Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Eleven

I didn't know where Mom had flown in from. I didn't know where she was going to fly out to. All I knew was that right now, she was here, and I absolutely hated being in the same room as her.

Don't get me wrong, I was happy to have her there. Sort of. I think. I don't know. It was easier to be angry with her than it was to be sad about her. It was easier to have her here than it was to have her away. Having her here was certainly preferential to having her dead, but only slightly, and only if I told myself that everything was okay.

The part I really hated was the voice. That damn voice that had never left, even when she had. My mother, snarling away in my head. It was the voice that made my skin crawl—made my heart race. It was the voice that had made me spend the majority of my summer up in my room, reading or punching a bag or just trying to get away.

This was the situation: when Mom wasn't in the room, I knew with absolute certainty that I was making up her voice. When Mom was in the room, I had to watch her lips or monitor her movements, just to determine whether or not she was really speaking. Guesswork. It was guesswork.

I spend my days perfecting punches, just so I know exactly where they land. I spend hours upon hours memorizing the names of foreign dignitaries, just so I have them available during a mission. I am not in the business of guesswork.

I hated being in the same room as my mother, but more than that, I hated that it wasn't her fault. It was mine.

"You should have seen the two of them, Cam," Dad said, cheek full of Chinese takeout. "I'm telling you—this brush pass was flawless. I didn't even see it."

Mom just laughed in the same way she always did whenever Dad got this excited. "I'm sure it was quite a show," she said.

For as long as I could remember and probably even longer, Mom and Dad had always clicked. They had, on some level, understood one another, even before Dad knew the story of Matthew Morgan. Even before Mom knew the story of Catherine Goode. They got one another, and if there were any two people who had found The One, it had to be them.

I could see it in how they moved and noticed it in their smiles. I could tell that they were always on the same page—always understanding, even if not always agreeing.

"And Maggie was right there with the block," he went on. "Clinged to her cover right until the very end, and neutralized the threat."

"It sounds like she did a great job."

The scene was so unbearably normal. Mother and father, home after a long day at work as their teenager sulked on the sofa across from them. Maybe the three of us really did belong back in Roseville, trapped behind a picket fence and working the day job.

God knows it would be easier.

I'd never been a huge advocator for the idea of normal. Matt—Matt was the one who wanted to settle down and have two point five kids. Matt was the one who had always wanted to play House back when we were kids. It was one of the greatest differences between my brother and I—one that had sparked many an argument over the years—but right then, looking my dead mother in the eye, I couldn't help but think that maybe my big brother was on to something.

If we were normal, we'd be safe. If we were normal, we'd be sane. The more I thought about it, the more normalcy started to sound like a pleasantry rather than an eighty-year death sentence.

I would spend my day going to a normal school with normal friends whose only idea of betrayal included swapped out boyfriends, not terrorism. I'd come home to a normal dinner and eventually retire to a normal room that might even show up on Google Maps if I took the time to look—which I could, because I would have time. I would have normal homework and a normal sleep pattern and I would hate my mother for all the normal reasons that teenagers are supposed to hate their mothers, not for running away and faking her death.