“I can’t believe next year you won’t be here for Easter,” mom says, tears leaking out of her eyes and streaming down her flushed cheeks.
It takes every ounce of bravery in me not to break down and cry with her. Yes, Easter with Ben will be just as great but… this is my family. These are the people that raised me. They are my parents and brothers. I can’t imagine not spending holidays with them; I can’t even imagine not seeing them or hearing their voices every day.
The closer summer gets the closer I am to leaving them for good; anxiety levels on both sides are rising. Victor is stressed out because of obvious reasons, but my parents have to deal with the fact that their only daughter is not only graduating in June, but moving across an ocean to a different continent and country. Mom is the worst so far, but I have a feeling dad is going to break pretty soon, considering he’s the one that talks to Victor about that subject a lot.
But here I sit now, in the passenger’s seat of my mom’s minivan. She’s crying; I’m sitting here trying not to.
“Mom, it’s okay I’ll… I’ll video chat and text you every day… I’m sure Victor wouldn’t mind you guys coming over for certain holidays—I’d pay for the flight,” I offer, wanting to try anything to calm her down.
I’ve been doing so good lately. I can’t cry now.
“It’s not that,” she sniffles, “It’s the whole point of having you here; at home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and…”
“You know better than anyone else… this isn’t my home,” I state, my voice catching at the end. I swallow down the lump in my throat. I must be strong; stronger than mom—like always.
“I know, I know,” she sputters, “B-but I’ll just… miss you.”
I bite my bottom lip hard against the burning of tears behind my eyes. I glance over beside us at Gabe and Marc in the parked beside us. “I’ll miss you too… all of you… you know that,” I manage to say without letting my voice crack. “Come on, a little Easter food shopping will do us both some good.”
It takes a few minutes, but eventually she works up the will to get out of the car. Her eyes are still bleary and a bit red; kind of like mine when I wake up first thing in the morning. She still clutches the used tissue in her hand as we walk through the front doors of the huge Big Y.
I can’t believe we drove all this way just because this place has better meat than our local supermarket in town. I swear I thought she was pulling an April Fool’s joke on me when she told me where we were going… just because of a few pieces of meat. She would do something like that to me.
“I’ll grab a carriage, honey. Why don’t you go get the baked goods on the list?” She sniffs, wiping her runny nose. The crying must have agitated her head cold.
I nod and set off with the list in the general direction of the ‘bakery’ sign. No one says a word as I pick out the right pies, pastries and cupcakes. I suppose everyone is too busy debating which ham to buy to bother noticing me.
This is awesome.
And then Gabe and Marc have to ruin my nice serenity.
“Ham pie?” Marc asks from behind me. “Really?”
I give him a roll of my eyes, picking up a box of Vladesvyan pastries and a pound cake on the way back to mom. When I drop them in the carriage I hear Gabe ask, “May I ask why we’re shopping for Easter a whole week before hand?”
Mom almost laughs, I swear. “Because it takes a week to prepare everything—and the same amount of time to thaw the ham,” she explains.
“You’ll have to excuse Gabe,” Marc chuckles, “He’s never had more than a microwave dinner in the Intelligence Agency break room for Easter.”
YOU ARE READING
Suddenly Princess
Teen FictionAnnaMaria Romanoff grows up with an adoptive family, thinking that her biological parents were working class citizens of the country of Chirnova, who died tragically in a car crash when she was just a year old. It's her senior year in high school no...
