I wanted Daisy to come back downstairs after taking care of Fruitful, so of course she didn’t. Instead, Mum came down alone. I heard her shut the bedroom door behind her, and then her tread on the stairs.
She didn’t look fussed, but then, I hadn’t expected it. Instead, she asked, “Cup of tea, darling?” As if I brought refugees home with me every day. Weirdly married refugees.
I said, “You could be tired yourself. Long day, eh.”
She flapped a hand at me and filled the jug. “Nah. I’ve been working long days for more years than those girls have. Or than you have, for that matter.” Which was true. My mum had raised me by being a cleaner for a Wanaka luxury-holiday-home firm, and working harder than any other cleaner. Now, she organized a whole team of cleaners, and she still got stuck in herself with the hoover and toilet brush when they were shorthanded. Some of my earliest memories were of trailing around after her with a lambswool duster, when she hadn’t been able to afford childcare. Unlike Daisy’s brother, I’d learned early how to clean a house, and what’s more, I’d learned to do it to my mum’s standard.
If you wouldn’t have wanted your shed full of tracked-in mud and your tools encrusted with dirt and tossed anywhere, why would you want your kitchen that way? No difference.
Mum handed me the mug of tea and said, “Let’s sit on the couch for a bit. There’ll be a good one tonight, clouds over the mountains and all.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant. I knew. The sunset and the dawn—they were my mother’s favorite nature programs. The world’s best entertainment, she’d say, free for the viewing.
People thought I’d built this house for myself. In reality, I’d probably built it for my mum. She wouldn’t take one from me, or take an easier job, either, but she’d live in this one and tell herself she was caring for it while I was gone, which was close enough. I’d picked a parcel where she could see the mountains and the sky, and I’d built as much glass into it as the framing would bear. No matter where I’d been in the world, I’d known she’d be here watching the dawns, watching the sunsets.
Comfortable and secure. That was how I’d felt at home as a kid, and it was the least I could do for the person who’d helped me feel that way.
She wouldn’t take the master bedroom, though, which meant I had a silly bath. Oh, well.
Beyond us, the light slowly mellowed over the hills and the mountains. The rich blue of the sky morphed into a shade so deep, it was nearly purple, and the rocky peaks began to glow with reflected pink. The colors strengthened, the pink deepened to rose, and my mother sighed.
Alpenglühen, it was called. Alpenglow. I said, “Your favorite thing. Other than the Southern Lights, maybe.”
“No, darling,” she said. “Not my favorite thing. That would be you.”
I put my arm around her and gave her a squeeze, and asked, after a minute, “Were you sorry, when you were younger, about how your life had turned out, the way Daisy is?”
She didn’t say, “Never,” the way you might expect. The way somebody else’s mum would’ve done. Instead, she said, “At times. Hard days. Hard months, when I had to decide which bill to pay, or when I’d wonder where my youth had disappeared to. I’d have a sulk for a while, a bout of poor-me, then get laughed out of it, I guess. Daisy, though—she didn’t want to be married, and I’m thinking she had a hard time after she left, too. Worked too hard. Worried too much. Me—I had your nan and grandad, the aunties and uncles, and my sisters, too, when I got to see them. Had them on the phone, anyway, didn’t I, to have that laugh with, and I had our survivors’ benefit. I loved your dad, too, as much as I knew what that meant. That made a difference.”
“My dad was older,” I said. “I didn’t think of that when I said it.”
She smiled. “Twenty-four and seventeen isn’t so bad, at least it didn’t seem like it to me. Just thought he was exciting, didn’t I. Big and strong, and I liked that. Young girls, eh, but he was more than exciting. He had