Mother F*cker in Law

2. emeralds

The silent car ride preceded a silent entry into the airport, which also preceded a silent forty-five minutes of waiting for their plane to board.

They sat in the chairs around the gate, Val grazing through some interior design magazines while Keith scrolled through his social media next to her. Melanie sat across from Val and took a couple of selfies, much to the dismay of the older woman, Diana, who sat right next to her.

Diana mostly observed the airport around them or stared out the large glass front where she could see various airplanes being directed to the take-off strip that would lead them to flight. She had always enjoyed airports and airplanes. Something about the way you could step on a plane in one country and step off it in another always gave her the one feeling she'd spent her entire life trying to replicate—freedom.

As there was no action going on outside at the moment, Diana sighed, shifted in her seat, and listened to the annoying sound of Melanie's phone camera going off every ten seconds. She had silently observed the girl's pattern—take twenty pictures, take the time to filter through them all and delete almost every one besides the one that showed off her cleavage the most, then proceed to take twenty more pictures in the exact same poses, only to repeat the process until she somehow grew tired of looking at herself. That seemed implausible to the aggravated Diana.

She then reluctantly shifted her sunglass-hidden eyes to her son in front of her. She felt a pang of something every time she looked at him, and that didn't refer to only the two hours she had been in his presence. It referred to all 21 years, every tense visit and forced time spent together which was not very much. She had always felt that pang in her chest whenever she looked at Keith, and she couldn't ever quite figure out what it was.

Perhaps that was why she felt like she was always on the run, always being chased down by a dark and looming feeling behind her. There was always a shadow cast over all the moments when she should have been happy—when she was successful, rich, had multiple friends, and was liked and known by every fashion company in New York. But she couldn't quite reach happiness due to the anchoring feeling in her chest. Everywhere she went, she felt like she carried tons of baggage with her.

Shivering in disgust, Diana sighed and combed her fingers through her copper hair, listening to the murmurs and noises of the busy JFK airport. One particular sound, the turning of a flimsy page, caught her attention and attracted her eyes up to her son's girlfriend.

She was fortunate that she was wearing sunglasses that obscured her gaze, but she felt like the girl was too invested in whatever she was looking at to have even noticed, anyway. Straining her eyes, she recognized the magazine as an interior design one. Her eyes flickered back up to the girl's face which seemed to lean closer and closer into the magazine with feverish intrigue.

Her springy black hair danced across the surface of her shoulders every time she moved. The natural light from the window behind the girl cast across the side of her face, illuminating her tan skin speckled with freckles. Her dark brown eyes scanned up and down the page almost analytically, as if she was measuring something out in her head. She looked concentrated and focused, like she was in her own little world and incapable of being pulled out.

But she was pulled out when Keith slipped his phone into his pocket disinterestedly and leaned closer to the girl, wrapping his arms around her shoulder in a rather abrupt way. Diana watched in piqued curiosity when Val seemed to jump under his touch, her entire demeanor tensing in a way that went unseen to Keith.

He leaned into her, whispering something in her ear and looking at her with a dark, expectant look. She kept her eyes on the magazine and gave an obviously forced smile in an effort to wave off whatever his intentions were. Diana was shocked when Keith smiled in satisfaction, completely oblivious that the smile she had given him was not genuine.