10 Samantha
10
SAMANTHA
I SAT WITH my sister in her car in the driveway of Grandma’s house. Pooter mewed miserably from the back seat.
We’d just arrived.
I was exhausted. I slept two of the three hours of the flight, I felt hungover, whiplashed, and entirely not ready for what was next.
“So come in quietly,” Jeneva said. “No big hello. I’ll introduce you, she might be quiet. Just give her some time to get used to you.”
Introduce me. To my own mom.
I blew out a breath. “Okay.”
“We can do this later,” she said. “You can unpack, get situated—”
“No. I want to do it now.”
We didn’t move to get out.
“Are you going to tell me about the escape room?” she asked, eyeing the Rush Veterinary Hospital hoodie I was wearing.
“What’s to tell?” I mumbled.
“You got locked in a UFO with a hot veterinarian. You have nothing to say about this?”
I put my head in my hand. I had a lot to say about it.
“I liked him,” I said. “It was a really good date.”
I’d lived in Minnesota for four years and I hadn’t met one guy who even remotely touched Xavier and in the wee hours before I leave…
You know what? No. I wasn’t falling down this rabbit hole. I was allowing myself some grace to focus on what I actually needed to focus on, which was Mom and my new old life and mustard. I didn’t have time to dwell on a guy.
I was going to manifest.
Mom was going to remember me. I was going to walk into that living room, her face was going to light up, and she was going to say, “Samantha! I’m so happy you’re home!”
And then I was going to find all the jewelry. After that I’d forget Xavier existed and I’d laugh like a Disney villain every time it was negative thirty in Minnesota and it was seventy-two here. I didn’t want to be in the Midwest with the hot guy I was into. I didn’t belong in a state that required grit to make it through the winters. I wasn’t a grit kind of girl. I’d live in my sunny paradise where it never dipped below fifty and it didn’t rain because my hair would hate that anyway and I’d make sexy yellow condiment content and live happily ever after.
I got out of the car.
Jeneva watched me grab my cat from the back. Then I marched up the steps to the porch and carefully, gently, like I was going to startle a roost of pigeons, I opened the front door.
Mom was sitting in the living room on the green chair watching TV with Grandma. Mom looked over at me, her face flat.
Jeneva pushed past me. “Mom? Samantha is here to see you.”
Mom stared at me blankly. No recognition. No suspicion, no surprise, no reaction at all.
Jeneva said they’d had to put her on some medications and that they sedated her. But nothing could have prepared me for this.
She wasn’t there. Like a light had been turned off.
I swallowed and came in. “Hi, Mom. I’m home.”
Pooter mewed from her carrying case and Mom looked down at that, like she was trying to make sense of the noise.
She’d aged. I just saw her at Christmas and now she looked ten years older. Her hair was gray, her makeup wasn’t on.
Mom was always so put together. She liked fashion and getting her nails done and dressing up. She never went anywhere without her face.
She looked so tired now, like she was blurring along with her memory. Smearing and fading and wasting away.
“Mom?” I said, sitting gingerly on the ottoman in front of her. “It’s me, Samantha.”
Her eyes came back up to mine and I watched the wheels turning and hope fired up inside my heart. Maybe she was making the connection, she was recognizing me. Then she spoke.
“Who are you?”