Louis supposes you never completely outgrow those moments of sudden clarity in realizing your mother had been right all along. As he'd grown older, these moments became fewer and farther in between—he had simply come to expect she was right about pretty much everything.
But even a mother's reassurances seemed to ring hollow when someone he trusted as much as the woman who raised him had betrayed his trust in ten different ways in the span of ten seconds.
"I've been seeing someone else," the woman he'd been preparing to spend the rest of his life with told him. "It isn't fair to any of us for me to go through with this wedding. I'm sorry."
His mother's words of comfort seemed far away and empty that night as he'd cried on her couch, returned diamond ring in one hand and a beer he hadn't touched in the other. After a while she realized he just needed to cry it out for a while, as much as it obviously pained her, so she had thrown a blanket over the both of them and turned on some ridiculous comedy movie he barely paid attention to.
"You're gonna find her someday, Louis," she'd said as he stretched out on the sofa to sleep and she was retreating to her bedroom. "You're gonna find a woman who is strong and brave and smart and it is gonna be when you least expect it."
"Yeah, Mom," he'd replied absently, voice cracked from hours of on and off tears.
Three years later when his mother is gone because most of the entire damn world is gone, Louis glances over at the brown-haired girl propped up on the other side of the safehouse cleaning out her gun after another mad sprint through zombie infested streets. Zoey raises her eyes to meet his gaze and sticks her tongue out at him in a small attempt to bring a little laughter back into the world.
"Damn it, Mom," he mutters.