Ok, so I got myself completely confused and left out a couple of chapters! A million apologies it's all in the right order now!
I hope you enjoy.
Chapter Five – Suspect
My mother is a warrior.
She's always at war. Fighting secrets, fighting for answers, fighting herself until she's too tired to fight anymore.
She fights to be respected in a male dominated profession, to find answers when sometimes there just doesn't seem to be any. But the most important fight of all comes from deep inside her. A war between her heart and mind that's been waging for years with not a peace treaty or truce in sight.
Her mind is strong. Her heart weak after years of holding onto secrets and half-truths that are eating her from the inside out.
The war that takes place inside Samantha Spade is never-ending. Neither side will ever surrender. They need each other to go on and much like the person they inhibit, they don't like to lose. After all, what good is a mind without a heart to lead it where it truly needs to go? And there is nothing left of a heart when a mind is not there to rationalize and think ahead.
These days, my mother fights her war to help others, that's just her way of dealing. Other kids just like me, vulnerable and just beginning to realize the real life evil that exists outside of cartoons and movies. She fights to help the families, grief stricken, falling apart with fear, living with a sense of denial. Hoping for the best and yet expecting the very worst.
She knows each one of them intimately it seems. Their thoughts, their feelings, their desperation that appear foreign to others and easily over looked are all too familiar to her.
Samantha Spade was in desperate need of her mask of indifference today as a case hit a little to close to her fractured heart.
The war raged out of control as emotion and rationale coupled with professionalism battled it out for ultimate possession.
The desire to hold onto her secret was what it all came down to. Emotion suppressed, saved for the dark confines of her apartment and the company of no one but me. Rationale and professionalism then took their rightful place in her demeanor. No one guessed the battle that had been fought for them to get there. No one would ever know.
I've always wondered why her secrets are so important. Guarded with nothing less than her life. But I suppose it's really quite simple when you think about it. A secret isn't a secret anymore if you share it. Until then, no one knows of its existence but you. By protecting her secret my mother is essentially holding onto me. Gripping me so tightly it sometimes hurts. Pretending what happened, never really did. And if she does that it can never really be real.
I wish I could tell her that holding on is sometimes worse than letting go. But in the grand scheme of things, this is her war, not mine and all I can do is sit on the sidelines, an innocent spectator cheering her on.
Nothing is worse in my mother's world than the evil that preys on the young. Men just like Graham Spaulding whose name can make you shiver with anxiety. Men like the one with the piercing green eyes and the puppy named Chase, whose name my mother cares not to remember, but in actuality will never regret.
The men with eyes that scream with danger. That should be accompanied by flashing neon lights and sirens to alert the world of their presence.
Whose eyes don't offer comfort the way your mother's do, don't warm when they see you first thing in the morning or give you butterfly kisses before bed.
I somehow knew the eyes that filled me with terror would be the last that I saw. Andy Deaver believed he would meet a similar fate. That Graham Spaulding's eyes would be the last he ever saw. Unlike me, Andy Deaver was old enough and wise enough to recognize the man Graham Spaulding was. And he almost escaped. But not fast enough.
He was lucky though. Damaged, injured, scarred for life but lucky none the less. Someone had been smiling down on him.
I wonder why I wasn't so lucky. Why he gets to live and I had to go. Why his life crosses my mother's now and mine will continue to run parallel for many years to come.
Maybe it all comes down to destiny. And luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. Maybe Andy's destiny was to be found alive. Perhaps there's greatness he's destined for just around the corner. And maybe my greatness, my destiny is to do exactly what I'm doing.
"You're my angel," my mother used to say as she tucked me in at night. "My golden haired, ballet dancing angel."
Maybe she was always right. What happened to me was pre-determined at birth. Six years was all I was allocated. That I was sent to my mother for only that amount of time before being taken to be exactly what I am.
Her guardian angel.
Watching over her and lending her my wings.