She'd stopped giving her mother birthday presents decades ago. At first it was because she had no idea where the woman was – she still pretended, still planned, still made a present (sometimes they were store bought, but Cordelia knew that if her mother wanted anything, she would buy it herself, and believed that anything she bought her would be…inadequate. Like she was) – but as she grew older, she gave up. The day passed without a second thought, maybe an acknowledgement when one of her girls wanted to send their mother something (by the end, Nan was the only one who cared), maybe an occasional feeling of guilt – if she was a better daughter, she would have something ready (if she were a better daughter, she wouldn't have been left here).
No. That wasn't her fault. She'd done nothing wrong.
More often than not it was easier not to think of her mother at all, except in passing references to their supreme.
…or when she showed up completely unannounced, which often caused her girls more pain than it was worth. At one point in time, she'd believed they needed their supreme here, with them, teaching them, in the same way that she thought she needed her mother.
But if she was strong enough to survive, then so was the coven.
It was easier without Fiona showing up.
Or staying.
To be honest, Cordelia was certain that if her mother wasn't dying she would be somewhere, anywhere else. Hadn't she proven that? Hadn't she proven time and time again that whenever there was any responsibility at all, she would be gone?
Cordelia didn't think of herself as a particularly bitter person, but whenever the subject of her mother came up – it was all she could do to keep from snapping. It wasn't hatred; that would be easy. If she hated her mother, then this year, when her birthday came around and she was here because she had nowhere else to be, she would leave an envelope with a plane ticket in it, a not-so-subtle suggestion to go somewhere else. Or, on better thought, she would leave a basket full of differing liquors. Or, more petty still, a bucket of fried chicken (because fast food was better than what she cooked. Must to be too healthy).
But she didn't hate Fiona.
She disappointed her. She knew that. Wasn't that why she was here while she was out gallivanting around the world?
Maybe that was the real reason she stopped celebrating. It wasn't what she bought that was inadequate – it was her entire self.
What do you give the woman who can have everything?
Nothing.
When she knocks on her mother's door, the knuckle of her first finger light on the white wood door, Cordelia can't say she expects an answer. She expects a hangover, a groan, a shuffle of covers and a pull of blinds to hide the light, or a woman still out from the night before. Whatever is on the other side – she's used to it. She knows her mother.
When there isn't a response, she cracks the door open. It is not quite as she expected – if only because her mother is nowhere to be seen. It isn't until she hears the water running in the connected bathroom – a bath, most likely, something much more luxurious than a shower, something befitting a supreme on her birthday – that she breathes a sigh of relief, that she even realizes she's been holding her breath at all.
She won't laugh at herself until she is outside of the room with the door shut behind her, a nervous sort of chuckle, hand covering her face, quiet and short so as to keep the girls (who are still asleep, with the exception of Nan, who is downstairs crafting her own breakfast). Right now, she feels the need to be quiet, as if she were a little girl again stealing into a room where she does not belong, tiptoeing across the floor (she already knows which spots will k if she steps on them wrong) to leave her offering on the bedside table.
Nothing much. Just a tray with a glass, a pitcher of water, and a bottle of aspirin.
And a note: Make sure you drink some water. It'll help with the headache. She thinks the pills are self-explanatory.
Oh! A post-script, scrawled much more hastily:
Happy Birthday.
It's easier, she thinks, finally able to compose herself before heading to the kitchen, to write those sorts of things than it is to say them.