And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

“Many of you knew my mother,” I started after the pastor finished his initial blessing. I didn’t want to give the eulogy, but Mama put it in her will, so I didn’t have a choice. “If you knew her back when I was a child, then you knew she didn’t like a fuss being made about her.”

I looked back on the casket, and my mother’s smile, finally at peace. “Which is funny, because since we left Chandler, all she wanted was a fuss being made about her. She became quite the diva in her last years—but I loved her for it. She spent decades watching out for others, caring for others, and making others the center of her world. For her first six decades, she pinched every penny and squeezed every dollar. It was nice to see her get everything she deserved in the end, even if it was only for a short while.

“She didn’t deserve to die like she did, but that is life, I suppose. That’s what she told me anyway, any time I got bitter about her refusing treatment. ‘God wanted me around for a while and I stayed around just as long as he thought necessary’ she would say to me. I don’t like the idea of that kinda God, personally, but it brought Mama comfort.”

I gulped loudly and glanced down at my notes, but I could barely read them through my tears. I looked out on the audience which filled every chair just like Norman told me they would, but they were deadpan. They didn’t care what I said. They just wanted it to be over, so they could pay respects and go home.

My stomach churned into knots. I didn’t want to keep talking even if I could see what I wrote down. I crumpled the pages up and tossed them aside. It didn’t matter anyway.

“I will miss you, very much, with every waking breath. I hope you were right, and Heaven is more than just a place on Earth.”

I walked over to the casket, kissed my hand, and placed it gently on my mother’s cold forehead.

*

* * * *

I STAYED AT THE FUNERAL home for another hour, greeting and thanking all the mourners. They were pleasant and polite, full of kind words and nice stories, but it was more draining than anything, and I felt a great weight lift off me when the last of them left and I could be alone with my mother.

“Mom,” I said. “I don’t know what to do now and I need your help. I promised this woman I would help her find her daughter, but I have no idea how to do that. I’m just a teacher from Colorado who somehow saved the world once, but you know I’m not a hero. I just want a simple life.”

As I looked down at my mother, I felt two eyes burning into the back of my head. I knew it was Adelaide without her saying a word. “I told you to wait for me outside.”

“It’s the middle of December outside. I’m cold.”

I gripped the edges of the coffin. “I’m starting to see why your daughter ran away.”

The breath went out of the room. I crossed a line and I wasn’t sorry about it. I hoped that my cruelty would send her away, but she didn’t move. “My daughter and I had our differences, just like you and your mother, but she would never run away, not for long.”

“Plenty of times I wanted to run away as a kid—hell, I did run away to Chicago for a few years.”

“I’ll bet you always came back, though.”

“I always did.”

“So would my Kim, if nothing happened to her. That’s why I’m so worried.”

I dropped my head down to my mother’s and touched her forehead with mine. “I love you.”

After a moment of silence, I picked my head up and turned to Adelaide. “All right. Let’s go.”

*

* * * *

ADELAIDE DIDN’T LIVE in Chandler. Something I found out only after we got in her car and started driving. I hadn’t been in a car since before I unlocked my powers.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Stubbins,” Adelaide replied. “I’ve lived there all my life.”

“Except for when you were living in my house.”

“I wouldn’t say living. I can’t say I’m living anymore, at least not really. Besides, I was only there a couple days.”

“You would have been there for the duration, though, yes?”

She sighed. “Unless my little one came home or until I had a better idea, yes.”

“What about your husband? Your kids?”

“I never much liked my husband, Miss Freeman. And as for other kids, well, Kimberly was the only one. She was the glue that held our house together, and I want to get her back. I need to get her back.”

“I get it,” I said, looking out the car window as Adelaide drove.

Kimberly wasn’t the only child I knew who was born to parents that didn’t get along. I was the product of parents that didn’t get along, after all—the product of an ill-fated scheme to force love where it didn’t belong—but I was the exception. After I was born, my parents found love for each other. Usually, it goes the other way, and heaps scorn on the child for forcing the parents to stay together in a loveless house.

“How far until we hit the town?”

“Hour or so.”

I watched the scenery drifting by. There was probably something I should have said, but I doubted there was anything I could say to make her feel better, and I knew there was nothing she could say to me to fill the gaping hole in my chest. Neither of us could help the other.

*