A blond head was walking into the hallway, talking to two hospital staff behind her. Another nurse was behind them, looking aggrieved, and from down the hallway, hospital security was heading our way.

Then that blond ball of fury looked my way, and I swear I could see steam rising from Chrissy Hayes’s head.

“There you are!”

My mother had arrived.

FORTY-FIVE

Chrissy Hayes hadn’t arrived. It was Christina Kathryn Hayes, and she wasn’t messing around.

I was lectured on the way out of the hospital. I was lectured in the car ride back to the estate. I was lectured as she followed me into Kash’s villa, only pausing once to comment on how breathtaking the home was. She avoided looking at the mausoleum, even sniffing and wrinkling her nose, but she hadn’t paused in her lectures.

Not one word. Not a beat. She never missed one.

She kept on even after Kash returned from talking to Peter.

He sat on the couch. Chrissy didn’t stop.

I was an imbecile.

I wasn’t thinking.

I was being ruled by childhood hopes and dreams.

I was being selfish.

I hadn’t been thinking. That was a favorite of hers. I heard it sixteen times. Yes, I started counting.

How could I have done this to her?

Hadn’t I known better?

She birthed me. She hadn’t needed to do that. She could’ve kept me in her stomach for all of eternity. I ought to be grateful I was pushed out of her vagina. What a wonderful vag she had. I had ruined it, for a couple years. It was never the same.

What would my grandpa and grandma think? Had I thought about the other family? My cousins were missing me. (I was pretty sure they had no idea I’d been gone.) Apparently, Cousin June got married and everyone wondered where I was. She was humiliated. (She didn’t know that I knew Cousin June went to Guatemala on a mission trip.) I had missed the county fair. I never missed the county fair. (I missed it all the time.) I had missed bingo at the VFW. I wasn’t around to be the caller for the nursing home bingo tournament. (All not true. I never went to them in the first place. Elderly playing bingo were scary. Mistakes were for the weak.)

There were bake sales.

There were football games. (Football hadn’t started.)

There were basketball tournaments.

Softball. Baseball. Every single sport imaginable that I had never participated in, watched, or followed. I missed them all this past summer.

A pinball something. She didn’t know what it was, but I missed it.

The words should’ve been hurtful, but I knew she didn’t mean them. She was hurt and she’d been scared and she was rambling until she could deal enough to really talk to me. Everything else: air. Just air.

Kash listened to it for a while, waiting for a break so he could introduce himself. There was none. After an hour, I signaled that he could go to bed. His relief almost had me going with him, because I wasn’t relieved. I was envious. If I’d gone with him, Chrissy would have just brushed her teeth, still talking, changed into her pajamas, still yelling from the bathroom, and then crawled into bed with us.

She would have. That was no exaggeration.

Kash came back out from the bedroom in pajama pants and a white shirt. He bent down, kissed me lightly, the mint smell from his toothpaste lingering, and murmured, “You going to be okay?”

“Save me now.”

He chuckled, though we both knew I wasn’t joking. Running a hand down my hair, he asked, “Want me to stay?”

I did, but I knew he had things to do in the morning, and since Chrissy was still talking, I knew she wasn’t going to end until she passed out. That could be four … tomorrow afternoon.

I shook my head, my shoulders slumping. “Nah. I’ll probably pass out while she’s talking. It’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

He was wonderful. I held his hand and nodded again. “I am.”

Another kiss, another hand smoothing down my hair, before he headed up the stairs to my room. We had been using my room all this time because he had crawled into mine. I hadn’t gone to bed in his. Now I was thinking that was foolish.

“Kash.”

He paused on the landing above us.

“Let’s sleep in your room.” I motioned to my mom. “She can have mine.”

“You sure?” He tilted his head to the side.

“Yeah.” His bed was bigger. He was closer to the door, in case something happened. I was sure. And I wanted to curl up and snuggle in with sheets that held him, just him. His smell. His feel. His everything. My room wasn’t my room anymore.

He came back down, mouthing “Come to bed when you can” as he passed by.

As soon as his door shut, Chrissy stopped talking.

My head whipped to hers. “You’re done?”

Her eyes were on the room Kash had just disappeared into. She watched it for a second, then a new look found me. A determined look. A look that told me she wouldn’t be pacified, and I had better come clean about everything or I’d be grounded until I was sixty.