fierce ↠ sweet pea [1] [✔]

|| THIRTY-TWO ||

When she walked into the diner, her mother was already sat at a booth looking just as nervous as she was. She hesitantly ambled over, sitting opposite her awkwardly. Eye contact was difficult, and there was a deafening silence.

"Hello, Lauryn," Katherine broke the ice, reaching across the table for Lauryn's cold hands which were shaking. 

"Hi, mom," Lauryn said quietly. "This feels... weird."

Her mother chuckled. "I can imagine so. I've missed you."

"Why didn't you come back?"

"I--"

"Why haven't you reached out in years?"

Katherine took a deep breath, her eyes meeting Lauryn's identical ones. "I'm going to explain everything. You deserve these answers."

Lauryn could see how nervous her mother was, and even though they'd been sat together for a while they still couldn't settle their nerves. Their sundaes sat in front of them untouched and melting, and Lauryn had lost her appetite.

"I need the full story," Lauryn declared after some light small talk. "Why were you so... unkind?"

"Well, there was a safe haven for young mothers, and I'd go there every weekend. It was a sort of farm, I guess you could call it."

Lauryn frowned in disbelief. "A farm?"

Her mother gave a nod. "Yes. They taught us how to take care of our babies, how to treat them superior to any other child and put them first."

"But, Fangs could've been raised as yours," Lauryn argued. "Him and I have the same father, and he was a newborn when you and dad got together. It wouldn't have made a difference."

"I know that now. And I'd do anything to take back everything that I used to say about him. It wasn't fair."

"Well, you can't, so you can quit with the sob story," Lauryn shunned, standing up to leave. Her brother would always come first, and nothing could ever excuse how badly he was treated as a kid, all because of her. 

Katherine seized her arm desperately. "Please, just hear me out. We were... brainwashed into a chant we had to recite every day, which affirmed our unacceptance. It was fed into us with every meal, played through the speakers. Most of us were lost and naive, and so it was all we knew to go by."

"That's such bullshit," Lauryn scoffed, rolling her eyes and wanting to leave even more. She wasn't buying it. "You just hated Fangs because dad wasn't with you from the beginning, and he was balancing you and Fangs' mom for months."

"It didn't seem like garbage at the time," Katherine defended, shaking her head. "When I'd go to the farm, they'd tell me stories about women who brought up babies that weren't theirs, and their real children were murdered by the bastard child."

"That's disgusting, and you believed it?"

"I did, I was only nineteen," Katherine admitted, followed by a sigh. "I spent five years in Greendale to escape, and moved back to Riverdale with no interest in going back to the Farm."

"Why didn't you come back for me and Fangs?" Lauryn asked. "If you knew it was all bullshit, and Fangs could've been your son. Why would you leave us like that?"

All the woman could do was sigh in regret, watching as Lauryn sat back down. The heartbreak on her daughter's face crushed her. "I'm sorry, darling. I really am."

"Sorry doesn't make everything right."

"I know it doesn't, nothing can," she understood. "But, I'd like to come back, to meet your friends, and maybe... sort things out with your father--"