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SNOWFLAKES PELTEDTHE glass. The street lamps turned into a neon smear, as Jude Asher gave a lift to everyone — beginning with Sam, who'd dozed off in the backseat immediately, temple to temple with Emma.
⠀⠀⠀ Gazing out the sideview mirror, Darcy found herself in the same predicament she'd started her night with: chasing serenity. She was flowing in and out of sleep, but had somewhat remained conscious enough to recall the journey in snapshots: Jude waking Sam up as they slowed to a park at his home. Emma jolting awake at the loss of his proximity. And she certainly couldn't forget how she felt herself getting sent into orbit, rocketing toward Jude as he whispered lyrics that crooned from the radio.
⠀⠀⠀ His hair was tousled, clothes rumpled, and face covered in a night's worth of fatigue and...something else that prompted him to grin broadly at Darcy when they all emerged from his car. Emma had thanked him before swiftly enveloping him in her arms. His chin rested atop her head as they exchanged a few words — it seemed intimate, so much so that Darcy didn't bother with a farewell.
⠀⠀⠀ Instead she slotted the keys into the front door of childhood home and pushed it open. Half her consciousness was still in another dimension, while half of it blindly groped around in the dark, hand searching for the light switch.
⠀⠀⠀ She freezed when she saw a shadow of a woman sitting at the table.
⠀⠀⠀ It hadn't been that long since she'd smoked and it hadn't been that long since she'd been going over what was different about a dreamy reality, what set it apart from sobriety. Things that she wouldn't miss now, not if she were lucid. The opposite of a dream wasn't reality, it was whatever Darcy was forced to live that night back in the slums of Blackwood Boarding School.
⠀⠀⠀ Darcy turned on the light.
⠀⠀⠀ It was her mother. Her hand slowly tracing the rim of a half-filled wine glass, everything about her seeming undone. Darcy couldn't ever remember the last she saw her mother like this.
⠀⠀⠀ "I'd always wanted a son," her mother said, her voice a slow and sleepy drawl, "to carry on everything I knew. My culture, my heritage."
⠀⠀⠀ Her mother was drunk.
⠀⠀⠀ "Mum," Darcy said.
⠀⠀⠀ "Mummy," she said. "You used to call me that. Do you remember?"
⠀⠀⠀ Darcy only looked at her.
⠀⠀⠀ "No. Of course not. Why should you?" She let out a breath, and gulped down the rest of the wine. She set the glass down, eyes shut. "My god, sometimes I think you're not my child at all."
