by Rea Winters
“And I will finish all the unpacking. All of it.”
“All of it?”
“Every single box.”
“And you’ll finish in time for dinner with Abernathy? Because I promised her the works for getting my dad released.”
“I’m the chef for tonight, so I better be.”
Amie squeezed around Caspar’s waist in a moment of delight, causing the woman to wince through a laugh. Her head popped up, a sheepish smile spreading under those bright eyes. “Sorry.” Words not being enough, she lowered her lips to Caspar’s in a soothing kiss.
Roadie barked. He’d had enough.
“Sorry, Roadie, getting up now,” Amie conceded. She straightened out her floral tank top and jean shorts, then got to work readying Roadie for his walk. It only took her a fraction of the time that Caspar usually took to get him harnessed and leashed, further evidence that the ladda likely pretended it was difficult just to avoid doing it.
“Okay, we’re off. But hey, don’t think this means you can avoid the neighbors forever.” Amie planted a smooch on her girlfriend’s forehead and took their fur-baby out into the breezy summer air.
They had moved to a new town filled with new people, but it wasn’t so far from Cedamire that the commute was a trudge. Caspar enjoyed it as it had the same qualities and benefits of her time in the hometown forest with the bonus of being open to the world instead of closed to it. The former she had become more comfortable with each passing day.
While unpacking in the den, Cas came across the two boxes of her mother’s belongings that she had allowed herself to take from their evergreen fortress before locking its doors. Amie thought it would be good to decorate a few walls and shelves with pictures of Chea and the art she made. To celebrate the good memories Cas had of her.
Cas wanted to, but there was one thing holding her back and that stack of journals she had been eyeing for weeks now would be the thing that freed her.
The top one was the oldest and the only one open. Amie had flipped through it a few times to read the entries about their mothers’ friendship during their teenhood. Cas could see why Amie felt like it was something special. It warmed her heart as well these days to imagine the lost so full of life.
It was the younger journals that made Caspar nervous. She got a little braver every time she touched them. In the beginning, she had flipped through mentions of herself as a baby, written in the scattered and fantastical way her mother used to speak. They were happy entries for the most part. Though, some she could tell were written on harder days where Chea had to try her very best to be optimistic about the hard choices.
Then there was the last journal – the one Chea didn’t finish. That was the one that terrified Cas. She opened it gingerly, afraid to go a few pages further than before, knowing she was near the end.
Her mother hadn’t left a note the night Cas found her. It didn’t occur to her until finding these journals months after her passing that she actually could have, just in a place she didn’t expect anyone but her daughter to find. Cas had buried them at the time because she didn’t think she needed a note to explain what had been obvious to her for years. That sharing a roof with the source of her pain became too much to bear.
Today she felt strong enough to see the confirmation of that, to confront it, and in doing so, exorcise the last vestiges of her mother’s troubled spirit from her own heart. So, she sat in a cushy recliner chair and began to read.
The older she gets, the less my little princess looks like me. But that’s such a little thing, isn’t it? I remind myself every day that, at most, I have control of the kind of person she will be. I do, me. Not the shape of her jaw or the curl of her hair or blood alone. She will be strong, self-reliant, creative, protective and nurturing of the ones she loves
- all the things I loved about my mother and father.
A good woman. That’s what my little princess will become.
She came from a beast, but I will make her a champion.
A good and capable knight who creates as well as she wields.
A smile tugged at the corners of Caspar’s frown. She remembered all the little lessons about patience and honor that Chea would relay to her as a small child while she taught her every basic skill under the sun.
She sees the things I don't want her to see. She’s old enough to recognize the sadness in my eyes, even when I smile at her. Asks me why I'm crying when I kiss her goodnight. Told me my tears wake her up because she always thinks it's raining. I merely laughed and told her it was nothing and that seemed to suffice. I wish she could stay this age forever, stay my little princess who worries after her mommy in our castle on the hill. But Des is right. I'll have to give her to the world someday. I'm just afraid of how the world will receive her, how it'll shape her beyond my control.
Caspar turned the page, her heart turning heavy.
She’s getting into a lot of fights out there. And she’s angry here, as well. She seems like a different person, as if the parts of her I didn't make are taking over and it scares me. I thought keeping the truth from her would help her. Keep her untainted and unmolded by it. But I was wrong. The truth should have come from me first. I failed her. And now hearing it from them, out there - having it slung at her like mud every day, it's changing her in ways I don't know how to reach. Maybe Des can help. Teach her that power doesn't come from rage, but from control.
Is it shameful that I can't be around her while she's like this?
It just hurts too much.
I can’t stand being afraid of her.
But I won't stay away for long, I'll find my way back to my little girl.
Tears welled in her eyes as Caspar wondered if that was the final straw. That she’d started to instill a fear in her mother akin to the monster that made her. Back then, she had believed if she used that anger to do good, to protect people like Chea, that it proved she wasn’t the one to be feared. She had sought to make those who struck fear into the harmless fear her in return, thinking it would make her a knight in her mother’s eyes and the woman would be proud. It had worked well enough to convince herself she wasn’t a monster in the making, but there was still quite the bridge between not being a monster and being a hero.
Another therapist, recommended to her by the hospital shrink, was currently helping Caspar recognize these exaggerated parts of herself – the aspiring champion of her mother’s fantastical escapism vs. the assumed beast within – and teaching her to tailor those traits to her life realistically. She was beyond the point of feeling ashamed of her less than shining ways in the past, but she looked forward to doing better. To putting her broken parts back together one day at a time. Cas flipped the page to the only entry left before the handful of blank pages and drew her hand down her face before beginning.
When I can’t sleep, she stays up with me. When I won’t eat, she cooks our favorites and threatens to eat it all without me just to make me smile. When I don’t leave my chambers, she sits outside the door and reads to me until we fall asleep.
I need her.
But I can’t keep her this way. It’s not right. I see how it’s breaking her from the inside out. How she pretends to never be tired or frustrated with me. The glint of disappointment in her eyes that will never cross her tongue when I beg her to stay here with me rather than go down there with the others. Des tells me I have to consider that more often. How others feel, especially my Caspar. So, I told him to take my champion on a week long voyage. Rejuvenate and refresh her mind and heart. Then when she returns, I will finally talk with her – really talk with her about our futures. Talk to her about the changes I will prepare myself to make if it means we get to be truly free and happy, even if that means free from each other and happy for one another from afar.
Though not too far and not forever.
I’ll have to put my foot down in that respect.
For now, I need my mind to quiet. I need sleep. I need relief from all this impossible aching.
&nb
sp; A good night’s sleep. In the morning Desmond and Caspar will return.
I’ll breathe easier, then.
Caspar’s brows furrowed. She scanned the final entry again. Line by line, word by word, letter by letter. Why didn’t it sound like a despairing goodbye, a sorrowful quitting of life? Her breathing hitched and thick tears drifted down her face as a weight long-anchored and rusted to her soul began to shift.
Chea could have the patience of a child at times, especially when she was physically uncomfortable. Caspar had told her a thousand times how many sleeping pills and pain relievers to take at what times, even going as far as administering them herself before bed. If Chea had been looking forward to seeing her the next day, if she only intended to finally end a two-week bout of insomnia and migraines, then…
“Cas?” Amie called.
Roadie led Amie to the den. She rushed over and kneeled in front of the quietly distressed Caspar.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
Amie pried Caspar’s head up as she stood; her gaze cast down to hers.
“It could’ve been an accident.” Cas huffed, her breath trembling.
Amie looked down at her lap, took away the journal hanging in her loose grip and held her woman’s head to her stomach as harder cries crashed through her.
“I thought she sent me on that trip because she didn’t want me there to stop her…”
Amie sat on Caspar’s lap with one arm over her shoulders and laid her head against hers. Cas slouched into the cushions. All cried out. Exhausted yet strangely a thousand pounds lighter.
“So, what happens now? Do you call Des, have some record corrected?”
Caspar took a breath. “No. No point. Whether she did it on purpose or by accident, she still did it. A line on a piece of a paper in some file won’t make a difference out there.”
But in her heart, it made all the difference in the world. All this time, Cas thought her mother had taken her own life because of her. She had seen the pain the woman was in, even at her happiest, so she tried to appreciate her effort for those eighteen years and accept her decision when she’d finally had enough. But under the surface, it broke something in the young ladda – the chain which held her iron ball of guilt for just existing. There were no more ups with the downs, no more good days in between the bad where she could hardly be fazed by it. When that chain broke, that ball of guilt sank deep inside and rusted to the walls of her heart, making her hate every breath she took when she thought of her poor mother. Until now.
“How do you feel?”
“Frustrated,” Cas answered with a scoff and cynical grin, squeezing the bridge of her nose. “I told her all the time to be careful. That just because it doesn’t work instantly doesn’t mean it’s not working at all. But relief was hard to come by for her. The crafts and the painting didn’t always help and I couldn’t always be there to distract her from the things that overwhelmed her. Or sometimes…I was the thing that overwhelmed her. Our house physician gave her these pills for anxiety and insomnia. Four to six hours later, if she didn’t feel how she needed to feel, she’d just take more. I found her sick a few times. She didn’t like how it felt when all the pills would kick in at once, so she’d throw them up. Maybe…maybe she would’ve thrown them up again had she woken up in time. Or maybe she tried and that’s why she was on the floor when I found her. It never crossed my mind before…and I can still never be sure, but…” Cas picked up the journal. “But according to this, some part of her wanted a future. Not just for me, but for herself, too.”
“That’s the part that matters most, wouldn’t you say?”
Caspar nodded.
Chea Adami could’ve made a mistake. A stupid badly timed mistake. In a way, this was better. Believing she was at fault in a way that allowed Caspar to be openly frustrated with her for once. It felt better than believing that she had been irreversibly repulsive to her own mother and nothing she ever did would change that.
Amie squeezed her hand, tears rolling down her own cheeks as she quietly sniffled. The ladda looked to her and wiped the remainder of them off her chin.
“This has to go to be the strangest, most draining year of your life, huh?” Cas said. “I know it has been for me.”
Amie lifted her gaze to hers and gifted her a sweet smile.
“Definitely top three. But I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Same here.”
Their foreheads kissed and then their lips as Caspar and Amie leaned on one another. Moments later, Roadie jumped on their laps and added his slobber-coated kisses to their display of affection, eliciting groans of delighted disgust from the pair. One by one, the family of three got on their feet and carried on with their day, moving confidently hand in hand within their precious present into a hopeful future.
Author Note
Hi Sapphites! If you enjoyed even a fraction of this story, I am eternally grateful. I’m really interested in themes around stigma and the oftentimes vicious cycle of hurt people hurting people. I hope to tell more stories like this in the future. To learn more about the AU (alternate universe) in which this story and other wlw dramas like it are set to take place, click here. You can also join the mailing list Rea’s World for a FREE short story, notifications of new releases, and other reading goodies.
Until next time,
stay gay
~R.W.
