"No matter your problems, face them with a bright smile and a bucket of chocolate ice-cream," nana once wisely told me. At the time, I was barely twelve and thought that I could summon a unicorn if I just believed in myself.
A decade later, despi...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Maeva's point of view.
"Mom?" I ask as I step into the Williams' house. As I hear faint chatter in the living room, I hide behind the wide-leafed ficus I've salvaged from a fungus a couple of years ago.
"You had no right to talk to my daughter like that," mom threatens, and I assume that her hands are firmly gripping on her hips.
"I'm sorry, Dalida. I was just trying to protect my son," replies Isabelle, voice ever so low and tone apologetic.
"Talk to her like that one more time, and I'll show you how a mother protects her kids!"
"Alright, but we're still on for Sunday, right?" asks Isabelle like a kid promised cotton candy.
From the squeak that emerges from a deep corner within Isabelle's soul, I get that my mother has agreed to resume the Sunday gossip brunch after a monthlong hiatus. It's about time our duo reconciled if you ask me. Even I forgave Isabelle. Temporarily, that is.
Just then, Isabelle leaves, and so I step into the room my mother sits in, contemplating the painting she'd offered Julia for her engagement.
"You've done a pretty good job. The colors are just exquisite." I say, and she smiles, the kind of smile one would flash before bursting into tears.
"Maeva," she says, squeezing my hands in between her frail fingers, "Why did you not tell me you didn't like your job?"
My job? I don't like the career I got into. It's all in the past though. Time has taught me to live with it. I'm working and baring the ups and downs just to pay for my loans.
"It's not that I don't like it..."
Shooting a -don't you dare lie- look at me, she pushes a lock of hair behind my ear and explains, "Whenever you come back home from that laboratory, the spark in your eyes is nowhere to be seen. It kills me to see my daughter unhappy like that."
"Mom, it's okay," I assure her, but she shushes me as she takes a piece of paper out of her silk pants' pocket. As I read the french script, tears fall down my cheeks, and I cannot contain the repetitive gasps emerging from within me.
"Nana wanted us to have her Toulouse shop after she left. Since we live here now, I sold it not long ago."
"Mom, you grew up in that shop. Why would you do something like that?"
"Those memories will not make me happy, but seeing you content will." Not understanding what she's making allusion to, I raise my eyebrows and she proceeds, "The money is yours. You can go back to college, do something you like."
