CHAPTER 7

"Hi Mom," I yawned, dropping into the chair across from her in the recreation room. I hid my splinted fingers in the pouch of my hoodie. She smiled down at the table.

"Rosie Mary, I haven't seen you since you were a baby," she chastised. I leaned an elbow on the table, resting my chin in my hand and watching her with sleepy eyes. "You saw me last week, actually." That gave her pause; she brought the marker off the table and frowned at me, her eyebrows drawn together.

"I know. I'm not stupid."

"I didn't say you were."

"So how's college?" she went back to coloring, leaning forward so that her dull black hair curtained her features.

"I told you I didn't go to school. I work construction and demolition now." That was the easy explanation but not exactly true. I didn't feel like getting into the nitty gritty of the difference. Again.

"Rose what would your father think? I can't believe this, where did I go wrong," she lamented, scribbling harder.

"He'd understand and you didn't do anything wrong, you were a great mom," I assured her. She ignored me in favor of folding her drawing into an origami jumping frog. "How have you been?"

"Fine, fine. Sometimes I miss the pretty blue eyed man, though," her expression crumpled into a deep sadness as she made the origami frog jump across the table. I noticed a pile of familiar shapes. Simple origami girls. She'd used to make them when I was small. She'd laugh and say it was her 'real little girl' whenever I demanded to be treated like an adult or complain that I didn't want to wear overalls in middle school.

"Dad had brown eyes."

"Obviously!" she snapped, rolling her eyes. I smiled a little.

"So who's the pretty blue eyed man?"

"He's not pretty, the blue is pretty. He's pretty ugly. But I can't remember. Sometimes he's in my nightmares, always surrounded by birds," she said offhandedly. I nodded and didn't prod anymore, realizing this was just another one of her delusions.

When I was sixteen my parents had been in a bank when it was robbed by Two-Face. The firefight with the GCPD ended with my dad getting caught in the crossfire and his untimely death. It had changed my mother, she started abusing medications and becoming unstable. The year I was supposed to leave for college she'd slit her wrists in the tub, I'd found her in time but she was too sick to be on her own. She ended up in the care of the state, sent to Arkham Asylum for a few years while I opted out of school and worked to get enough money to get her out of that hellhole. I don't know what happened in Arkham but she'd come back so much worse.

Now she was in an assisted living facility, free to build scribbly origami creatures as much as she wants. I'd given up hope of her getting well but as long as she was happy and safe I guess that was good enough.

Finishing up my visit I got up to leave but she yanked me back by the sleeve. I waited while she dug through the pockets of her cardigan until her face lit up and she shoved something into my hand.

"He'd like you to have it, I think," she smiled. I inspected the small origami gift.

A pitch-black paper crow.