The next morning, I wake much earlier than usual, long before the sun is up.
Mara sleeps heavily beside me, exhausted from relating just one of the countless ugly stories from her childhood. I’m sure she could tell me one like that every day for a year and never run out.
I’m filled with an anger that sickens me, that makes my muscles shake.
I’ve never been furious for someone else before. Never felt this need to right the scales. To wreak vengeance on their behalf.
The fact that Mara’s mother and stepfather have never been punished for their rampant child abuse is an injustice that rankles like a spike jammed in my side.
The only time I’ve killed for someone else was when I spiked Michael Bridger’s drink, drove him home, and left his car running in the garage. Even then, I was telling Mara the truth: it was mostly for myself. I was tired of Sonia showing up to work puffy-eyed and exhausted, distracted by streams of calls and text messages from her fuckwit ex and his rapacious lawyer.
Maybe an infinitesimal portion of pity influenced my decision. If so, it was unconscious.
I’m a selfish person, I always have been. I’ve always been alone. No one was going to look out for my interests but me.
Even now, the things I do for Mara are really for me. I like the way she looks dressed up in gorgeous clothes. I like watching her eat ice cream. I like the way she melts under my touch. I like that I have the power to further her career. It feels just and right when she gets the attention she deserves because she’s fucking talented and her art is far more interesting than the shit turned out by commercial-minded egoists like Shaw.
Everything I do for her binds her closer to me. I want her dependent on me, so she can never leave. So she never even wants to.
Mara is distracted by everything beautiful, everything interesting.
I have to be more interesting, more useful to keep her attention.
When I have her focus, her energy surges into me. She fills me with life.
I can’t lose her. I can’t go back to numbness and boredom.
Which puts me in a dilemma.
I want her parents punished.
But Mara is vehemently opposed to revenge. She doesn’t even want to kill Shaw, which has locked us in a bizarre three-way stalemate.
I hate how she binds my hands. And yet, I know Mara’s stubbornness. Her boundaries are not where they should be, but they do exist. If I cross a hard line with her, I risk severing the fragile ties between us. She’ll bolt and I may never capture her again.
I slip out from under the covers, careful not to jolt her. Mara lets out a sleepy sigh. I tuck the blankets around her so she stays warm and cocooned.
Her laptop sits on the dining room table. It’s a piece of shit Lenovo—yet another thing I should replace for her. I hate when Mara touches anything shitty or cheap.
I open the lid, letting out an irritated tsking sound when I see that she has no password protection. It only takes me a moment to open her email.
She told me that she has her mother blocked on every social media platform, and she hasn’t shared her phone number in years. But Tori Eldritch still emails her, the messages piling up in a folder Mara never reads.
I knew the messages were here. The volume still surprises me.
There are hundreds of emails. Thousands, even. The blue dots show that Mara hasn’t opened a single one.
I start to read through them.
Thousands of messages, but each basically the same: threats, insults, and above all, guilt trips.
How could you? I’m your mother. What kind of daughter abandons her family? After everything I did for you. You’re ungrateful. You’re selfish. You’re so dramatic. You think you had it hard? It’s your own fault. Who do you think you are? You think you’re an artist? Don’t make me laugh. Everything you do is for attention. You have no talent, no brains. You’re lazy. You’re the reason I’m divorced. You’re the reason your father left. You were a mistake. Everything bad that ever happened in my life is because of you. I should have aborted you. I was driving to the clinic to do it, do you know that? God I wish I could go back to that day. I’d be doing the world a favor. I’m so ashamed of you. You should be ashamed of yourself. The way you dress, the way you behave. You’re a slut, a whore. No wonder men use you and throw you away. No one will ever love you. No one will ever want you. You’re immature. Worthless. You don’t deserve happiness, and you’ll never get it. You’re disgusting. You repulse me. This is why you’ve never had friends. This is why everyone hates you. You think you’re pretty? With that face and that body? You’re a scarecrow. A fucking mutant. You’ll never be beautiful like me. You take after your father and he was hideous. You’re disgusting just like him. I’ll never understand how you came out of me. I carried you for nine months. You destroyed my figure, my tits have never been the same. You were a massive baby, they had to tear you out of me. You almost killed me. You owe me. You fucking owe me.
On and on, page after page. Sometimes rambling and misspelled, (particularly the emails sent late at night), sometimes long, eloquent paragraphs recounting mistakes Mara made, times she embarrassed herself. The piano recital is mentioned several times, how she humiliated her mother in front of everyone, how she did it on purpose.
This woman’s pettiness could fuel a dictatorship. She’s Lenin and Stalin and Mussolini all rolled into one. Nothing is her fault. Mara is the architect of all evil in the world.
Her hatred for her own daughter baffles me.
I assume some of it is jealousy. Like Snow White and the Wicked Queen, Mara grew in beauty and vitality while Tori was fading by the day.
And some of it is pure rage that Mara refused to be crushed, refused to be destroyed. Mara was the insect Tori stomped on over and over and over again, only to turn into a butterfly and fly far away.
I’m so distracted by the emails that I fail to see the motion alert on my phone. Mara rises and dresses, padding down the stairs while I’m still deeply absorbed in reading.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I look up from the laptop. I must have an awful expression on my face, because Mara takes a step back, eyes widening.
It’s hard for me to speak.
“I was reading your mother’s emails.”
“Oh,” Mara says.
She isn’t angry.
We each have our own brand of relentless curiosity. She knows me too well to expect privacy or reasonable behavior.
“They’re all the same,” Mara says. “She can’t stop insulting me even when she’s trying to get me to come visit.”
“She wants you to visit?” I scoff.
“When she found out where I lived, she showed up at my apartment. I wouldn’t let her in and she broke in the next day when I was at work. Went through all my things. Read my journal.”
“You have a journal?”
I’m just as nosy as her mother. Worse, probably.
Mara snorts. “Not anymore. And I moved the next week. She can’t stand not knowing where I am. Not having control over me. Not having the power to fuck up my life. She used to show up at my job, trying to get me fired …” she trails off, laughing softly to herself. “Actually, you two have a lot in common. You might really get along.”
“Oh, fuck off. First of all, I’m way better at finding people than she is. She wishes she had my skills. And second, I don’t fuck up your life, I fix it.”
“I know,” Mara says, her expression serious. “I’m grateful to you Cole, do you know that?”
“You better be. I’m taking you to Betsy’s party tonight.”
“Are you really?” she squeaks. Then, her excitement fading, “What about Shaw?”
“He’ll probably be there.”
“What does that mean? What will we do?”
“Nothing in the middle of a gallery. And neither will he. It’s safe.”
“I don’t want to see him, though.” Mara shudders.
“We can’t avoid him in this city. Besides, I want him to see that you’re living with me, if he doesn’t already know. I want him to see you under my protection. If we talk to him, I’ll make him believe there’s a truce. That I’ll leave him alone as long as he stays away from you.”
“Will you?” Mara asks, her fog-gray eyes fixed on my face.
“Never.”
Shaw is a threat. There’s no fucking way I’ll ever relax enough for him to put a knife in my back, or Mara’s.
It’s then that I realize Mara is wearing her old clothes—jeans and her favorite battered boots.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I demand.
“Sweet Maple,” Mara says.
“The fuck you are.”
“I’m working this morning, and you’re not stopping me,” she says, jaw set. “You can come along if you like, but I’m doing the full brunch shift.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You don’t need a side job anymore.”
“I’m not doing it for the money. I owe it to Arthur.”
“He can find another waitress,” I say dismissively.
Mara crosses her arms over her chest, refusing to back down.
“My last year of high school, I applied to the Academy of Art. I spent that entire year working on my portfolio. The week I was supposed to submit it, my mother threw it in the tub and soaked it in bleach. Then she cleaned out the $1200 I had hidden inside a book in my room. She thought I couldn’t leave if I had no money and no scholarship. I left anyway, the day I turned eighteen. I bounced around a few couches, halfway to homeless. When I showed up at Sweet Maple, I had a backpack of clothes and six dollars to my name. No resume. Hadn’t taken a shower in a week. My sneakers had holes big enough for my toes to poke through. Arthur hired me anyway. He gave me two hundred dollars up front so I could buy some better shoes. I bought these boots.” Mara sticks out one foot, showing the boots that look like they’ve been through a war. “He didn’t know me. Didn’t know if I’d take the money and never show up for a shift. He helped me anyway. So I’m not ever quitting that job, until Arthur doesn’t need me anymore.”
“Alright, alright,” I say, holding up my hands. “I’ll drive you over.”
Flushed with victory, Mara grins at me.
“Can I drive?”
