Page 67 of Arranging Ayra
EIGHTEEN
Ileaned heavily into my mother as she guided me back to the manor.
“Reva,” Keely said as she spotted us coming in. “So glad you could join...” She looked at me. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything is fine,” Mom told her. She guided me toward the stairs. “We’ll be back down in a minute.”
“I’ll have some tea sent up, Reva,” Keely called up to us.
“Thank you,” Mom said. “Thank you.”
We reached the second floor, and I led her to my room.
“Such a pretty place,” she said as she sat down on my bed with me.
Weeping, I looked around and nodded. “It is such a lovely room, isn’t it.”
She pulled me into her arms, holding me tight. “Now, tell me what has you in such a state.”
I couldn’t speak. I simply cried, weeping like a hadn’t in such a long time.
“My beautiful and intelligent little girl,” she said, raking her long fingernails through my tangled hair. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve held you like this.”
I pulled away to look at her, surprised to see tears in her eyes.
“When I was nine years old,” I said, remembering quite clearly that last time.
Her nod was filled with regret. Her lips pinched into a hard and self-reproaching line and her nostrils tightened momentarily.
“Yes,” she let out in a weak croak. She swallowed loud and hard. “The year your father passed away.”
I nodded as the pain of that loss struck me once again.
“You suddenly closed up after that,” she said.
I nodded again.
“Before that, you would tell me everything.” She chuckled, almost to herself. “You would tell me all about your day in school, right down to what you’d eaten for lunch and what certain classmates had worn to school that day. You would tell me about the boy who’d pulled your hair, or the girl who’d stolen your pink pen. Then, on that fateful day, nothing. You simply clammed up.”
Releasing me, she stood. She walked around the room looking idly at my things that laid about. She briefly picked up my hairbrush then set it back down. With her finger, she traced the title of the dogeared script that lay on my dresser. She ran her hand over the jacket I’d left on the back of my chair.
“In med school,” she said softly, “studying to be a doctor, I didn’t plan on becoming a widow. I didn’t plan on becoming a single mother.”
“I know.”
“Things became so hectic. After your father died, I lost myself in my work.” She picked up the lavender sweater I’d worn the night before and had left hanging on the bedpost. Hugging it to her and smelling it, she looked at me. “I saw you as a very solitary child. I thought you enjoyed being by yourself, enjoyed your own company. You kept to yourself... so private and closed off. I guess it was all too convenient for me to think it was how you wanted things to be.”
