Page 94 of Mom Com

I retrieve my baby cup of coffee, and the weight on my shoulders presses firmly down like it might actually push me through the floor. I consider leaving the kitchen to collect my thoughts, give myself space to work up to the conversation(s) I know I need to have with her, but I find myself hesitating. I’m not certain if I leave that I’ll return, and I likely won’t get another opportunity like this after Spence wakes.

I wet my dry lips, pulling the hot cup to my chest, figuring the only way to do this is the Band-Aid approach.Mom, I caused a giant scene, prepare to hear about it for the next couple of weeks and turn red with embarrassment, Mrs. Buenaventura officially hates me, and by the way, I’m leaving and disappointing everyone just like you predicted. Merry freaking Christmas.

But before I can get a word out of my shit confession, my mother starts speaking.

“You know,” she says, still looking out the window, “your father and I used to watch the sunrise every Christmas morning.”

My internal machinations stop abruptly like she threw a stick into the wheel spokes of my thoughts.

She sighs. “He’d wake me up early with an offering of holiday tea. ‘You’re gonna miss it, El, if you stay asleep any longer. Today is the day to watch the world come alive.’” She shakes her head at the memory. “I’d always grumble that I could watch the sunrise perfectly well from my bed, but he wasn’t having it. He’d insist we go downstairs. And here, on the kitchen table would be a warm treat just out of the oven and a present—something to start the morning properly, he’d claim.”

My heart squeezes so intensely that I find myself off-balance, my voice only one notch above a whisper. “He’d leave a pastry on my bedside table for when I woke up,” I say, realizing I’d forgotten all about that Christmas tradition, packed it away with the rest of the things I knew I couldn’t keep when I left.

She nods, giving me a sad smile. “Would you like to join me?” she asks, and now I’m really thrown. My mother doesn’t do vulnerable; I’m fairly certain she’s made of steel and wire instead of soft malleable flesh. So to see her like this in her bathrobe, eyes heavy and untouched by makeup, with her heart on her sleeve, rattles me.

“I would,” I say after a beat, sinking into the seat across from her at the breakfast table.

We sit there for a long minute, looking out the window at the purples and pinks dusting the tops of the trees in our backyard, and remembering Dad. And the lump that forms in my throat is so insistent that I can’t think past it, can’t imagine how I’m ever going to tell her what I need to without feeling like an awful person. I press my lips together, trying to swallow, to normalize my breath.

But as if she could hear my worry, she asks, “How was the party last night?”

I freeze, immobilized by an onslaught of guilt.

Her forehead scrunches in confusion at what I’m sure is an overwhelmed expression on my face. “Madeline?”

But I’m afraid to speak. Afraid to tell her that for reasons unbeknownst to me, my presence always seems to incite an altercation, a loud one. And that this time it included her closest friend, leading me to want to flee Haverberry once more.

“Did something happen?” she asks, and her tone already betrays that she knows it did, that in some way she expected it.

But instead of taking offense like I usually would, my face crumples, my head bending toward my cup. “I don’t want things to always be this way,” I say. “I just don’t know how to do it, ya know? I don’t know how to change things.”

Only instead of waiting for me to collect myself, she reaches her hand across the table, laying it on top of mine.

“I’m afraid you got that from me,” she says, and the kindness shatters me. Without warning, I’m crying, my shoulders vibrating, and my grip on my coffee slackening.

I look up at her, trying to reel myself in, finding it hard to take a breath. “I wish things were different. God, I wish that so much,” I say, my voice so garbled I have to wonder if she heard me.

She sighs, making her appear even wearier. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Why don’t you tell me anyway,” she says.

And after a second of hesitation, I do. For the first time ever, I talk to my mother about Wilder, past and present. I tell her about the kiss and about wanting to stay. I tell her about Kate and Mrs. Buenaventura, about how hopeful I’d been when I went to that party. She asks questions here and there, but mostly she just listens, refilling my coffee cup when it empties, and bringing us cookies from the containers Spence and I filled yesterday.

When it’s all said and done, when my cheeks are dry and the sun is shining, she gets up. “Excuse me a moment,” she says, and walks out into the hall.

But when she doesn’t return right away, I move to the doorway, wondering what could be so pressing, not confident she took everything I told her well. I know it was a lot to process, that there were sections that were particularly hard for her to accept, especially the ones about Mrs. Buenaventura. So, when I hear her pick up the phone off the foyer mail table, my heart sinks.

I close my eyes, exhaling and leaning my weight on the doorframe, and just as I expected, she says Mrs. Buenaventura’s name into the phone.

“Hannah? I’m glad I caught you. I don’t want to interrupt your holiday celebrations, but I wanted to clear the air from last night.”

It’s a stake to the heart. Only this time, I stupidly didn’t see it coming. It felt like she was listening, that for the first time, she was seeing me, even if she didn’t fully understand. I suppose it couldn’t last—this moment of peace with my mother. I just also didn’t expect her to wipe it away as though she were sliding her arm along a fully set table, crashing all the plates to the floor.

“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard,” she says after a moment.

I hang my head in my hands, defeated, my temples starting to pound. Part of me wants to go back to bed and hide under the covers, vow to never be hopeful again, and remind myself that it only ends in heartbreak.