A Nightmare's Fate

Distance

Chapter Fifty-eight: Distance

My mother runs down the driveway with a smile on her face. When she embraces me in her arms it seems as if she’s about to tackle me on the football field, but when our bodies meet, she’s gentle and she seems happy to see me.

“You done?” I ask, giggling at how she acts like I’ve been gone forever. I have actually, so it would make sense.

“Sorry,” she says as she pulls out of the hug. “Let me help you with the bags.” We both try to grab as much as we can and head into the mansion.

When I step inside, it’s like I never left. The tile floor allows my mother’s high heels to echo throughout the house and I feel like everything in here is the same, except the pictures. Instead of my father, my mother, and I the photos are of my mother and Lipchits, and pictures of me. Beyond the hall of photographs is an open and large living room and on the side with a swinging door is a kitchen. As we get to the living room, Lipchits sits on the leather couch watching sports on the sixty inch flat screen television.

He nods his head and grins my way as I pass him, since he’s too interested in the game.

My mother and I head up the large stairway to go up into the hall full of bedrooms. We get to my old room and she sets the suitcases and bags down on the mattress. “Is there anything else?” she questions with a small grin, her eyes trailing all around me like she hasn’t been in here. She probably hasn’t since I’ve been gone, or she could have been in here a few times from missing me, depending on how empty she felt or if she was really sad and didn’t feel like coming in here to reminisce on memories.

“I’ll be good. Thank you so much mom,” I say.

She nods her head once with the smile on her lips as she leaves out the door and closes it behind her.

Gazing all around me, I realize how it’s the same I left it when I left. The purple wallpaper, the desk to the end of the room at the wall and window, the same queen sized bed that is naked with no sheets and the open closet with the remaining clothes I didn’t want to take with me.

I begin to start putting things away like bathroom products in the connecting bathroom or clothes in the dresser that is in front of the bed or in the closet. When I’m done, I put the bags and suitcases underneath the bed and put my hands on my hips and take a good look around, smiling at the success.

Heading back down the stairs, I catch my mother in the kitchen with her sitting at the long dinner table, a newspaper in hand. “Hello sweetie,” she says.

“What are you reading?” I ask, sitting in the chair next to hers.

“More like, ‘what are you doing?’ I’m doing a word search,” she explains. “You know how much I love these things.”

I nod and say, “Yup, I know.” With my elbows on the table, I try to think through what I want to do. “Hey, do you have a job thing in there?”

“No need to look for a job, Ray.” She stops looking for words and gazes at me. “I got you an interview with the publishing service in L.A., since I know how much you love doing it. Actually, how is your book coming?” She puts the newspaper aside and puts her palm under her chin with her elbow on the table as well, steadying her so her head doesn’t fall.

“It’s going good,” I say, nodding. “I have about nine pages left to do and I’m gonna be revising it a lot, and then send it over to well . . . a bunch of publishers in hopes someone takes it.”

“I’m very proud of you, Raven.” She puts her hand on top of mine and smiles some more.

“Thanks,” I reply.