The Awakening Aidan - By Abby Niles Page 0,56
happy mom who had turned into a woman who got on all fours and scrubbed the kitchen floor with a toothbrush. “My mother cleans…compulsively.”
Rafael nodded, a sad smile tilting his lips. “Before Willa died, I’d never run a day in my life.”
“You’re a shifter, of course you’ve run.”
“I meant on a treadmill in human form. Honestly, I’d always considered it a form of torture. Afterward, I couldn’t stop. I run twenty-five miles every day. Being a shifter, I can do that in about two hours.”
“But why?”
“We’ve lost our mates. We need something to focus on.”
She pointed at him. “You just made my point.”
He closed his hand around her finger and lowered it. “I’m not finished. Yes, the bond changes us. I may run now, but I also cook, spend time with my family, read, and get to stay in a tropical paradise just soaking up the sun. I smile. I laugh. And I do still love. It will never be the love I have for my Willa, she is part of my soul. But when I look at my grandchildren, my children, I still feel that squeeze in my heart. I’m not the living dead. I’m very much alive, and I’m sure your mother is the same. She’s found her thing. She cleans when she misses your father, but in twenty years, I know it’s not the only thing she’s done.”
“It feels like it. It scares me how focused, frantic even, she is during those times.”
“Look past that, Miss Jaylin. See everything else she does. Actually see your mother as she is, not what you’re focusing on.”
Could she? It was hard to even come up with something about her mother that didn’t revolve around frantic cleaning. “She plays canasta with her two sisters every Friday night.” Jaylin frowned. “They are also Wydowed. They use one another for companionship, which isn’t very healthy in my opinion.”
“Again you’re looking for things to prove your point of view. Things that might not be there. Does your mother have a good time?”
“I guess so. They do go through three bottles of wine on Friday nights. I see it as them drinking their sorrows away together. Though, now that I mention it, I did drop in to check on them one night.” Despite herself, she smiled. “All three of them were plastered, rolling on the floor laughing on a Twister mat. My mom had just taken both of her sisters to the ground by trying to get her left foot on a green circle.”
Her mom had been so full of life that night. Jaylin had been thrilled and stayed, wanting to spend time with this lively woman. When Jaylin woke the next morning, she found her mom obsessively polishing the already immaculate silverware, and the fun they’d shared the night before had been erased. How many other times had her mother smiled and laughed over the years that had been wiped clean from Jaylin’s memory all because of the compulsive cleaning?
She was beginning to think a lot.
“Now love, Miss Jaylin. Tell me how does your mother love?”
“She loves me. I know that.”
“But you feel she can’t grow an attachment to something else because of losing your father. Who has she come to love in the years since he passed?”
“Easy. Those three cats she got a few years ago. The first one showed up on her doorstep and she took it in; within the next three months she’d acquired two more. She’s become the crazy cat lady. She sings to them, and actually uses baby talk when she speaks to them.”
“But does she loves them?”
“They’re animals. It’s not the same as human companionship.”
“But if you believe what you really believe, she wouldn’t be capable of loving anything. She’d be dead inside. Seems to me your mom still has an abundance of love to give. And what of hope, Miss Jaylin? Looking forward to the future? What does your mother dream of?”
Jaylin’s throat constricted and she forced herself to swallow. “Grandchildren,” she whispered. “She wants grandchildren. She volunteers at the elementary school, saying if I wasn’t going to give her grandkids then she’d go get her some.”
The smiles her mom would give as she retold some of the antics of the young children. The wistfulness in her eyes. Jaylin gasped, tears blurring her vision as she cupped her hands over her mouth. “My mom is alive. W-why couldn’t I see it? Why did I only see the bad?”
Rafael squeezed her knee. “You’re not the first, and you