A Daughter’s Love
The day was overcast; gray mist swirled and buffeted the window panes. The wind complained bitterly in its effort to blow the world asunder and Cally was as miserable as she could possibly be.
Why was it that adult children seldom resembled the little people they had been
She loved both her girls, but the one who still spoke to her lived miles away, and even she called home with decreasing regularity.
When the girls were young, they had been such a team, the three ‘Cs’ Cally, Cecilia and Cami. They faced the world like a battering ram, nothing could deflect them, nothing could harm them, they were a unit, a force to be reckoned with. A family with a single purpose.
Cecilia was the first to leave the fold armed with a scholarship and a mind as bright as silver. She’d left with a suitcase of shiny new things and only a few concrete memories digitally captured on her phone.
But with Cecilia the physical distance was nothing compared to the emotional rift Cami built between them all. Cami had fallen in love with a married man, a man twice her age and she’d forsaken education, sense and family for her infatuation.
Why were women so blind? No, why was her beautiful, intelligent daughter, whom she had raised, so blind? No one could talk any sense into her cloud-skimming head. The girl she’d so carefully brought up, was a mad, mad hatter of questionable morals; the man had three kids, too. He was as mad as she was. They were mad.
Cami no longer answered her calls and the mad pair had absconded to an address unknown. A love nest, she supposed. How sad!
Cally was lonely, she had raised the girls single-handedly after Greg died.
But, she didn’t mind “lonely” if she could just be the mother she thought she had been. Why, oh, why?
She heard the doorbell ring and slouched, she wasn’t expecting anyone and knew she was incapable of even the most inane conversation. She spied through her keyhole and fell back, instantly, her hands on auto-pilot, unlocking the door.
Cecilia, breezed in. Smile, plastered all over her lovely face.
“Look who I’ve found, mom!” She turned into the wind and Cami blew through the door.
Good God, they were both in the hallway.
“Cami’s been staying with me for a few days and it’s been just like old times. Cami, is there anything you’d like to tell mom?” Cecilia chirped.