Loose Ends

Chapter 19: Mothers Day

Amy woke up bright and early at 8:30, even though she had purposefully not set her alarm so she could sleep in, simply because her stomach had decided to make its presence known. Putting on her robe and house slippers, Amy made her way to the kitchen where she found her mother and Robbie eating their breakfasts. Kissing her little brother on the head to say good morning, Amy turned to greet her mother.

"Morning, mom."

"Morning, Amy. You're awfully cherry this morning," she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Just got a good night's sleep," Amy shrugged before making herself a bowl of cereal.

"So what are your plans for today?" her mother asked. Bringing her cereal to the kitchen table to join her Amy replied, "Well, I was wondering if the two of us could hang out and talk actually." Anne looked surprised but nodded. She hadn't just hung out and talked with Amy in quite some time.

"I'll talk to your father and then we can go out."

"Talk to me about what?" George asked, coming into the kitchen just then and looking between Anne and Amy. Anne turned to him to reply.

"Amy wants to spend some quality mother-daughter time with me today so you'll need to watch Robbie." George looked at Amy questioningly, silently asking her if she was gonna have a talk with her mother like she'd had with him. Amy understood his silent question and nodded. Anne hadn't seen the look pass between them, having turned back towards the table to finish her breakfast, but saw Amy nod and wondered why she had.

"No problem, Anne. You girls have fun." He knew there were probably going to be a lot of tears today and he and Anne would need to have a serious heart-to-heart afterwards, but luckily he'd been doing a lot of thinking about what Amy had told him for the last two days and he believed he'd be ready when Anne was ready to talk to him.

"So where do you wanna go today?" Anne asked Amy. Swallowing her spoonful of cereal Amy looked at her mother and said, "Could we go up to Palm Springs?"

"Sure! I'm sure Mimsy would love to see us!" Visiting Mimsy wasn't the reason Amy wanted to go there but she had to admit visiting her grandmother for a little while would be nice so she just nodded. Amy finished her cereal and dashed upstairs to get dressed. She made sure to take her phone with her, but she decided to keep it off for now. She would check to see if Ricky called with any emergency about John later in the day. Anne and Amy were out the door and on the road by 9:15. There was very little traffic out that morning so Anne quickly reached the freeway heading towards Palm Springs.

"So, what did you wanna talk about?" Anne asked conversationally, hoping to find out what her daughter had been up to the past couple of days. She'd noticed that Amy hadn't been calling or texting her friends lately and always seemed to be lost in thought or shut away in her room, and the emptiness of Amy's room hadn't escaped her notice either. Amy had been looking out the window but turned towards her mother at the question.

"We should wait until we get to Palm Springs to really start talking, mom. What I will tell you is that I need you to help me better understand how our family got so screwed up." Anne found herself both surprised and worried at her daughter's response but nodded her head to let her know she would wait until they'd arrived at their destination. The rest of the drive passed quickly as they talked in more detail about Amy's time in New York and discussed how quickly the boys were growing. The two hour drive was over before they knew it and they were pulling into Mimsy's care facility. As Anne predicted, Mimsy was happy to have some visitors and greeted them with a smile.

"Hello dears," she said as Anne and Amy both hugged her.

"How are you doing today, Mimsy?" Amy asked her.