There's still a slight blood stain on the kitchen floor. You have to look really close, squint a little, but it's there: in the corner, right by the cupboard under the sink, a thin line of red.
Whenever Fiona catches a glance of it, the image of her mom sat there, trembling and bleeding, flashes in her mind for a second too long. It freezes her momentarily and she has to swallow back the tears that threaten to spill from her eyes. She has to clench then unclench her fists against the anger that flares inside of her.
It's a cold Tuesday morning and she's washing one of Liam's cups when her eyes are drawn to it. It's been months since she's last thought about it; her fucked up mother and what she's left behind. Her hands seem to go limp, dropping the cup into the sink and splashing soapy water onto her grey sweater.
She stares down at it, gripping the counter and breathing hard. She closes her eyes and all she can see is red: oozing out of wrists; the ruddy, tear-streaked cheeks of her siblings – so young, too fucking young to have to deal with this shit.
They're too young to remember Monica for who she honestly was; when she loved fiercely and was stable. They're too young to remember what she was like before she truly began to unravel. Maybe even Lip and Ian are as well, who knows?
Fiona isn't, though.
Fiona can remember lilac covering her fingers. Her mom would bake on Sundays and let Fiona decorate the cakes with icing. Lopsided flowers and badly formed stars and her attempt at spelling names. Lilac, always lilac. Fiona wonders if that was her mom's favourite colour.
In the second grade Fiona got cast as an angel in the nativity play at school. She remembers the excitement that spread through her when Miss Cole said that she and her mommy would have to make the wings of her costume. Their living room was a sea of white and glittering silver for a week.
At the park, near the swings, buttercups would grow in a small patch. In the sun, they looked luminescent; glowing yellow. Fiona remembers Monica leading her to it, sitting her down in her lap and picking one of the flowers out of the ground. She said, holding the flower under her chin, "See, you like butter!", and then explained how if the flower makes a yellow spot on your skin then it means you like it and if it doesn't then you don't. Fiona remembers picking all the buttercups and taking them home, lining her windowsill with yellow until they died.
When Fiona was ten, Monica took all of her storybooks and sold them to a used bookstore so that she could buy some blow. Fiona remembers getting angry, but not sad. She had to put Lip and Ian to bed without storytime because Monica and Frank were too busy downstairs with their friends doing lines and singing along to the music that blasted through the house and she had no stories to tell. She remembers the dark brown shelf in the corner of her room no longer coloured with the spines of her books. Just dark brown and ugly.
Monica left in a black car. It revved to life so loudly that it woke Fiona up in the middle of night. She scrambled out of bed in her too-big pyjamas and drew back her curtain. A man in a black coat hugged her mom and took her bag, opened the car door for her. They sped down the road, becoming a dark blur in the distance.
An arm snakes around her waist and she startles, runs a hand down her face when Jimmy kisses her neck.
"You doin' okay?" he asks, lips moving against her skin.
"Yeah." Turning, she kisses him briefly then pats his chest. "Can you start on the lunches?"
He nods as he pulls himself away from her. "Sure."
Fiona takes a single, steadying breath, snaps out of whatever nostalgic mood she was in and yells, "Get your asses down here, it's time for breakfast!", stepping closer to the sink so that the tips of her socked toes cover the stain.
The sound of her siblings running down the stairs fills the house with this comforting warmth; Fiona smiles.
Title taken from The Black Keys song These Days.
Thank you to Beth (mintsauce) for the proofread :)