17. Laina #2
Sofia remained on my mother’s shoulder, occasionally making a soft trilling sound that seemed to soothe my mother’s nerves.
We passed the mossnibbles’ enclosure, and one of them darted out through a gap, scaled my mother’s leg, and stole her bracelet before anyone could react.
“Oh!” My mother yelped, reeling backward, grabbing for her bare wrist. “What on earth was that?”
The mossnibble whistled, deposited the bracelet in its nest, and returned for more treasures. It sat in front of my mother and studied the rest of her jewelry.
They’d found a new way out of their pen. We kept locating gaps in the mesh and even a narrow, underground tunnel, and filled it in. Then they escaped again.
A second mossnibble appeared from behind a fence post, eyeing my mother’s earrings.
“No,” I said. “Not happening.”
It whistled and retreated. For now.
“Do they understand English?” my mother asked.
I shrugged. “They understand a warning tone well enough. They simply choose to ignore it sometimes. Let me get your bracelet back.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said, though her voice was still a little high. She watched the mossnibble arrange her jewelry among its other stolen goods, shaking her head. “It seems happy there.”
We moved on.
A fizzling sparked near us but didn’t discharge, just following our movement with its bright eyes. Gerald rumbled from his enclosure when we passed. The vellicharm, Duchess Filandra, actually dipped her head in acknowledgment when my mother stopped to look at her.
“They seem to respond to you,” I said. “They like you.”
“Or they’re very polite for wild creatures.”
We reached Abagail’s enclosure and my mother stopped walking.
The twins were nursing, tucked against their mother’s side. The larger one had closed her eyes in contentment. The smaller one kept pausing to look around, making sure everything was safe before returning to her meal.
My mother stood at the fence for a long time, while I explained about the cave birth.
“You delivered these,” she said, her voice careful.
“We did. In the woods.”
“In a cave,” she said. “In the rain. At night. Without proper facilities. That was awfully unsafe, Laina. Were you scared?”
“Terrified,” I said. “And certain at the same time.”
I’d delivered animals with my father since I was sixteen, and she’d never once asked if I was scared back then. She’d asked if I was prepared, if I had backup, and if I’d followed protocol. Never if I was afraid of what I did or the outcome.
“Your father always said fear and certainty could exist in the same space,” she said softly. “That the best vets learned to work with both.”
I was surprised she’d remembered that about him.
“Walk me through it,” she said, her gaze returning to the suckling twins. “The medical risks. How you knew what to do.”
I explained how Abagail had chosen Brovish and me, which was an honor in the orc kingdom, that we’d bonded to her through her care.
Brovish had moved closer.
My mother noticed. Her gaze flicked between us before returning to the twins, but her expression had turned tense again.
She reached through the fence, extending her hand. The larger twin stopped nursing and approached, sniffing Carol’s fingers before returning to her mother.
“Your father would’ve loved this,” my mother said quietly. “He would’ve been fascinated by it all.”
My throat closed around words I couldn’t form.
Brovish’s hand brushed mine, his finger hooking briefly around my own. There and gone before my mother could notice.
“Brovish.” Krem’s voice carried across the yard. “The fizzlings have created a chain reaction discharge. We need your grounding abilities immediately.”
A crack of static electricity lit up the western enclosure.
Brovish’s jaw tightened. “I should—”
“Go,” I said. “I’ll finish the tour.”
My mother watched him leave. “He seems very attentive.”
“He is.”
“To the creatures or to you?”
The question landed in my chest and stuck there. “Both.”
We went back inside and while my mother had more tea with Krem, I got some work done.
The afternoon passed quickly and she and I left the facility as the sun started creeping toward the horizon. My mother followed me in her rental, maintaining the same careful distance as when she’d arrived.
At my cottage, I made dinner while she set the table. We moved around each other carefully, a delicate dance of too-long politeness.
After we’d eaten and taken care of dishes, we sat at the kitchen table with fresh tea between us. My mother had taken Dad’s chair without seeming to notice. Maybe she didn’t remember it was his. Or she did and sat there anyway.
We made small talk, speaking of the weather. Her flight. Whether the rental car handled well on dirt roads.
The small talk exhausted itself and quiet filled the space where words should be.
“After your father died,” my mother finally said, “I watched you disappear into that clinic for three years.”
I went rigid. “I didn’t disappear. I was working.”
“You were hiding.” She said it gently, but that didn’t make it cut less. “And I understood why. I just couldn’t reach you through it.”
“You didn’t try very hard.” The words came out sharp.
“I didn’t know how. I’d already walked away once. Coming back felt like admitting I’d made a big mistake.” She traced the rim of her mug with one finger. “And I wasn’t ready to face that. Are you going to be staying out here forever? What about a proper life?”
“I am building a proper life, Mother. My own.”
“Your own. With orcs. And creatures that spit static and steal jewelry.” She sighed, a long, dramatic one. “You could’ve had a respectable position. A practice in Portland. This place is a fantasy. It isn’t sustainable.”
“It is. And it’s what I want.”
“Want? Or what you’ve run to?” She met my gaze, her eyes probing. “You were always good at finding places to run.”
“That was you, not me, Mother.”
With a huff, she refilled both our tea cups, the silence between us now thick and heavy, like the mud on her pristine shoes.
“I’m not in a hurry to get back to Florida,” she said as she settled back in Dad’s chair. “Things actually haven’t been going well with Jerry. I might stay a few extra days, if that’s alright with you.”
The yes wanted to come automatically. It was the good daughter response and the path of least resistance. But I’d spent most of my life being the daughter who didn’t make waves.
“I’d like that,” I said, choosing to say it instead of feeling forced. “There’s more I can show you.”
She nodded, looking around the cottage. Her gaze caught on the bookshelf where Dad’s veterinary texts still sat, their spines cracked from use. The coffee table where both Dad’s and my mugs used to sit side by side. The peg board by the door that held only one coat now instead of two.
She’d left all this behind and built a new life in Florida with a new husband and two children who aren’t me. And now she sat in his chair, in the space I’d built around his absence, trying to find her way back to a daughter she’d left a long time ago.
I didn’t know how I felt about any of it yet.
“Thank you for letting me stay,” she said, her voice small, a fragile offering.
“You’re my mother.”
“I am.” She smiled, though it came out sad. “I wasn’t sure that still meant anything. Not here or with you.”
We were two women trying to figure out how to be daughter and mother when neither of us had the script.
But maybe there was a chance we could write a new script instead of dragging out the old.