Just us.”
We started along the perimeter fence, neither of us speaking. The path was made up of packed dirt winding between enclosures and along the tree line. A mossnibble whistled from somewhere inside their pen. Gerald rumbled in his sleep as we passed.
My mother walked with her hands in her pockets, watching the ground.
“I didn’t come here because I disapproved,” she finally said. “I came because I was frightened.”
I waited.
“When your father and I were married, we rarely had serious conversations. He didn’t like conflict. I didn’t push even when there were things I needed to say, things I wanted him to hear.” She kept her eyes on the path ahead. “I’d try to discuss things that mattered, like finances, our future. He’d disappear, taking late-night calls that could wait. Or he’d spend hours in the barn fixing things that weren’t broken. Anywhere but with me, working through the latest problem.”
The mossnibble’s whistling faded as we walked.
“I got frustrated,” she said. “I pushed harder, thinking if I could make him see how important it was, he’d stay and talk. But the harder I pushed, the more he backed away. By the time I realized we needed help, the love was gone. We were two people living in the same house, avoiding each other in different ways.”
“So you left,” I said.
“I did.” She stopped walking, turning to face me. “I wanted to take you with me. But you and Dave were so close. You were like a second version of him. And I was angry at him. I couldn’t see you separately. I craved city life, restaurants and theaters, and people who’d talk to me instead of running away. That wasn’t a life for a daughter who loved nature the way you do. I left you because I loved you, not because I didn’t. I thought I was giving you the life you needed.”
“By leaving me behind?”
“I know how it sounds. I know what I did to you.” Her voice cracked. “Watching you throw yourself into work and avoid anything that might require you to be vulnerable with another person terrifies me. I’ve seen where that leads. It led your father and me to separate lives in the same house. And then it led me to leave my daughter behind because I was too broken to fix what I’d helped destroy.”
We stood facing each other on the path, years of silence between us.
“I’m not avoiding connection,” I said. “I’m building something new here.”
“Are you? Or are you running to another isolated place where you can work yourself to exhaustion and call it living?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not. I left you once, Laina. I can’t fix that. I can’t go back and make different choices. But I’m here now, trying to make up for it.” She pulled her hands from her pockets. “I’m trying not to lose you again.”
“You’re trying not to lose me again?” The words came out flat. “You lost me when I was eleven, Mom. You don’t get to show up now and act like we can fix that with a walk along a fence.”
My mother flinched, but I couldn’t stop.
“You left me with a man who was so busy avoiding his own pain that he taught me how to do the same thing. And nowyou’re worried I’m too much like him? You helped make me this way.”
“You’re right,” she said, the words coming out careful. “I did. And I can’t undo that.” She pulled her hands from her pockets, holding them loose at her sides. “I can only try to do better now. If you’ll let me.”
The anger in my chest flickered, guttered.
I’d spent years imagining this conversation, rehearsing all the things I’d say if she ever gave me the chance. Now that I had it, the words felt hollow. She wasn’t asking for forgiveness. She was asking for a chance to walk the distance she’d created.
That was something I could maybe, eventually, give.
The thing about grief is that it doesn’t announce itself. It sits in your chest for years, growing into the empty spaces until you forget what it felt like before it moved in.
My mother wasn’t trying to control me. She was trying to find a bit of the daughter she’d left behind.
“I understand what you’re saying,” I said. “And I appreciate that you’re here, trying. But I need you to understand something too.” I gestured back toward the facility. “I’m not running away. I’m running toward work that means something. I love this place. It’s mine, not inherited.”
