she was. “Their struggles are representative of the journey every person makes. There’s confusion and mishaps and villains along the way, but in the end it’s up to each individual to get where they want to be. We don’t need wizards or magic. That’s the point of it all. We just have to try and we’ll eventually get there in some form or another.”
Evelyn blinked through the blinding sun that bleached the darkness from the shade of her eyelids.
She felt like Dorothy: lost, alone, meeting strange people along the way. When Parker finally finished
the book, it had all been just a dream. Maybe that’s all they all were—dreams in the mind of some
superior being.
Could you dream up something a little easier?
Sighing, she pushed herself off the bench and looked at the time on her phone. 12:47. She counted
the cash in her pocket and decided to make use of her time until Jason came at three. Hailing a cab,
she made up her mind to visit Pearl.
***
The halls to the rehab always smelled the same. Deodorized air shone over motes of dust that
hovered in shards of light cutting through the white blinds at the reception desk where she signed in.
The staff smiled at her, but otherwise ignored her presence as she made her way to her mother’s room.
She tapped her knuckles on the door, which eased open silently. Pearl was watching television and
turned at Evelyn’s presence.
“Scout, what you doing here?”
She hadn’t realized how much balanced on the gamble of her mother’s recognition, but when her
mother distinguished her as more than just a stranger, something broke inside of her and she started to cry.
“Oh, baby, what happened?” Her mom stood from the ugly mauve recliner and stepped close. When
Pearl’s frail arms drew her in— physical contact—every bit of preservation fled and she sobbed into her mother’s meek form. She hadn’t felt her mother’s touch in years and she needed it so badly.
Tears erupted from Evelyn’s eyes as she drew in stuttering breaths. “I’m so lost, Momma.”
“Here. Sit.” She was drawn over to the bed and collapsed, her shoulders hunching forward in defeat.
“What happen?”
The anomaly of her mother’s nurturing touch and sympathetic tone was her undoing. She wept like
a child. She wept for all those times there simply wasn’t room for tears. She wept, because sometimes,
no matter how old a person was, they simply needed a mother and today she had one.
Pearl waited quietly for her to explain herself. It was a novel form of patience displayed by her
mother, and Evelyn wondered if this was the break she had asked for.
She was tired of pretending; pretending she could read and write, pretending the children’s books in
her bag belonged to someone else. The unending marathon of her life had exhausted her and the finish
line felt just as distant as ever.
And now she was back with Lucian, but not back to the way things had been. There had to be a
happy medium, but she didn’t know if he could truly bend the way she needed and she feared losing
him again.
All she ever wanted in life was to be normal. Was it even possible to be normal and in love with a
billionaire? He was larger than life, and she valued the small things that most took for granted. She
didn’t know where she belonged, and her heart was leading her down a very unpractical path she’d
never traveled before.
Once her emotions were back under control, she blotted her eyes and looked at her mom. She
looked well. In soft cotton pants and an ordinary cotton T-shirt, she looked nothing like the woman
who raised her or stood by teaching her to raise herself.
Gaunt fingers, no longer stained with grime, brushed a strand of hair from her face. Muddy brown
eyes, once so velvety tan, like chocolate, searched her face. “You okay now, baby?”
What could she say? Pearl’s standard of living was a version of poverty littered with squalor and
accepted sacrifice that was never good enough for Evelyn. Pearl merely existed until it was time to
clock out.
Evelyn had always been different. She’d wanted to run from the time she could walk. Her hunger
had always been for something more than what was immediately available. Maybe she simply wanted
too much.
“I’m so confused, Momma.”
“Confused ’bout what, baby?”
“Life.”
There would be no logical advice from her mother’s lips, but her presence of mind in that moment
was worth more than any nostalgic diatribe of life’s do’s and don’ts. She shut her eyes and breathed.
“Life’s hard, Scout,” Pearl slowly said. She blinked at her mother’s unexpected comprehension. “I
’member back when I’s met your daddy. We had some good days. Once we even had a place to stay. It
was real nice. Had a bed and toilet. We’s had that place ’til just before you came along.”
Her expression shuttered. That was the place her father was murdered. She didn’t know much about
the man who created her, only bits of what she’d heard over the years. Pearl had been right next to him when he was shot point-blank to the head.