“I know. Her family might be tough, but maybe not. They were strict and traditional before, but Scarlet is much older now and knows her own mind. Her parents accepted her divorce readily enough.”
Neera wasn’t sure if Scarlet thought the same thing about her parents or if Elodie was making some assumptions. Neera swallowed down the wet lump rising up to block her airway. “Umm, what if I fell in love again?”
Elodie blinked. She set down her cup, studying Neera the entire time. Neera felt naked under her mom’s scrutiny. Her happy scrutiny. She was beaming. “Sweetie, that would be wonderful. I just want you to be happy. Some people are happy on their own. I always was, but I guess I was never on my own. I always had you. I had a family. I had Scarlet. I guess I didn’t need a romantic partner. Did you meet someone?”
“I— I was more asking just in the hypothetical. Kind of.” No, I’m not. God, I need to tell her already. “What if I did meet someone and she was a lot older?”
“I don’t think that age really matters. I mean, maybe there’s a limit, but who am I to say? It’s not my business. You’re my daughter and I would love you and support you no matter what.”
Neera shut her eyes tight. She knew that was her moment, but she also knew that her mom wasn’t expecting her to come right out and say that she’d fallen in love with her best friend. Her best friend who was part of a sacred sisterhood. Neera now fully understood Scarlet’s objections. She’d thought she had before, but now she got it. She really got it. That lump in her throat started to burn. She felt feverish, the room too hot.
“I did meet someone,” she blurted, doing it all wrong, with her eyes still shut. “I’ve known her for a while. I’ve been in love with her for a very long time. With Steph, I— I was never able to fully give her everything. I guess that’s what went wrong. It was me. I couldn’t love her the way I should have because I was always in love with someone else. Someone I couldn’t forget. I know you’re going to think it’s wrong, and that I’m crazy, but it’s real. It’s truly real. I need you to understand that.” She wrenched her eyes open and forced herself to look at her mom.
Elodie was surprised, but repulsed? No. Not yet. Angry? No. Her lips were working like she was trying to find the right thing to say, and she was obviously waiting for her head to catch up. She just stayed silent and bit down on her lip instead, waiting for Neera to say what she had to say.
Neera had never felt anything like what she felt at that moment, sitting right there on the couch beside her mom. It was a unique feeling, a feeling between elation and horror, terror and certainty. Her palms were soaking wet. Her tank top was plastered to her body under her sweater. She was hot and cold all over.
“It’s Scarlet,” she choked, then she spilled everything in a rush. “I’ve loved her since I was a teenager. It wasn’t her. You have to believe me. She didn’t want anything to do with it, but I pursued her. I talked to her. I basically seduced her. I know she’s your friend. I know that. Please don’t hate me, because I didn’t do this to spite you. I would have chosen anyone else if I could. I know how wrong it must seem to you. She never wanted to lie to you. I made her not say anything so that we could talk first because I thought you needed to hear it from me. I thought that maybe I could make you understand, even though I know it’s probably impossible for you to do that. Just please, don’t hate her. Don’t take it out on her. It isn’t her fault. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”
Neera shut up. She stopped the flow of words before she gagged on them. She was turning into a wreck sitting there. And Elodie? She’d never seen her mom so quiet. So utterly still. It was like she was made of stone. She could have been a living statue.
Neera’s heart thundered in her ears and beat wildly at her ribs. She waited. Watched her mom’s face for the slightest hint, the smallest giveaway, a window into what she was thinking and feeling, but there was nothing. Nothing except the smallest purse of her lips, a slight pinch in her brow from the strain, but Neera had seen her mom look like that after a long day at work. She was sure that this time it wasn’t exhaustion.
Elodie blinked. She blinked again. Then slowly, she stood up from the couch. She said nothing and Neera watched her, frozen to the spot as her mom had been.
Elodie traced a pattern to the kitchen, one step then another, one foot in front of the other. She dumped her tea in the sink, then she came back to the living room. Neera heard those steps behind her and braced for it without turning around, braced for whatever her mom was going to say.
But she said nothing.
She walked past the couch. She didn’t sit down. She didn’t hash it out or ask for an explanation. She didn’t rage or rail or cry. She was so stoic that Neera started to feel like she could gag for rea
l. Her mouth was suddenly horribly dry.
She was totally confused when her mom walked to the front door. She flung it open and stepped out in her blue pajamas and her pink fuzzy slippers. She was wearing an old black t-shirt on top, and that was it. She stepped right out into the night like that with no sweater, no coat, no nothing.
Elodie was not the kind of person who ever left the house in her pajamas. Ever. No excuses. Period.
Neera leaped off the couch and ran after her mom. “Mom!” She shouted out the open door. Her mom’s hair was still wet from her shower. It was freezing out there. “Mom!”
Elodie didn’t turn around. She was in a daze, in her own world, in a fog. She was going to get hypothermia out there. She might be in shock, or she might be fuming mad and that’s what was keeping her warm, but she was going to make herself sick out there.
Neera wrenched open the closet door and tore her mom’s coat off the hanger. She threw hers on and then bundled the other one over her arm and tore out of the house. She was careful on the slippery sidewalk as she ran.
“Mom!” she yelled. “Mom!” Her voice was shrill, the cold night stealing it from her with its frosty fingers. “Mom!” She tried one more time, shouting herself hoarse.
Elodie didn’t slow one bit in her trajectory.
She headed straight for Scarlet’s house, on the warpath if Neera had ever seen it. She forced herself to run faster. She was wearing slippers herself and she just about slipped and fell. She sped on regardless, sliding her way over the icy sidewalk when it wasn’t even safe enough to take a real step. “Mom!” she screamed.
She finally caught up with Elodie right at the base of Scarlet’s steps. Elodie was about to go up them when Neera grabbed her arm and wrenched her around.
“Mom!” She threw her mom’s coat over her shoulders, arranging it so that it blocked out the cold, holding it closed together at the front. “Mom, what are you doing? You’re going to make yourself ill out here. This is crazy. We have to go back inside.”
“I’m going inside,” Elodie confirmed in a perfectly flat calm voice. “I’m going inside there. I’m going in there,” she lifted her arm from the coat and pointed at Scarlet’s front door. “And I’m going to make this right.”
Neera clasped her mom’s coat around her tighter, caging her in. “It is right, Mom. It is. You have to believe me. Please, let’s just go back home and we can think about this, and we can talk about it.”
“I’m not talking about it until we’re all talking together. All of us. I’m protecting you. You’re my baby. You’re a child. You’re a— a— Scarlet is not for you. She’s done something to your mind. She’s fucking bewitched you or some nonsense.”