Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Whoever waited on the other side of the glass must have said something reassuring, as the young mother smiled and nodded, saying only, “Sure—the waiting room is just around the corner there?”
Delaney, not trying to be nosy or unintentionally invade someone’s privacy, averted her gaze to the posters on the entrance wall. Everything from the birth cycle of a pregnancy to warnings about the common flu and available seasonal shots. Before long, the mother rocking the toddler in the lone hallway chair stood up with her medicare card in hand.
“Thank you,” she told the person behind the glass.
Once the woman had exited the hallway to the waiting room further down, Delaney stepped forward to take the open chair. She found the small cubicle behind the glass, partially blocked by a large computer monitor facing her direction, to be empty when she first sat down. Leaning forward, she pumped a pile of sanitizer into her hand to rub into her palms before she produced the provincial medicare card with her name on it to register once the receptionist returned.
Still reading the expiration date on the card for the following year, Delaney didn’t realize the chair in the cubicle had been filled until she lifted her head.
And stared directly into the face of her mother.
Well, partially.
Amanda Reed’s gaze stayed locked slightly lower than Delaney’s face, instead pinning to the screen in front of her as she asked simply, “Medicare card, please?”
Years of not seeing her mother face to face came to a head in that moment, and Delaney did her best to roll with the emotional punch that came along with it. Of course, she would have no idea that her mother switched jobs from her old secretarial duties for a general practitioner in town to the Valleyview Hospital. They didn’t talk—how could she know?
Not much about her mother had changed.
A bit grayer, maybe, in her swept back black hair tied neatly into a bun at the nape of her neck to deal with the unmanageable length. Delaney could remember begging her mother as a preteen to be allowed to cut her feet upon feet of hair and being refused every time because the hair was a woman’s crown.
Delaney’s hesitance to provide the medicare card in question finally coaxed the other woman’s gaze upward to find the problem. It took Amanda two blinks to recognize the person sitting on the other side of the glass.
Her only daughter.
“Delaney,” Amanda said.
Once, as she left the courtroom after testifying against her brother and cousin for their part in the arson, she had caught sight of her mother sitting in the back of a black Buick. Amanda never attended court even though her husband hadn’t missed a single day.
Delaney hated that she didn’t know what to say. That her mind wouldn’t form words. How she couldn’t decide whether to address her mother by Mom or Amanda.
Life brought her to this moment.
And for what?
“Hi,” Delaney eventually choked out.
Immediately after, she slid the medicare card through the circular hole of the pane of plexiglass that met the desk and lower wall. Amanda didn’t waste time grabbing the piece of plastic, and there was nothing kind or ceremonious about the way she dropped it off to the side of her desk like she didn’t want to touch it.
Amanda glanced toward the card, and her fingers worked over the keyboard. Likely inputting the number across the front. “I suppose I don’t need to ask your birthdate, hmm?”
Delaney frowned.
Was that an attempt at a joke?
After she acted like the card Delaney touched and owned might burn her?
She tried to shake the unsettling feeling off.
“How have you been?” she asked her mother.
Amanda’s lips pursed, and she swallowed hard, but her gaze never left the screen in front of her. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard about recent changes in my life. I left your father a year ago—we’re not divorced, but he’s moved out. Things are a lot quieter at the house.”
“I didn’t know that, actually.”
Her mother looked over the top of the screen.
Delaney shrugged. “It’s been made clear to me that I shouldn’t ask about my family, the church, or anything else, really. Honestly, it’s easier that way. I don’t have to wonder if you give a shit about me when actions speak louder than words at the end of the day.”
Flash of indignation lit up her mother’s familiar eyes. “There’s no need for that kind of language, Delaney. You may not be welcomed in my home or at the church, but I know I raised you better than that.”
“Are you registering me in?” Delaney asked, trying to put the two of them back on task because this was going nowhere, fast. Not to mention, the stress of having to sit there and be polite to the woman who had birthed her—and who also had acted like Delaney didn’t exist for the better part of the last seven to eight years—was enough to make the achy, deep cramps low in her belly worse. It bothered her that the pain wasn’t any better or worse than her normal periods, but it still felt like she was losing something all the same. She tried to push those thoughts to the side, and the heavier flow settled between her legs the longer she sat there in that chair, to handle the situation in front of her first.