Page 40 of The Whisper Place
My mom and I always celebrated her birthday the same way. Every year, we went to the movies. She popped popcorn at home and smuggled it into the theater in a giant handbag, along with candy and sodas from the grocery store. We watched at least two movies, buying tickets for the first one at matinee prices and then ducking into the next theater after the first show ended. An entire day’s worth of food and entertainment for twenty bucks. As a kid I was nervous about getting caught, but Mom always told me it was about confidence.
“Act like you own the place and no one will know any different.”
And she was right, although the employees probably did notice. They just weren’t paid enough to care.
We watched kid and family movies when I was young. Disney, Pixar, musicals, Marvel, although the second movie of the day was more random. Sometimes it was a blockbuster or a family drama. Once we watched a Japanese horror film that gave me nightmares for months. When I turned thirteen she stopped covering my eyes during bloody or sexy scenes. Then, she met Ted. For two years, he came along for Mom’s birthday tradition, but he did it all wrong. Hebought tickets for both movies, paid fifty dollars for concessions, and then complained about them. He talked during the movies and held Mom’s hand the whole time, like he couldn’t stand it if her attention wasn’t at least partially on him.
He was tall, slim, with thick dark hair and a meticulously shaved jaw. His eyes were as dark as coal and when he looked at you, it felt like a laser. He knew how to charm people, how to use his looks in any given situation, and that’s what he’d done to my mom. At the time I was sixteen and outraged that she would let this guy into our world. I could see it more clearly now. A struggling, single mom meets a man with a giant house next to an idyllic forest. He seems successful, attentive, the kind of guy who can make impossible things like medical bills and rent increases disappear.
We missed her birthday tradition the year we escaped him, but every year after that we went back to the theater. And we did it our way. Smuggled food, bonus movies. She insisted on comedies and romances, I think, because she wanted me to believe that love existed in the world. That the nightmare of Ted was an exception, and not the norm. I didn’t need to watch made-up stories to believe in love. All I had to do was look at her.
At the beginning of June, I told Blake I needed the day off and did something I promised my mom I would never do.
I drove back to Illinois.
I didn’t stop until I reached the movie theater with its potholed parking lot and bright marquee. Inside, I bought a ticket with cash, slipped into the theater of the most romantic show playing, and felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw her sitting alone in the fifth row. She was already staring at me, as if she’d been watchingthe door and waiting. Slowly, I moved up the aisle and into the row. By the time I sat down, tears were coursing silently down my face.
We watched an entire preview, both of us facing forward and pretending this was normal. Mom played with the popcorn in her gallon Ziploc bag, but she didn’t eat it. I tried to get ahold of my emotions enough to speak. When the trailer ended, she whispered to the screen.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
I looked behind us. There were only a handful of people here on a Thursday afternoon, and the closest ones were two rows back. “I haven’t seen anything in the news. No body discovered. No missing person report.”
“Nobody missed him.”
The laugh burst out before I could stop it, high and loud. Her dry humor was exactly what I needed to clear the clot of emotion in my throat, an instant remedy, but it sent fresh tears pricking into my eyes. I’d missed her so much. Angling my head, I studied her profile as she watched the next preview. She looked healthy. Her hair was freshly trimmed in the super-short pixie cut she’d worn my entire life, and she was still dying it the same dark brown. Her hands were steady and she looked like she’d finally put on some weight.
“How are you?”
She swallowed and her hand found mine in the dark. Her slender bones squeezed around my palm. “Better now.” I smiled and looked back at the screen. I wanted to rest my head in her lap, to feel her hand stroking the hair away from my face, but I settled for circling her arm with my other hand.
“You look good,” she whispered.
“I’m doing so well.” I hesitated, not sure how much to tell her. “I’ve made friends.”
“I’m happy for you, sweetheart.” I could hear the tears in her voice, choking her with the weight of our choice, the moment we’d separated our forevers from each other.
“I could come back more. No one’s looking for me, Mom. I don’t think—”
“No.” She squeezed my hand tighter as she cut me off. “It’s not safe yet. It’s only been a few months.”
“When will it be safe?”
“Not after two months,” she clapped back. I sighed, caught between the comfort of being with her and the frustration of not knowing when I could see her again.
“How long do you think?” She didn’t answer, so I pressed. “A year? Two? There’s not going to be any physical evidence left on the body. It’s only his house—”
“I scrubbed out the kitchen after you left.”
“You weren’t supposed to go back there!”
“Well, I did.”
Emotion boiled beneath my skin. “So, if all the evidence is gone and no one has reported that psychopath missing, not even—”
“Stop.”
Her quiet command reminded me where we were. I gave up and faced the screen, letting the argument die for now.
