Iron (The Warding Book 1) (23 page)

On some level, it irked me that I was wasting a perfectly good mental health day. On the other hand, I just couldn’t find the energy to do anything. I was in dire need of a shower and I hadn’t even managed that. The most energetic thing I had managed was a PB&J for lunch, so preoccupied at the time that I had hardly tasted it.

My thoughts just kept chasing themselves around in circles. One moment I’d be fuming over Kaine’s failure to keep his promise and get my bad guy. The next, I’d be wallowing in crushing despair, certain that said bad guy (now guy
s
, actually) were going to find me, no matter what I did. The worst part was that I knew I was being overly dramatic. I knew, deep down, that Kaine et al. had tried to come to my rescue. Unlike the romance novels I had grown up reading under the covers, the hero didn’t always swoop in at the right moment to help the damsel in distress. That was just real life. Real was a vague term, considering I was talking about a life that involved trolls and faeries—but, still.

I knew I shouldn’t be taking it so personally, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to help it. Maybe it was the timing. I had just finally started to feel like I was stronger than the mess my life had become; like I had a handle on it all. Being, literally, cornered by those cretins had taken me right back to the square one. They had left me feeling like that scared shitless, powerless, vapid girl who had thought things like designer purses and the season’s hottest shade of lipstick were oh-so important. The one who had honestly believed that everything in life would work out, one day, and that being a little lost was no big deal, so long as I had a good time doing it.

They reminded me of the innocence that night had taken from me and I hated them for it.

I rolled over onto my stomach and buried my face in a throw pillow. I kicked my feet like a child, screaming until my throat went raw. Thankfully, the pillow muffled it enough that I didn’t expect the owners of the business downstairs to come check on who was being murdered. When the frustration had drained out of me, I lifted my head and pushed the tangled mass of hair out of my face. I scuttled back into the corner of the couch, pulling my blanket around me like it would somehow protect me from that aching empty place inside me. I looked around the apartment.

Nothing had changed, of course. The TV chattered on in front of me, the chicken sizzling happily in a skillet making my stomach turn. The faint sound of traffic echoed outside the window, interspaced with a few honks and the wail of a far-off police siren. There was nothing new, nothing special, to mark my emotional breakthrough. The world was oblivious to my anguish, just as it always had been. Getting to the heart of the issue didn’t lift any of my sadness; it just made me feel more alienated. Suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so much like being alone anymore.

I fished around under the blanket until I found my phone. I stared at it, cradled in my palm. There were only a few people I talked to regularly, and none of them really fit the bill, considering what I was going through. Even as irritated with me as she was, I knew Jenni would still drop everything to lend me an ear if I called her in the middle of the day. I even considered it for a moment, before deciding that doing so would likely cost a price I wasn’t up to paying. She would have more questions than solutions for me, and, honestly, I didn’t have any answers for her. The only other one I could turn to was Mairi. She would actually understand the issues that were at the heart of my impending breakdown, but I didn’t really want to go there with her either. Not yet.

I took a deep breath. I already knew I’d regret the urge later (as I always did), but I gave into that primal instinct every girl has when she’s feeling lost and vulnerable.

I called my mother.

As it rang, I wondered if I had finally lost my mind. Conversations with my mother never went in my favor. Don’t get me wrong; she was a sweet, loving woman—just not particularly so with her eldest offspring. It had been that way from the cradle, if family lore was to be believed. My maternal grandmother had been more of a mother to me than my own during the first few years of my life while my mother suffered through some undiagnosed post-partum depression. That may have explained some of the coolness between us, but it hadn’t made accepting it any easier. I only had the alienated, often hurt, feelings of my teen years to go on. I remembered more screaming matches (which I had usually started) and slammed doors (which was how my younger self had preferred to end those verbal battles) than hugs in my lifetime.

As the years went by, I continually knocked my head into the same wall over and over, trying to forge some sort of common ground, adult-to-adult relationship. Sometimes I tricked myself into believing it was working.

“Why aren’t you at work?”

Sometimes even I couldn’t be that deluded.

The disapproval was evident in her voice, like I was still thirteen years old and being caught playing hooky from school. I swallowed a sigh. “Hi to you too mom. I called out of work today. Had a little stomach virus or something.”

“Oh.” I could hear the television on in the background. She was probably watching The Price is Right while she ate her lunch. She had done that pretty much every day since as early as I could remember. I bet her lunch had been a ham sandwich with mayo too. She had always been a creature of habit. She asked, “Something going around the office?”

I don’t think she really believed me, but it was nice to be humored. “Stomach trouble” had always been her go-to excuse to beg off of something she didn’t want to do too. I was probably a lot more like my mother than I cared to admit. I shrugged, knowing full well she couldn’t see me do so. “Maybe. Kinda hit me out of the blue.”

“Diane had some sort of flu last month. Everyone has been getting sick on and off ever since.” Mom droned on about the Great Plague of the Year and its effects on her office for a bit. I made the appropriate sounds of encouragement to keep her going every now and then. I didn’t really care about any of what she was saying. It was just nice to hear another voice that wasn’t coming out of the television.

When her tale of woe had run its course, she took a noisy drag on her cigarette and asked, “So what else is wrong with you?”

I’m not sure if the timing of the question or its phrasing gave me pause, but for a good thirty seconds I was left dumbstruck. Finally I managed to slap on some sarcasm to hide my guilt-ridden surprise. “Gee ma, love you too!”

She laughed, in her wheezy-wet smoker’s way. “Not with you personally, dingbat. I mean, what’s going on that has you calling me on a Tuesday afternoon?”

I sucked in my cheeks, counting slowly to five. “Why do you assume something is wrong? Can’t a girl just want to say hi to her mother?”

“You never call me in the middle of the day, Caitlin Marie.” I shrank back into the pillows reflexively. Hearing my middle name was never good. She chided me, “Hell, you hardly call me at all these days. Something must be going on. What is it?”

Had I wanted to talk about the deep, dark issues that were eating away at my soul? Maybe—but only on that “never actually going to happen” level. Really dishing the dirt with my mom was something I hadn’t done since, well… Ever. I felt betrayed by her sudden interest in my life. I pulled the phone away from my ear, giving her little digital image on its face an accusatory stare.

Have you ever had one of those moments in a conversation where you realize you really have nothing to say? Like, not even small talk? A moment where the words have literally dried up in your mouth and you just want it to be over, so you start to panic while trying to think of a single freaking thing to say? You know; one of those times where you just sit there, feeling dumb and listening to the silence drag on, wondering why the hell you ever picked the phone up in the first place?

Suddenly I was wondering just what the hell I had been thinking. Calling my mother had been some deep seated little-girl-in-need-of-comfort instinct but I had remembered too late that there was nothing comforting about our relationship. Her putting me on the spot like that left me slack-jawed, feeling more and more anxious by the minute, until the words finally spilled out of my mouth, unbidden. “I’m lost.”

“Come again?”

Tears had already sprung to my eyes. My voice wavered, threatening to crack. “I’m lost, ma. I feel like nothing I do is ever right and I just keep spinning my wheels trying to figure out how to make tomorrow better—but it just stays the same or gets worse.” I took a deep breath, swallowing a sniffle. I scrubbed at my traitorous eyes with a balled fist. “I just don’t know what to do to fix my life.”

I don’t know what I expected her to say. I wasn’t really expecting an earful of sage wisdom. Mom had never been big on doling out wordy life lessons. Maybe I was hoping for a nugget of advice. Perhaps even some sort of commiseration; a promise that every woman went through this stage in their lives and that mine too would pass. At the very least, a sound of sympathy would have been nice.

“Really, Caitlin.” The word was drawn out almost into a drawl, heavy with disgust. Or maybe it was exasperation. The two kind of sounded the same when coming from mom’s mouth.

I felt like I had been slapped. My eyes welled up again and my cheeks burned, missing only the sting of a physical blow. My stomach did a sickening somersault, chastising me for expecting any sort of empathy to have come through from the other end of the phone. I felt like an ass, and that made me snappish. “Yes,
really
, mom.”

She heaved a sigh, like I had asked her to move mountains. “I mean, come on. What do you want me to say to that?”

She said “that” like it was a dirty word. I hated the way my voice shook. “I was hoping for some sort of advice, maybe.”

“Advice?” She snorted. Her tone turned snide. “What kind of advice could I give you? By the time I was your age, I was married with two children and a full time job. I didn’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for myself.”

Feeling sorry for myself.

The words burned.

That’s what it always came down to with her. Every problem, every complaint I had ever had in my life could be laid at the feet of my selfish and all-consuming need for people to pity me. I don’t know what I possibly could have done as a child to warrant such immediate distrust from the woman who birthed me, but I couldn’t remember a single time in all my years that she had taken a single concern of mine seriously.

I didn’t want to believe that she went out of her way to alienate and hurt me—who wants to think such things of their mother?—but I couldn’t forget all the times she had dismissed me or out-right laughed at my ideas. The worst memories stuck out most, of course. What teenager would ever forget her mother refusing to take her shopping, because she was ashamed to be seen in public with a rebellious little goth?

After so many years of being put-down, I should have lost the ability to be burned her coldness. Instead, each time we butted heads, it just bit into the old, familiar scar tissue and added another weal. I felt cold inside, like I had swallowed ice water and it had frozen as it trickled down my throat.

Calling her had been a mistake; maybe the biggest I had made yet. The cold reminder of the aching distance between us hurt more than the memory of Goliath hoisting me into the air, ready to devour me. Maybe my life had gotten crazy and weird. Maybe I needed a little dose of normal to help me get my feet back on the ground—but I sure as hell wasn’t going to find that in mom.

“Thanks for the pep talk, mom. I’ve got to go; stomach is ready to act up again.”

She was still talking as I hung up. I didn’t care.

I lowered my phone into my lap. My fingers were clenched so hard around it that my knuckles ached, but that was nothing in comparison to the ache in my jaw. I couldn’t explain why, after so many years, I still let her get to me but each time it was a new surprise. I hated how much it hurt, but I hated myself even more for expecting better of her.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, lost in my own private darkness, but by the time I finally found the strength to force myself up off the couch, my cheeks were dry once again.

~*~

To say I didn’t accomplish much that day would be a gross understatement. Well, I guess if you consider moping and staring at the wall “something,” I had reached pro status by that evening. Since I don’t, I pretty much just chalked the day up as a loss.

After the heartfelt chat with my mother, I shambled around the apartment for a good ten minutes or so, trying to find something to lose myself in. The effort of working out was straight out right off the bat, but little things like doing some laundry or taking a shower were given a cursory perusal. I had even briefly considered taking a walk and getting some fresh air to clear my head but that had just seemed too damn complicated.

Despite the restlessness crawling around like ants under my skin, I just didn’t have the energy to
do
anything. And, let’s be honest; if basic hygiene was difficult to manage, there was pretty much no chance I was stepping out into public. Instead, I wound up back in bed with the solace of my pillows once again.

After a few hours of tossing, turning and fitful napping, I was forced to emerge from my cave of despair by my grumbling stomach. Melancholy or no, it wanted to be fed. It was already a fitting pitch black by 6pm, but turning on the lights just didn’t seem worth it either. The fridge was near bare, leaving me with only a handful of frozen dinners as viable options. I still had some wine left, so I didn’t think it was worth the effort to go grocery shopping either. I may have considered that such thoughts were dangerously close to that of an alcoholic, but it took all of two heartbeats for me to decide that I really didn’t give a flying fuck.