Page 31 of The Sun and the Moon
“Lola has her own mother issues,” I reply, trying to tamp down the heat. “She’s empathetic to the cause.”
“Unfortunate that she relates,” she says, fiddling with a tiny loose thread on the edge of her sweater. All I know about Sydney’s mom is that she passed away, leaving Rick to raise Sydney alone for the rest of her teenage years. I don’t know what it would be like to lose a mother, especially that young, especially if you were close to her. It feels like a tricky topic, considering my mother is still very much alive and until this week I was actively choosing nocontact. There’s a difference in removing a person from your life and having that person taken away.
I’m staring too long. I flick my eyes back toward Kismet, sip my tea.
“But it’s convenient,” I say, voice rocky.
“Glad she’s on your side,” Sydney says, a subtle shift in the way her voice sounds. It’s like she doesn’t want to let the mother talk get to her. Like she’s shoving it away, burying the emotion rising up. The pain.
To me, other people’s feelings are like the ocean’s waves, treacherous, consuming, fascinating but overwhelming. It’s been that way as long as I can remember, and it’s made everything from my friendships to my romantic entanglements rife with complexity.
Shutting people out is just easier. A fact that, I can admit, may not entirely be my mother’s fault, even if it’s been made more complicated from the force of her influence. My mother connected my own skill with empathy back to an inherited psychic ability.
Back to her. The origin of everything.
And then she used that to try to convince me that becoming just like her was my path to success. Kismet was supposed to come to me at some point, but when I told her I didn’t want to do what she does for a living, that inheritance was snatched back as fast as it was offered. I guess, except in the event of her untimely death. But even then, I’d expect her to have planned for it.
She’ll have seen it in the cards and willed the place away from me in spite.
“Lola told me Moira has a few errands to hit in town before the weekend.” I have to lock all the rumbling thoughts andfeelings firmly behind a steel door. I shouldn’t be daydreaming about Kismet or the life I could have had if my relationship with my mother were different.
I can and will focus on the task at hand.
“So you want to tail her?” Sydney’s voice is underscored with new energy. I feel relief as the conversation moves along. “What makes you think we’ll learn anything worthwhile? Her errands could be, like, the dry cleaner and Trader Joe’s.”
“Because one of her errands is the bank,” I reply. “Lola talks a lot.”
Her lips tug toward a smile and she sits back in the seat. “Well done, Ranger Girl.”
There it is again. That bolt of heat. The nickname-smile combo is lethal. Addictive. I don’t immediately shut it down, even if I probably should. Her shoulders drop down into a more relaxed stance, and she sips her coffee, calmer. She looks toward Kismet, her eyes raking over the facade.
The face, as Moira has always called it. Kismet has always felt especially alive. Serving the community as it does, all those people coming in and out, all that energy flowing through the doors, seeping into the wood beams.
Living, breathing, and completely unique.
“Did you always live here?” she asks, not looking away from the house.
“I was born on the Westside in a tiny apartment. Midwife, no drugs, all her.” I wouldn’t believe the story if not for the framed photographic proof displayed proudly on a shelf in the dining room. Grainy, just her on a bed of blankets, holding a new, gooey me.
“I was a hospital baby. Epidural and induced. Late to my ownbirthday,” she says, her smile soft but a little sad. She looks back to me. “That’s what Mom said.”
“Early and angry, according to Moira,” I reply, pointing to myself. She laughs, a bright sound that breaks up the heaviness in the air.
“Honestly, I could see it.” Her eyes take me in, and I wish there were somewhere to hide away. “How long until you moved to Kismet?”
“I think probably two or three years. My earliest memories are on the porch, looking up at that tree.” I point to the fir, hoping it will push her focus back to the house and off me. It works. Her eyes trek the expanse as the memory crashes into me of many hours spent alone with nothing but the company of thatwild thing.
You and the tree aren’t that different, you know, I hear Moira say from somewhere far away, as if the words approach on the wings of a bird seeking shelter in the very same tree. There was something about the wild parts of this suburban world that always felt more real to me than the concrete or the shiny skylines ever could.
“She opened Kismet when I was still in diapers,” I add, desperate not to get lost in these feelings.
“What a bizarre place to grow up,” Sydney says, her voice pensive. “Don’t you think?” She looks back at me to confirm.
I’m taken aback by the question.
Growing up, I was the weirdo at my school. The girl with the psychic mom. The girl with no dad. The girl with no friends besides the trees and the creatures that live in them. But it wasn’t like anyone ever asked me how I felt about it all. It wasn’t as if anyone ever wondered if this was what I wanted my childhood and adolescence to look like.
“Sorry,” she says, likely course correcting due to the way myface scrunched up when she asked the question. “I just mean having so many people in your space, like, all those strangers in and out, the way they must have acted toward Moira—or you.”
