Page 25 of Advice from a Sunflower

This is a scene she’s encountered before.

“What is she doing here?” Mommy Dearest croaks, her upper lip lifting in disgust as her eyes menacingly roam my body from head to toe.

“She came for your wedding and to help me and the girls. What are you doing here so late, Denise?”

Marnie’s voice is even and patient, completely contradicting the uneasiness that seeing my own mother has unleashed onto my nerves.

“It’s Saturday morning, Marnie. I always make the girls breakfast on Saturdays.” She pours a glob of pancake batter onto the heated skillet and then turns toward me. “We don’t need you here, Mouse,” she spits in my direction, looking through me, the way she always had before.

“Come on. Don’t be that way. You two haven’t seen each other in seven years. You're getting married! It's supposed to be a happy time. We’ve talked about this, Denise. Why don’t I make a pot of coffee and we can all catch up? Mouse can finally tell you about the amazing things she’s done.”

Marnie sends me an apologetic smile and then walks over to the sink to start filling the coffee pot with water, carefully keeping Denise in her peripherals. Our mother lets out a sardonic laugh, flipping the pancake with her eyes locked on me. “We don’t care what you’ve been doing, little girl. As long as you do it somewhere away from here. I didn't invite you for a reason.”

I’m a rubber band being pulled beyond its limits as Denise playfully strums me for her own amusement. She knows how much it hurts me when she talks like this. She’s used her words as weapons against me my entire life, carefully stringing together the most menacing insults she can fathom to nail me as deeply as possible. I thought putting distance and time between us would change things. It’s only made them worse.

Somehow, Marnie has formed calluses against the years of abuse, shielding her from any more hurt or resentment that might have come from it. Or maybe physical abuse was easier to get over, I’m not sure. All I know is, the moment I saw her tonight, I was an eighteen-year-old again, desperate for my mother’s affection.

Even though I know it will never come.

“That’s enough! This is my house now, and you don’t have the right to talk to her like that anymore. If you’re going to keep being nasty, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I want to hear it from her,” my mother’s voice rumbles, a grittiness added to it from years of abuse to her body and bitterness toward others. Negativity has a way of wearing you down until there’s nothing left, leaving you even more sour and resentful than ever before. “Go on, Mouse. Tell me to get out of this house and leave you alone.”

“Stop it,” Marnie warns again.

The coffee pot begins to gurgle in the background, brewing a fresh pot. Under normal circumstances the noise would soothe me, but I’m too wound up. My fists ball at my sides as I consider finally speaking to my mother for the first time in years. The last thing I told her was that I loved her, and it was probably the most irritating and insulting thing I’ve ever served to her. I can’t do anything right for her.

When I leave, she’s angry.

When I come back, she’s downright nasty.

“I know you want to say something. Isn’t that what all those books were about? To vent about what a horrible little life you had here in a small town? How mean your mommy was to you when she was just trying to instill good morals into you?” Denise goads, casually pouring more batter onto the skillet, as if it meant nothing for her to deliver such cold words.

She’s trying to dig further under my skin, but her statement has the opposite effect. There’s only one way she would be able to sling an insult my way with such certainty, knowing it might dig deep enough for her level of manipulation.

She’s read my books.

As much as she wants to deny my existence, as much as she wishes I would stay away, it doesn’t matter anymore. Because the one person who I so desperately needed to hear my voice has read my inner thoughts and that was not a commitment she would make to a cause she didn’t care about.

“Pancakes!” Ally’s voice shrieks from the doorway, her tired face lit up with a broad smile.

Marnie gives Denise a warning look for her to drop it, then turns to give me the same.

Denise doesn’t miss a beat, somehow managing to turn off the threatening monster she had been toward me and morph into a loving grandmother for the girls. They crowd her at the stove, excitedly offering their help.

I politely dismiss myself back to bed and listen from the open bedroom door as they carry on with what is apparently a weekly occurrence, feeling more like an outsider than ever before. I realize the more time I spend in The Hollow, the harder it is for me to wrap my head around the idea that time hasn’t stood still here. Not in the way I initially thought it had.

New traditions have been created, lives have been lived and while I love what I’ve built for myself back home, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe I should have been here all along.

***

“Hey, babe, it’s Nat. Can you answer your damn phone already? I have news to share, and I miss your peppy little voice. If you don’t call me back in the next twenty-four hours, I’m taking the first flight I can find to hick-town to rescue you. Love you, bitch. Bye.”

Natalie’s most recent voicemail plays through the speakers of my car, offering a sense of familiarity that the streets I’m currently driving through are lacking. Today is Denise’s wedding and I’ve been sent to pick up the centerpieces and bouquets for the bridal party. Under normal circumstances, in a normal place, the florist would deliver the flowers themselves. But this is The Hollow and nothing about this place is normal.

For most of my life, the flower shop was owned by an elderly couple who barely made enough to keep the place open. Their delivery van broke down when I was still in high school and apparently hasn't been replaced yet. I’m not mad about it, though. I’m just happy to have gotten out from under the same roof as Denise, if only for a few fleeting moments.

I don’t bother calling Natalie back before I step out of the car and make my way to the entrance. It’s an old building that’s been around since the town was built. Thick green ivy reaches across the front, almost completely covering the worn red brick and black shutters that decorate it. The building has always housed a flower shop and not much has been updated since they opened.

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