Hey guys- sorry for the long wait! lack of inspiration, I guess... Anyway, enjoy!

"Nat," Dan said, hanging up the phone and calling up the stairs.

"Hold on," she said into her cell phone, sitting up on her bed. "What, dad?"

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

"About what?" she asked. She was in the middle of a conversation- did she really have to interrupt it?

"Natalie, come downstairs. It'll only take a minute."

"Fine," she called, then picked the phone up again. "I'll call you back, Henry. Father calls."

Taking the stairs two and a time, she landed on the first floor with energy, looking her dad expectantly in the eye.

"Well?" she asked rudely.

"Be polite," he said, and she rolled her eyes. "Nat, tomorrow night you need to be home."

She laughed. "Um, dad- tomorrow is the first day in three weeks that I've had free! It's Friday, and for weeks I've had to practice and I've been busy with auditions and college apps and service hours. Seriously? Why do I have to stay home?"

"Your mother's coming over for dinner," he said simply. Natalie was quieted immediately.

"Why?" was all she could ask.

"She wants to see you."

"I saw her like, two weeks ago."

"Natalie, it was over a month ago. And you always see her in tiny little incriments of time- after a recital, or you meet for lunch and find an excuse to leave after barely an hour- she wants to come over and actually spend an evening with you."

"Are you going to be here?" Natalie asked. Dan nodded. "Is that going to be awkward?"

He held up his hands. "I've dealt with so many awkward situations that I'm immune. So tell Henry you can't go out tomorrow-"

"How did you know-"

"You're not that hard to figure out, Nat," he said, smiling.

With a grunt, she dragged herself upstairs, making a show of her annoyance at the situation.

She called Henry back, and answered his "Hello again!" with an overdramatic sigh.

"What's up?"

"So tomorrow we can't go out, because my dad wants to play happy family. My mom's coming over for dinner, and I have to 'spend time with her.'"

"Ok," Henry said. "Are you free on Saturday night then?"

"Ok?" Natalie said icily. "Ok? This is not ok, Henry!" she spat.

"Ok..." he said, more slowly this time. "What's isn't ok about it?"

She grunted. "I don't know! But this certainly isn't!"

"Ok," he said. She made a face even though he couldn't see her, and he laughed. "Sorry. I just wanted to say it one more time to annoy you. So what's so bad about your mom coming over?"

"Well, it'll start out fine, because she's actually been pretty normal every time I've seen her. But see, when she's normal, my dad's not. He'll, like, start crying or keep mentioning how nice it was when we all used to be a family. He's totally still in love with my mom. And if she isn't ok, then the whole evening will be devoted to her problems, and dad will go right back to fixing them, and I'll be ignored, and then we're right back where we started."

"So keep your phone on. If it gets too awkward, text me or something and I'll show up and pretend you left your textbook at my house. Actually, you did- I have it right here and I've been meaning to give it back to you-"

"Thanks, Henry," she said. "But I think I can handle it. It just sorta sucks."

"Life sucks. Then you die," he said.

"Great," she moaned. "Anyway... sorry about tomorrow night."

"I can survive on my own for one evening, Nat," he said, jokingly. "So lemme know how this goes. I'll see you at school tomorrow."

When she hung up, she flopped back onto her bed. This was so weird- she had no idea what to expect.

At six on Friday, Natalie waited nervously and kept checking the windows to see if her mom had come yet. It was weird- she dressed nicer than usual, as though she wanted to make a good impression. This whole thing felt so formal, even though for the better part of her seventeen year life, she'd lived with this woman.

"Hey," Natalie said, crossing her arms over her chest and nodding, trying to cover up her awkwardness.

"Hi, Nat," her mom said, her smile easy and relaxed, almost too open. She looked healthy- her complexion was flushed, her hair shiny, she wasn't too thin. Natalie didn't knwo whether or not she wanted her mother to benefit from leaving the house, but benefit she had.

"Want to... sit down?" Natalie couldn't get over the awkwardness of the situation. She felt like a hostess, but was she? This woman lived in this very house for years; does the fact that she moved away make her a stranger?

They sat in the living room, and then Dan joined them, bringing in two glasses of white wine and a soda for Natalie. Nat's skin prickled oddly- while they lived together, there was never a day when the three of them just sat on the couch and visited together, simply to talk and catch up on the things. She was always on the go, running between activities, and her mom... well...

For awhile, things were awkward. Actually, things were awkward all night. They ate dinner much to formally, filling each other in on everything that was happening in their lives, being too polite and never interrupting or bumping elbows. The closest any of the three got was when she hugged her mother goodbye on her way out the door.

"So, how'd it go?" Henry asked when he picked her up the following night.

"It was totally weird. It felt like when my grandparents would come over- the house was spotless, we acted all formal and weird. She felt like a guest or something."

Henry nodded. "I totally get that. When I was twelve, the year after my parents' divorce, my dad came over for my birthday dinner. My parents didn't argue or anything, but the whole night was just so bizarre."

"Yeah- except my dad still totally loves my mom, and that's really awkward too. He misses her so much, it's ridiculous. And it's not like I can talk to him about it, you know? That would just be weird," Natalie said. "Once in awhile, I just wish things would get back to normal. And then I remember that nothing was ever normal. But still, when she was home, everything was less confusing. I still had a mom and a dad. Plus, they're not divorced or anything, so I don't get a normal excuse for not having two parents. Who wants to say, 'my mom moved out for medical reasons'?" she shook her head.

She couldn't say when it happened, exactly. But as time went by and she saw her mother more frequently, she became more comfortable with their more distant relationship. They no longer seemed to be mother and daughter- more like aunt and neice or something. They were close, but they were not connected in a strong, tangible way. Their relationship became more friendly, less personal.

It came to be that when natalie was going to meet her mother, she did not dread the day. She would be excited, and wanted to hear what her mother was up to. She wasn't constantly scared for her mother's life, or worried about what she would do to mess everything up. The whole her mother had created in leaving was closed up- her father, Henry, and some friends from school grew around the absense, and she felt like she had a family. And her mother was still there, she just wasn't in Natalie's daily life anymore.

Still, Natalie missed her. She never thought she'd admit it, but she wanted her mother to come home again.