Wildfire: A Novel (The Maple Hills Series)
Wildfire: A Novel: Chapter 6

Nothing on this earth inspires the same pure, unadulterated despair as having to spend any prolonged length of time with my parents in the same location.

It sounds dramatic, but honestly, Chuck and Sarah Roberts are the poster couple for “sometimes divorce is a blessing.” There’s just something about them being within six feet of each other that turns them both into monsters.

With that in mind, I should probably count myself lucky that Dad hasn’t showed up to the goodbye breakfast he promised he’d to be at before I head to Honey Acres sleepaway camp to work for the summer with Emilia.

The most annoying part isn’t being consistently let down by a man who is supposed to be one of the stable pillars in my life, it’s the effect his absent parent bullshit has on Mom, who, if anything, I could cope with being a little more absent.

“Why don’t you try him again?” She watches me over her orange juice with a sad pout. “Have you tried his assistant? Or Elsa? Your sister can always seem to reach him.”

“He’s not going to answer; it’s fine.” It is fine, because you can’t be disappointed by someone you have zero faith in. “Our plans clearly weren’t his important ones. What were you saying?”

Reaching for my glass, I gulp down my water and free my throat from the metaphorical brick lodged in it. The one that gets slightly bigger every single time I say the words “it’s” and “fine” in the same sentence.

“I was about to ask if you thought any more about moving home when you get back?” Give me strength. “Don’t look at me like that, Aurora. I literally made you.”

You’d think after twenty years I’d be used to the incessant probing and the not very discreet attempts to remind me that she’s the reason I exist and yet—here we are. “I, uh, Mom, you know we’ve signed the lease for next year already. Dad already paid the full year upfront . . .” What’s a polite way to say, “hell will freeze over before I voluntarily live with you again?” “You can’t expect me to commute from Malibu every day when I have a perfectly nice home right next to college . . . I’d spend half my day sitting in traffic.”

“There are children in other cultures who live with their parents forever,” she says in a hushed tone. “Your sister is in London. You take three days to return my calls. Don’t act like I’m the unreasonable one for wanting to see my daughters regularly. It’s not even far.”

God forbid Sarah Roberts ever be accused of being the unreasonable one.

“I think my parents’ worst nightmare would be me moving home,” Emilia interjects, forcing a chuckle to lighten the increasing tension.

Emilia Bennett is the perfect roommate, best friend and occasional human guilt shield. Two years studying public relations and six years playing emotional babysitter to my mom and her turbulent mood has turned her into my own personal crisis manager.

“I’m sure they would love it if you moved home, Emilia,” Mom sighs dramatically. “I’m sure their house feels huge and lonely without you.”

The only reason Mom’s house feels huge and lonely is because she sold my childhood home and used the divorce settlement to buy a huge “fuck you” house on the beach.

Her eyes land on me and it’s a look that I recognize: expectancy.

She expects me to want to be home as much as she wants me to be home and she can’t understand why I’d rather work all summer than spend it with her. It was never a problem when I was the one sent to camp, the problem started when she realized I was much happier there than with her.

We travelled around a lot when I was a kid, moving from country to country depending on where Fenrir, the Formula One team my dad owns, was racing that month. Following the team around the world was always Dad’s top priority, never stability for his daughters and wife.

Elsa and I have always joked that Fenrir is the only thing he’s ever helped create that he actually loves.

I love my sister, but even with the same complex web of mommy and daddy issues, our six-year age difference was too big to overcome as two kids looking for connection. I was acting out worse than ever and that’s why my parents started sending me to camp every year when I was seven.

It was everything I didn’t know I needed. I had routine, I was able to spend time with kids my age and I could begin to build the foundations of who I was without constantly being surrounded by adults and a moody older sister.

Honey Acres was the first place that ever felt like home. Even when my parents eventually split up and Mom moved us back to America full-time and enrolled me in school, I still insisted on going to Honey Acres every summer. I loved how happy the staff were to see me every year and it’s my first real memory of feeling wanted.

I want those feelings back, which I’m hoping to do by rebuilding the foundations I’ve broken. I love college and the experiences I’ve had in the past two years, but I feel lost. I make choices I don’t understand in the moments where my feelings get too big and, because there’s nobody there to tell me to stop, the little voice in my head tells me “fuck it.” I’m becoming someone I don’t recognize and I need a factory reset. I want to feel at home again. I want to feel at peace.

Emilia’s foot making contact with my shin drags me from my train of thought and, even after I apparently zoned out, Mom still has that look on her face.

If I wish hard enough, do you think I can summon my dad for a distraction?

Unsurprisingly my father doesn’t materialize, but thankfully the server arrives with our breakfast and interrupts the growing tension slowly building beneath the surface of Mom’s sadness. It feels like a cruel twist of fate to have one parent who doesn’t give one shit and one parent who cares far too much.

I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t like this, which means I can’t decide if this is who she is as a person, or if this is the ramifications of her spending her life feeling like she has to love me twice as much.

I say love and not parent because she’s never parented me. For every inch my dad has pushed me away and favored his job, she’s tried to pull me closer twice as much. For every time he’s let me down, she’s made allowances because it’s easier to blame him for my behavior than it is to risk driving me away. She’s never cared about anything I’ve done unless it directly affected her.

When I was younger, I always strived to be the best, to know the most, like somehow the validation of being the perfect daughter would give me the type of attention from my parents I craved so desperately, but it never came.

So I stopped striving for the best. I achieved validation and attention through other means and became my own person, but somewhere along the way I’ve found myself in this limbo of happily doing whatever I want because people don’t care and then being hurt that I can do whatever I want because people don’t care.

I worked my ass off to get into Maple Hills because I wanted to prove to my teachers I was more than the girl who cut class and didn’t pay attention. Instead of my achievement, all Mom saw was my impending departure. When I got my acceptance letter she acted like I was going to war, not a college in our state, and she didn’t talk to me for three days. It didn’t matter that I’d stayed close by, unlike my sister who moved to our dad’s place in London when she graduated high school.

The balance between being the perfect daughter and my own person is like walking a tightrope.

Except there’s a hurricane.

And the rope is on fire.

I’ve fallen down more times than I can count and I’m really fucking exhausted.

“You can visit us at camp if you want to, Mom.” I push a strawberry around my plate, waiting for her response because with a mother like mine, whose self-worth is so heavily intertwined with the title of mother that it becomes exhausting, every word is a chess move. “Visiting day is in July. I can text you the date.”

“You clearly don’t want to me to visit, Aurora.”

I’ve never been very good at chess. “Mom—”

“Ms. Roberts, did I tell you about the camera Poppy bought me to take pictures at camp?” Emilia interrupts, reaching for her purse. “As you know, I didn’t get to go to sleepaway camp when I was younger and I was so happy when Aurora finally gave in to me begging her to be a camp counselor with me. She says you picked the best camp so I’m really excited.”

I begged Emilia to be a counselor with me, not the other way around, but my mom doesn’t need to know that. She’ll be too distracted by the praise.

Like mother like daughter.

“Aurora has always had the best. Not that you’ve ever appreciated it, have you, darling? You’d have been happy rolling around a pig farm when you were younger. You just wanted to play somewhere there weren’t any tires.”

Emilia grabs the camera from her purse and hands it over. Mom’s face lights up as she clicks through the pictures, murmuring about what a beautiful couple Poppy and Emilia are and how blue really is Emilia’s color.

“And where were you when the girls were hiking?”

I was sitting on a basketball player’s face. “Studying.”

“You were studying? After your finals?”

“Yeah.” Shit. “I was studying ropes and stuff for camp.” I was tied to a bed. “Plus they’re a couple, Mom. They don’t want me third-wheeling on their date.”

“That’s true. Will you not miss her, Emilia? Ten weeks is such a long time.” She’s talking to Emilia, but I can feel her eyes on me, waiting for me to react to her subtle dig. “Trust me, it feels like forever.”

“I’ll miss Poppy, but it’s fine, we’ll both be super busy. She’s in Europe with her mom until school restarts.”

Emilia knows what she accidentally did before I even have time to flinch. Her big brown eyes meet mine and she gives me a look that says, “I’ll fire myself, don’t worry.”

Crisis manager, my ass.

Mom’s lips pull into a tight line as she focuses on neatly folding the napkin from her lap and placing it on the table. “Poppy must really love her mother to want to spend the whole summer with her, isn’t that nice. Excuse me, girls, I’m going to use the restroom.”

It’s amazing how one woman can suck all the oxygen from the room with one sentence.

“Ow,” Emilia cries, placing her hand on her forehead over the spot I flicked as soon as the door to the restroom closed behind Mom. “I deserved that. It just came out!”

“You could have said anything.”

“I’m sorry! God, I wish your dad was here. He’s better at being in the firing line than me. Maybe I need to change major, I’m terrible at this.”

“You really are.”

“I wonder if Elsa’s friends were ever put through the Emotion Olympics with your mother,” she muses, mopping up the last of her syrup with a piece of French toast.

“Like Elsa would ever agree to breakfast. Or have real friends.”

“That’s true. When do you think we can politely say peace and leave?”

I can’t help but snort. “She might keep us here until we miss our flight.”

“Are you good? She’s been even more intense than normal this morning.”

“She’s just spiraling because Dad’s girlfriend and Elsa are competing to see who can spend the most time in the tabloids and I’m leaving. It’s fine.”

“Your dad’s girlfriend the florist?”

“No, he broke up with her, remember? I’m talking about Norah. The ex-weather woman. Or was she a Real Housewife of somewhere?” I shake my head as I mentally try to recap my father’s long dating history. “I can’t remember. Anyway, whatever she did she loves a photo op.”

I hear Mom’s heels hitting the tiles, which gives me enough time to force a smile back onto my face. Her hand gently brushes over my hair as she passes and she twirls the end around her fingers. She says it looks like hers when she was twenty and how happy she is that I’m all her. Same light, blonde hair and green eyes, same freckles that appear after too long in the sun, same everything. Unlike my sister, who is a carbon copy of my dad, with me there’s not a Chuck Roberts gene in sight.

Taking a seat across from me again, she sighs. “I’m going to miss you girls. Should I get the check? I’m sure you want to get to the airport with plenty of time.”

“That’d be good. Thanks, Mom.”

It’s funny how the moment Mom acts reasonable I start to feel bad about leaving when she so clearly would love me to stay. There is nobody on this planet who can get under my skin like my mother, which only fuels my complaining about her, and yet the moment she shows a shred of humanity I crumble. The guilt begins to creep into my system like venom burning its way through my blood, but the universe delivers me the antidote in the form of my cellphone buzzing in my pocket, quickly reminding me why I so desperately need to get away from this place and everyone in it.

MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT

Got delayed helping Isobel move out of her dorm so won’t make it to breakfast.

Safe travels.

I discreetly tilt my phone screen toward Emilia while Mom hands her credit card to the server, thankfully keeping her distracted. I don’t need to be looking at my best friend to know she’s rolling her eyes hard. It’s not a surprise to me after I saw him moving Isobel out of her dorm on Norah’s story last night. It’s nice Norah’s daughter gets the caring dad treatment; perhaps one day Isobel can let me know what it’s like.

The easiest thing for me to do is convince myself it’s just who he is as a person. That it isn’t anything to do with me. The disinterest, the broken promises, the cold and aloof parenting method is because he wasn’t ever cut out to be a great dad and that’s not my fault. But then I see him with someone else’s kid and I’m back to thinking maybe it is me.

I’d be upset if it wasn’t so fucking predictable.

I’m tired more than anything. Tired of feeling like I don’t fit in my own family. Tired of questioning my every choice. Tired of wanting to do better but feeling like I can’t manage it.

Emilia keeps Mom chatting the whole drive back to the house, which gives me the opportunity to stew in my anger and feelings that are most definitely not disappointment, rejection and hurt. I’d have to care to feel rejected and I don’t care anymore.

It’s clear the universe has no intention of giving me a fucking break as we idle in traffic in front of an ice rink. Russ has been on my mind since I woke up this morning, which is not a problem I’m used to having after a one-night stand. He wasn’t what I’m used to, in a good way, and I can’t get him out of my head. I’m trying to not feel bad that things ended without so much as a goodbye, but it’s hard to forget about him when his fingerprints are still decorating my hips from where he held me.

Pulling into the driveway beside my car, the impending goodbye hangs awkwardly in the air as we all climb out. The guilt floods me again, because for all of Mom’s faults, she’d never bail on me for someone else’s kid.

She’d never not call. I’ve never had to beg, cry or fight for her to love me.

The hug I pull her into catches her off guard at first, but she wraps her arms around me tightly and nuzzles into my hair, whispering so only I can hear. “Don’t forget to call.”

“I won’t.”

Emilia waits until Mom is a dot in the car mirror before daring to speak. “You good?”

“I’m fine. I just need plane snacks and to manifest a double Fenrir DNF today.”