Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway

Parents help guide their children. They’re not just these guardians who provide money and shelter, who pay attention only when their kids shine.
    For two years after the big to-do that got me kicked out of the house, my mother had obeyed my father’s orders. I’d seen my sister a handful of times—it was easier for Drew to claim she was doing something else so she could meet me—but never my mother. I’d given up on my mother, knowing she either couldn’t or wouldn’t risk my father’s ire.
    During the last month of my pregnancy with Quincy, my mother appeared at our house with two armfuls of gifts, calling first to make sure we were home. It felt like we were making a mutually inconvenient but necessary appointment, as though she was coming for a root canal. I’d opened the door to her reluctantly. After I felt Quincy flipping in my womb, awakening with loud music or kicking at the sensation of Tom rubbing my belly, I couldn’t understand how my own mother could have let me go. What, exactly, was my father holding over her head? Maybe it was my crazy primeval pregnancy hormones talking, but if someone had tried to come between me and Quincy, I’d have cut off his leg and beaten him to death with it. Needless to say, at eighteen, I was still angry at my mother. At her impotence and passivity.
    But Mom said she had something very important to give me. Entering my house, she stood nervously behind the couch, brightly striped gift bags held awkwardly in her hands. I hadn’t seen her for two years, but she looked as if she’d aged ten, with deep new creases between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. Doing a lot of frowning, but not much laughing. My poor mother. Still, I didn’t want to take the gifts. She was supposed to have fought for me. Determined to make this as uncomfortable as possible, I sat down and waited.
    Tom swooped in, though, scooped up Mom’s bags and enveloped her in one of the big warm Italian-family hugs he gives without reservation. “I’m so glad to meet you!” Tom squeezed my tiny mother. Only his parents had attended our wedding. I waited for her stiffness, for her to step back.
    To my surprise, her arms flew up and she squeezed him back. When he stepped away, her eyes were bright. She let out a large sigh and smiled. “I’m happy to meet you, too.”
    Was that all she was feeling? No sadness? No apologies? I gulped down the lump in my throat. She could not just waltz back into my life, I thought fiercely. I wanted something—for her to say she regretted what her husband had done. That she had missed me. Anything.
    Tom touched my shoulder. “I’ll be in the bedroom if you need me,” he whispered, and left.
    Mom sat down, playing with the black pocketbook on her lap. She was dressed not in one of her customary Chanel suits, as I’d expected, but in sweatpants and a sweat jacket, the kind of thing she would have worn only while out walking. She stared at the rickety old trunk that served as our coffee table while she spoke. “Your father does not know I’m here,” she said slowly, enunciating each word.
    My mouth went dry. “What will you do if he finds out?” Who knew when my father would embark on another crazy whim and force her away? She would comply. She’d shown me that.
    Mom smiled wryly and spread her hands out. “It is not your worry. He cannot keep me from seeing you.” She reached into the bag, drawing out a large floppy gift wrapped in pink tissue paper. “I have something for you and Tom, and some things for the baby.” She bowed, as if I were a stranger. Which I was. I made no move to take the package.
    â€œMom. I don’t need anything. We’re set.” In fact, we were not, but if I took her gift, I’d be accepting her back into my life. I couldn’t handle the disappointment if she left again, not while I was pregnant and