Ultraviolet ✔️

21.2

Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

My house hasn't changed since my childhood. The shutters on the windows are still the same color, a chipping grey from all the years of rain. Our hideous green curtains are hanging in the living room and they still don't match the rest of the house. My mom has already hung her Christmas lights up, complete with an inflatable angel for the front yard. Her garden is well-manicured and our welcome mat continues to feature Beware of Dog even though we haven't had a dog in fifteen years.

It's my house. It's the same house that I left behind down to the rocking chair sitting on the porch. Some things truly never change.

"Anything I should know?" Joel asks, only half-joking.

"She might actually smack me across the face for not calling her enough," I warn him. "Other than that, probably not. My mother holds grudges, but she'll definitely pretend she has no issues with me until you're out of earshot."

"Got it." He nods. "Anything else?"

"Tread lightly? She can be... interesting sometimes."

He chuckles. "You actually seem unnerved by the prospect of visiting your mother."

"We can't all have a Mallory. She's definitely not as warm and fuzzy," I reply before getting out of the car.

The rain has stopped, so I have one less thing to concern myself with as I ring the doorbell.

"Violet Marie Carrigan!" my mother exclaims as she yanks the door open. "You better have a good reason for why you haven't responded to any of my calls in the past few days. I heard that my daughter's apartment caught fire and couldn't even get ahold of her. Oh, Violet, I was so worried. I ought to yank your hair out of your head and beat you!"

Her blue eyes, almost the same color as mine, fall on Joel, and she closes her mouth into a thin smile.

"And who is this?" she prompts, her tone shifting entirely.

"Joel Reed." He reaches around me to shake her hand, his other resting on the small of my back. "And she didn't get a chance to call because we've been very busy the past few days and her phone was lost in the fire."

"It's true," I say. "I'm sorry, Mom, I really should've called."

"By the grace of the Lord you're okay," she replies, her palm closed around her rosary. "Jesus's twelfth commandment is to always call your mother."

"Aren't there only—" Joel begins, but I elbow him in the ribs and silence him immediately.

"Well, I won't leave you to freeze on the porch," she says. "Come in, both of you. And young man, my name is Roselyn, but you are free to call me Rose."

As she strides ahead of us, I whisper to Joel, "She makes her own additions to the Bible, by the way. I've learned to just go with it."

"Got it."

The house is only a one-story with a couple of rooms, nothing too extravagant. The entire hallway leading up to the living room is full of pictures of me as a little kid, staring up at the camera with a toothless smile. It's a little weird having Joel look at younger pictures of me, considering all of it came long before him.

"You were adorable," he whispers, gesturing to a few of my middle school pictures where I was still rocking the pigtails and forcing myself to look happy.

By the time we reach high school, which is every picture sitting on the bookshelf in the living room, anyone can see that I had given up my efforts in looking falsely chipper for the camera. In most of the pictures, I posed awkwardly the way the photographers always wanted, but I wasn't really smiling. Especially because sometimes, the camera person would reach out and brush my hair out of my face. The contact triggered a vision. The vision meant I would have to ignore the fact I felt like I was suffocating until whatever horrible image had passed from my mind.