Page 8 of Missing Moon
“Why do you feel so guilty?” Paxton yawns and enters the kitchen, heading for the cabinets by way of giving my sister a quick greeting hug. “Hi, Aunt Mary Lou.”
My sister hugs her back. “Morning, sweetheart.”
“I could make eggs if you want… or pancakes,” I suggest.
“Cereal’s fine.” Paxton stands up on tiptoe and stretches to reach for a box in the cabinet. “So, why do you feel guilty?”
“It’s a long story.” I sigh. “Short version is our father was away a lot when we were kids. And when he was home, he kinda ignored us all. Wasn’t mean to us, just kinda acted like we were mooching roommates who didn’t pay rent rather than his kids. And now he only has a month to live.”
Pax sets the cereal box down on the counter and looks at me. “So you’re feeling like that because you were mad at him for a long time?”
“I guess.” I bury my face in my hands, feeling weird. Tired, wired, guilty, and confused all at once.
Outside of unexpected tragedy, people will always face the day where they have to come to terms with losing their parents. I suppose an argument could be made that I lost them already, many years ago. A situation like this would be a far moreemotional and difficult process for anyone who had a good relationship with their dad. At least I don’t hate the guy. I’m not going to go dance on his grave or anything. In all honesty, I’m angrier at Danny’s parents than him. They tried to poison my kids against me. (I’m never going to forgive them for that.) But, my own father dying? Ugh. I probably should be more upset than I feel. Question is, do I fake being more emotional than I am so that I seem normal to everyone else, or do I just act like myself?
Is it a problem that this news isn’t hitting me very hard? Maybe. Guess I shouldn’t have avoided him this long and carried that grudge about our argument for years. Can’t remember the last time we even spoke except for that argument. I’m not entirely convinced our fight was the last words we exchanged, but it’s so prominent in my memory that it’s blocking out anything after that. It’s not like I ran away from home or moved out the day of our big argument… so it’s more or less certain we spoke after the fight. I kinda remember him being real moody with me, as if me not changing my mind about going to college was some sort of direct insult to him or something.
Of course, once I actually went to college, that’s another story. Good chance I really didn’t have any contact with my parents after that point. School was an absolute blur of academic work and literal work. I justbarelymanaged to afford to keep going, working two crappy jobs in between classes. I had zero time for anything else.
These days, I have plenty of time.
Ugh. Yeah. I really should go visit him. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s on him. At least I’ll make the effort.
Chapter Three
Stuck in Time
No one ever would accuse me of being spoiled.
Not as a kid, anyway. We were poor growing up, the kind of poor where getting clothing for Christmas didn’t make us cry. At the moment, I’m feeling a little on the spoiled side but it has nothing to do with money or getting everything I want. No, I’m a little grumbly that I’mdrivingup north instead of teleporting.
Or rather,weare driving.
I’m not personally behind the wheel at the moment. Anthony got his permit and he wanted to get some practice in. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me at all. This is one of those ‘makes you feel old’ moments. ‘Holy cow, mychildis driving’ situation. Most of the time, any sign of my kids growing up hits me pretty hard. Then again, Ant learning to drive is pretty tame compared to ‘hey, Ma, I’m gonna be an angel.’
The reason we’re in the van is primarily to blend in, and a little bit of laziness. I don’t want to bother thinking up an excuse for how we got to my parents’ place without a vehicle. At least, assuming the Momvan makes the trip okay. It’s getting kinda old for a car at this point. Probably not the smartest ideato just pick up and drive a few hundred miles in a vehicle of this age without at least taking it in for a mechanic to go over first.
If it dies out on the road somewhere, oh well. Then I’ll teleport us the rest of the way.
Tammy—and we’re an hour into the trip at this point—is still laughing at how her brother couldn’t figure out how to start the engine. The way he looked at the key I was trying to hand him got her going on and on about writing a script for a movie where an angel tries to live among mortals but is completely clueless how anything works.
Obviously, my son is not a celestial being—at least not in the sense that he’s never seen the mortal world before. The boy should know how a traditional key works. I can’t help but feel I failed as a parent in that department—even if the car he drove for his driving school course had a push-button start and an electronic key fob. The boy should still know how the key works in this van. Hadn’t he seen me start it a million times? Sheesh. Anyway, like any respectable parent would, I had sat there quietly watching him search all over the dashboard for the push start button that this van does not have without saying a word until he finally asked why he couldn’t find it.
When we get home, I think I’m going to give the kids a crash course on Gen-X technology.
So, me and mine are driving up now. Mary Lou and her brood should be not far behind us. She’s still trying to reach Clayton and River.
For all we know, the brothers might already be there at the house. Another reason I decided against just teleporting us there. Not that Mom would even notice if people appeared out of thin air right in front of her. Clay might think he’s hallucinating thanks to his drug habit. Don’t really know how River or Dusk would react. Haven’t had a lot of contact with themsince they moved out. Being the youngest of my siblings, I was the last one stuck living at home.
Don’t tell anyone, but I really hated not having Mary Lou around for the last couple years I lived at home. She moved out when I was sixteen, since she’d met Rick and they got married young. At least I’d been old enough to mostly take care of myself at that point.
Truth was, I just kind of stumbled along until I met Danny. Took me a long time to grow into a proper adult. Even past the age of eighteen, I still had this thing where I was afraid to make decisions and needed to feel like I had someone there taking care of me. To this day, I still can’t pinpoint the moment it changed or what finally gave me a smack upside the head. Looking back, it probably happened during my first couple of months with HUD. Kinda hard to go through assertiveness training without becoming at least a little more assertive.
Like I said... we’re on the highway.
Despite the grimness of the occasion, the mood of a family road trip is pretty strong. For the time being, it doesn’t feel like we’re on our way to say final goodbyes to an elderly family member. We’re merely on the way tovisit. Paxton doesn’t have much of a duck in this race since she’s not related to my parents and had never met them. I have some vague memories of taking Tammy to see them once. I don’t really remember if Anthony was around at that point in time or not. If he was, he’d have been a baby. Tammy doesn’t remember them. The only thing I really remember about that trip was Danny spending the whole ride home giving me crap for bringing our kids into the presence of more drugs than he’d ever seen.
Could be one of the reasons I turned into such a clingy mom… because I didn’t want my kids to distance themselves from me like I did to my parents. It’s on my parents, though. If they wanted us around more, they shouldn’t have spent the first eighteen years of my life acting like they couldn’t care less if weexisted or not. And they certainly could have come down to visit—or invited us up (which they never did).