The Other Mother by Holly Sharp

Author:Holly Sharp
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2016-07-23T22:00:00+00:00

26

Isa snores.

She snores even worse than Thalia.

I forgot that Isa snores.

As bad as listening to her involuntarily mimic the sounds of a sawmill all night is, though, it’s better than freezing to death.

Isa’s body is warm, in contrast to pretty much everything within a ten mile radius, and I’m thankful that it’s on top of me.

I’ve pretty much given up on sleep by this point. Now, I’m just lying around waiting for the sun to come up. I wish it would at some stage; this night seems to want to go on forever.

I’m hoping that, when the sun does rise, my mind’ll give it a rest. It just won’t shut up about everything that’s happened, and it’s not like you can really do anything about it. You can’t duct tape its mouth shut or tell it its grandmother died to distract it from the conversation like you can with humans. You’ve just gotta listen to it.

Right now, it’s going on and on about this shit with Thalia, and showing me a range of possible ways me ‘talking to her’ could go down. Around half of those ways end in her giving me the finger and walking away, and I don’t blame her in any of them.

It’s also treating me to a selection of clips showing me all the different ways I could have handled things when that letter came. Getting angry enough to throw myself through my front door was admittedly not the best course of action. But, now that I think about it, I don’t think talking to her would have really helped matters.

Thalia’s leaving. I’m as certain of that as I am the sun rising tomorrow (or today, as those ‘people’ who tell you that days start at midnight would say).

How do I know that Thalia’s leaving, you might ask?

I know it because that’s what people do.

They leave.

You get attached to them.

And then they fucking leave.

Thalia’s a person.

And people leave.

Ergo, Thalia will leave.

Just like my mother did.

Just like my brother did.

And just like my fucking father did.

I know what Isa was trying to say earlier, but I can’t change what’s going to happen.

My daughter will leave me.

Corinth’s far.

It’s so far that the sole postage service that operates between here and there can only manage deliveries once every six months.

If Thalia goes to the Imperial University, it won’t be like she’s moving.

It’ll be like she’s dying.

Thalia will be functionally dead from my perspective, and I’m not dealing.

But still, I don’t want her to leave with what happened at our dining table to be her last memory of us.

And, more importantly, if she is going to leave, I want to make sure she’ll be okay after she does.

I have to do it.

I have to do it right now, before Isa wakes up.

It’ll be fucking freezing, but I have to do it.

Ever so gently, I slide the relatively tiny body off from on top of me. I set Isa down beside me, and cover her with the sleeping bag up to the neck.

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