Entry #6

A Moment In Time
by Lindsay McAlpine


This wasn't the conversation I wanted to have with my mother.

Hell, this wasn't the kind of conversation I want to have, period.

“Did you not wonder why you were different? Did you not notice?” The incredulity in her voice made me wince.

It hurt because- in truth- I hadn't.

She sighed, many years of her life that I couldn't see, audible.

“I told your father-he wouldn't hear it.” She leaned over, gracefully, and grasped her wine glass in her elegant fingers.

The wine, blood red and fragrant, swished in the glass-the only sign that my mother-No! Not my mother!-was nervous.

“Nor would he listen when I told him to tell you years ago.”

She looked at me then, her emerald eyes boring into my gold ones-the only sign that I was different.

“He thought you deserved a proper mother.” She shook her head, her mahogany curls cascading over delicate shoulders. “I should have known better.”

I reached down, grasped my own glass, and drank. The wine soothed my throat, the wetness in my eyes, dried.

The silence heavy with questions not asked, answers not found, and the truth of the lies.

Abruptly, she spoke “You are not my daughter by birth, but by choice. And the one I would choose again.”

“If you would let me.”

A single tear fell.

My voice was bitter. “Is that the Queen's order?”

Another tear followed the first, wet upon her face.

“Just a mother's hope.”