Chapter 34 Eleanor #2
Ava insisted on a sleepover. Which, in our world, meant dragging blankets from her room into mine, piling pillows into a crooked nest at the foot of my bed, and watching old stop-motion Halloween movies until she fell asleep mid-sentence.
She curled against my legs like she used to when she was little, before grief settled into all the corners of our house, before everything got sharp and quiet.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed this. Just being her mom. No judgment. No witnesses.
At some point after midnight, she reached for my hand in her sleep and kept it there. I didn’t dare move.
We woke up tangled and warm and smelling faintly of hair dye.
“Sunday pancakes?” I asked, my voice still groggy.
Ava nodded, hair a brilliant halo of blue chaos around her head. “Yes. With chocolate chips.”
“Obviously.”
We padded downstairs together, both of us barefoot, both of us in pajamas, both of us hoping and praying that maybe my mom had gone out early for church or brunch or one of her endless committees.
Maybe she wouldn’t see the hair.
Maybe we’d get one whole morning of peace.
But no.
Of course not.
She was standing right at the kitchen island, arms crossed, pearls on, coffee cup in hand like she’d been waiting specifically to judge me.
Her gaze snapped to Ava first. And she gasped a sharp, horrified inhale that could’ve cracked glass.
“Ava!” she cried. “What on earth did you DO to yourself?!”
Ava froze beside me, shoulders tensing, fingers tightening around mine.
I stepped forward immediately, placing myself between them.
“Oh, that?” I said lightly. “That was me.”
My mother blinked, confused, until I tilted my head just enough for the kitchen lights to catch the bright blue streaks in my hair.
For a moment, she simply stared.
Then her face twisted, disbelief, anger, embarrassment all tangling together until she looked like she might combust.
“Eleanor.” My name came out like a warning. Like a curse.
“What,” she hissed, “have YOU done to your hair?”
Ava’s hand trembled in mine. I squeezed it gently.
“We did it together,” I said, louder now, steady. “She wanted to match me.”
“Match—?” My mother sputtered, color rising in her cheeks. “Have you lost your mind? She looks—she looks—”
“Powerful,” Ava whispered behind me.
I could’ve kissed her.
My mother snapped, “She looks ridiculous! And you—Eleanor, you’re a mother. You’re thirty-seven years old. You cannot walk around looking like—”
“A person?” I offered. “Who makes choices? Has autonomy? Enjoys color?”
“Like a delinquent!” she spat.
I swallowed the immediate sting, kept my voice level. “It’s just hair, Mom.”
“It is NOT ‘just hair’! It is appearance, Eleanor. It is reputation. It is what people see when they look at you.”
“Maybe I’m okay with that,” I said softly. “Maybe Ava is too.”
She opened her mouth again, outraged, but I stepped back between them, forming a literal wall of blue streaks.
“Pancakes,” I said to Ava, tilting my head toward the stove as if we weren’t standing in the middle of a battlefield. “Chocolate chips or blueberries?”
Ava blinked up at me, cautious, then quietly said, “Chocolate chips, please.”
My mother sputtered something else. I didn’t catch it. I didn’t need to. Because Ava’s shoulders had dropped, her breathing had steadied, and she was watching me with something like awe.
And maybe for the first time in years, I felt like I had actually done something right.
About an hour after dinner, Ava was in her room as I came down the stairs to my sister and my mother sitting on the couch looking perfectly Stepford. I kept on my way to the kitchen.
“Eleanor, will you join us for a minute?” I heard my sister call.
Tentatively, I turned and looked at them. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just have a present for my sister.”
I walked closer, picking up the pamphlet on the table. “It’s a retreat for women at my church. It’s in a month. I think you would really benefit from meeting the women there. They might be able to help get you back on the right path.”
I shook my head. “I’m not interested.”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” my mother said, perfectly pleasant.
“You can’t just insist I go to a Christian retreat for a church I don’t even attend.”
“Eleanor, it’s nondenominational. You don’t have to be a member of my church to attend. It would be good sister bonding,” Stacey said.
“I can’t just leave Ava.”
“I will keep Ava here with me.”
“No.”
I turned and made my way to the kitchen.
“If you wish to stay here, you will go to this retreat.”
I turned and looked at her. “What did you say?”
“You have some time to think about it. But if you want to continue to stay here under my roof, you will go to this and get your life in order.”
“You two are unbelievable!”
Stacey looked at her watch before standing. “Well, I have to get going. But I’ll see you in a few weeks, Eleanor,” she said as she came over and gave me a hug. “See you soon, mom.”
I stood there. Blind sided. Again.
“I can’t believe you.”
She simply picked up the brochure and leafed through it. I turned, stomping up the stairs, like the petulant teenager I could never quite escape in this house.
I shut my bedroom door behind me and finally let my back slide down it until I hit the floor. My hands were shaking. My breath was uneven. The old familiar ache of being small, being wrong, being too much pressed against my ribs like a fist.
I needed . . . someone. And there was only one person I wanted to see right now.
I grabbed my phone and hit Alex’s name for FaceTime before I could overthink it.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hey,” he said softly, like he somehow already knew. “You okay?”
The question undid me.
Not all the way. Not loudly. But enough that my voice cracked. “No,” I whispered. “Not really.”
His face appeared on my screen, warm, worried, hair mussed like he’d been running his hands through it. The instant he saw me, his expression shifted into something fierce and tender at the same time.
“El,” he said gently, “what happened?”
I told him. Not everything, I couldn’t get all the words out, but enough.
My voice trembled as I told him that my mother wanted to send me away, the lecture, the criticism, the blow-up.
His jaw tightened. When I mentioned my mother telling me that if I didn’t go, she would kick me out, he swore under his breath.
“Oh, honey,” he murmured, pain and protectiveness layered in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”
“I just—” My throat closed up. “I want out. I want Ava out. I want . . . something else. Anywhere else.”
“You can come here,” he said immediately. Without hesitation. “You and Ava can stay here. Tonight. Tomorrow. As long as you need.”
My heart squeezed so hard it hurt.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I don’t want to uproot her. Not like this. And your house is . . . it’s Leo’s house. And Becca’s. And Mel’s. I don’t want to disrupt anything.”
“Eleanor,” he said, voice firmer than I’d ever heard it, “you could never disrupt anything. You’d be welcome. Both of you would be welcome . . . and the other half of this duplex is empty.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I didn’t think of that. I don’t know, that seems like a lot. I couldn’t pay anything now. And before you say I wouldn’t have to, please don’t. I need to take care of Ava. I need to stand on my own two feet for her . . . and for me.”
He sighed. “Okay, I get it. Then I’ll be here. Whatever you need. However, you need me.”
We talked for a while. Not heavy, not planning, just .
. . connecting. He made me laugh once, even though I’d come upstairs ready to scream.
He told me Leo drew a new comic today called The Ballad of the Blue-Haired Witch Queen, and Ava was clearly the inspiration.
I told him Ava had declared herself powerful. He said, “Well, she’s right.”
I lay on my side, phone propped against a pillow, just listening to the reassurance in his breathing.
After a quiet moment, he asked, “So . . . are you still trying out for the Reapers tomorrow?”
A slow, tired smile tugged at my mouth. “Of course, I am.”
He grinned, wide, relieved, proud. “Good. Because I’m making breakfast. We’re going to have brunch before tryouts. Something fun. Something good.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he said, no wavering. “You deserve a good morning.”
My eyes stung. “Okay,” I murmured. “Brunch sounds . . . really nice.”
He hesitated, then added softly, “And El? I like the blue streaks. A lot.”
Damn him. That made me blush.
We said goodnight. I put the phone down and crawled into bed beside Ava, who had fallen asleep with her blue hair fanned across my pillow like a neon crown.
I was still angry. Still hurting.
But for the first time all day . . . I wasn’t alone.
And that made everything feel just a little more bearable.