Page 6 of New Hope, Old Grudges

Although I really didn’t feel like it, I smiled back at her. Because it really was impossible not to smile around someone like her. Who didn’t let life get her down, even for a second. Who never stopped loving you. Even when you gave her every reason to.

My body stiffened with a guilt so overwhelming, I almost cried out in pain. I’d been so hard on this woman. I’d shut her out, screened her calls … abandoned her when she needed me most.

I opened my mouth to apologize, my eyes watering. “Mom—” I choked out.

My mother reached out to squeeze my hand. “Eat. Drink. You need your strength. The rest we’ll figure out later. Together.”

I squeezed her hand back, nodding silently to hold in my tears.

Then, for the first time in over a decade, I sat at my family’s dinner table without my father.

* * *

You’d think I wouldn’t sleep well that night after sleeping the entire day. You’d be wrong. Especially after two helpings of my mother’s eggplant lasagna then two helpings of her peach cobbler plus over half the bottle of the wine she opened.

I collapsed back into my twin bed, had about three minutes to contemplate what my life now looked like, then mercifully, passed out.

I heard my mother moving around the next morning, early. The smell of coffee almost coaxed me up, since my mom made some of the best coffee I’d ever tasted. She added her special blend of cinnamon spices and in the fall and winter made her own pumpkin-spice syrup that Starbucks likely would’ve paid her millions for. It was that good.

But even her coffee and pumpkin spice wasn’t enough. I squeezed my eyes back shut and willed myself into unconsciousness. Unlike my mother and various ‘gurus’ in L.A., I did not believe in the power of willing something into being. But this time it worked.

By the time I emerged from my room, the house was quiet. That meant my mom was gone.

There was absolutely no chance our house was quiet when Fern Watson was around. Music would be playing, she’d be using her singing bowls, belting out the latest pop song and getting all the words wrong.

My father’s low chuckle would punctuate those sounds. A murmur of his voice, gentle, always gentle with my mother, even though he was a big man. Well over six feet, muscled from working in the forge and a belly from my mother’s cooking that didn’t take away from how handsome he was.

He was born and raised in New Hope. He was a mountain man at heart, wore plaid, boots, had a dark and full beard, had calluses on his hands from his teenage years onward.

Mom was the free spirit who had been backpacking across the country when she found herself in New Hope, found my dad. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Weird Watsons. That’s what they called our family. Stupid and unoriginal name for sure. But kids came up with it. Kids were fucking stupid. More importantly, they were cruel. Especially to those who were even a little different from them. And we were a lot different. My mother read fortunes for a living, ran the town’s only ‘occult’ store, Trix—Occult to the small but vocal religious zealots in town. She sold crystals, candles, books and anything ‘spiritual’ you could think of. This was before it was trendy and didn’t exactly do a booming business, though enough to keep the lights on, apparently.

My father turned his hobby of blacksmithing into a real business. People all around town used them for their farms, their animals, their tools. He had artisan boutiques commissioning him for all sorts of stuff. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve taken it further and charged outrageous prices. But that wasn’t my father.

We’d never been rich growing up, but I’d never wanted for anything—except normalcy, maybe.

Cold brew is in the fridge if you’re on the iced coffee thing you millennials are into.

Otherwise, make yourself a nice warm mug, curl up by the window then grab one of the steamy paperbacks I’ve set beside the mug. Reading is an escape that helps heal all wounds. Especially if it’s got some hot sex in it.

Oh, and there are chocolate chip muffins, freshly baked this morning. Sex, chocolate and coffee, it’s impossible to be sad with that combination.

Love you eternally. Into this life and the next.

Fern (Mom) xxx.

The note in my mother’s signature looping script sat on top of her espresso machine. Beside it was a mug shaped like a turkey and a stack of romance books.

I didn’t want to smile. There was really nothing for me to smile about. But I did. Because my mother hadn’t changed in all these years. She still left notes. Long ones. She still signed them with her first name thenMomin brackets. She was still her, despite the heartbreak I know she endured losing my father, her best friend.

Feeling numb and without anything else to do, I followed my mother’s instructions. I made coffee. I ate a muffin. I went to the window nook with the plan of losing myself in a romance novel. But then I made the mistake of looking out the window.

Our house was at the base of the mountain that New Hope was scattered around. We were surrounded by woods on all sides, more mountains in the background. There were other homes dotted around, but you only saw their lights at night. Otherwise, we had complete privacy. My mother’s garden was winterized, but there were plenty of sculptures sitting on the outdoor furniture. Fairies, sundials, crystals. Whatever deity she was worshiping.

And amongst it all was something else. Something that stabbed me in the gut.

I stared at the structure out back. It was the same as it always was, hedges neatly trimmed on either side, flower boxes empty because the flowers were long dead. But the paint on the exterior showed no signs of chipping, the windows were gleaming, and I half expected to see the amber glow of the forge.

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