Page 73 of The Kiss of Deception

Sometimes, I desperately wish I could turn my brain off. I’d be so much happier.

“Let’s sit outside,” Mom says, the warmth of her hand chasing away the cold of the fork in my grip. It clatters against the porcelain, which I hand Rosario with a grateful smile before trudging outside through the back door at the far end of the kitchen. As we round the corner, my mom asks again, this time implying more than just the simple words. “How are you, Zoe?”

How am I?

A fully functional mess.

Outside, unshaken—perfect gleaming ice and bulletproof glass. The only vestige of my dance with death is a mar on skin. In the end, it only deepens the edge of my unapproachability. Not my words.

Inside, I’m… learning. I’m blood and bruises, sharp shards that tear and shred tissue to the bone. I’m learning to patch them up as I go, to fit the little broken pieces back together and apply the glue. Learning to walk again, except I’m barefoot and blindfolded, and I never know when my toes will fall out of the line and tumble into an abyss of dark memories and haunting whispers.

The simple thought of going back to my apartment, even if that means three steps across the hall, still makes my skin sticky with dread. I miss the comfort of familiarity and habit, but there isn’t much inside my four walls that I’m homesick for.

Desperate to return to my real life, I’m afraid, too—normalcy brings a false sense of safety, and I fear I might fall for it only to be hit in the face with reality. There’s no space for more scars.

“I’m fine.” I sigh.

Mom sighs too. “I’m sorry, Zoe.”

“I’m not mad at you, Mom,” I say.

The sun crawls low on the horizon, making the tall trees taller on the grass grounds. Perfectly aligned along the contours of the space, they rise high towards the sky in a shield, a limit of the perimeter.

Upon a flight of seven long, narrow marble steps, the green lawn awaits, impeccably trimmed and tailored. Light flagstone squares make a pathway that snakes all the way across the rectangular perimeter, erupting into a round marble fountain.

With my feet, I count one, two, three, twenty-two steps until I lose count, the numbers fading when my mom’s voice comes again.

“I wish you were. Then you’d blame me. As it is, I think you blame yourself. I think you think he left because of you—your father. Don’t you?”

Ah. This is about my father.

For a moment, in the hospital, I thought I saw his favorite forest-green vest in the shadows through the window, quickly discarding it as concussion symptoms. I don’t even know if it’s still his favorite color anymore.

In the end, he never came. Or called.

I lower myself beside her on the marble bench near the fountain, the middle unoccupied between us.

“That’s just not right, Zoe. You are the only one who has no responsibility in any of this.”

“What I think, Mother,” I say, restarting the mental count. “Is that neither of us should carry responsibility or guilt over decisions we didn’t make.”

The shadows of the trees sway to silent songs of the gentle wind, darkening one limestone square, then the next, with the weight of their shade.

“I was never raised to be a mother or a wife, even if that was expected of me, too. I was raised to be the legacy, to be excellence—so that’s who I was,” she confesses in her voice. It doesn’t shake the slightest as her eyes gloss over. A testament to her own words, she remains the woman she was raised to be.

“I didn’t know how to be a mom. So, I convinced myself you were better off without my mothering. If I couldn’t be good—the best—I could only mess you up. Women are raised to exceed and excel in a world that is tailored for our failure, eager for our downfall. A world that thrives on our self-hate. I immersed myself in the only thing I knew how to be good at. Look at what good that did.”

“Are you saying I’m a mess, mom?”

A blink, and the woman I recognize is back.

“What I’m saying, Zoe, is I failed you. You must understand my failure is not in any way a reflection of you.”

My phone chimes in my pocket. Instantly, I know it’s Miles. We do that now—texting. Well, I now return his voice messages with my own—he doesn’t trust regular texts. In light of the recent events, it’s understandable, so I make an effort for his sake.

Ahead, a little bird lands on the sun-heated stone with a thirsty chirp. Its beak moves with bated breath, begging for our departure to sate its thirst.

“You’ve always been so strong and independent. You shouldn’t have to. You’re my baby. You deserved a mother’s protection. Not just my distant, silent love.”

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