Hugging her mother back felt like a balm to her soul.
“You don’t have to bear this all on your shoulders,Nena.”
She felt her mother press a kiss to her cheek and Noelle squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m her mother, Ma.” She felt her mom rock her a little and she fought to keep herself together. “I’m mom and dad now. I’m going to do what it takes for her to move past this.”
Her mother took a step back and looked into her eyes.
“You will. You both will. It’s just going to take time.”
“I remember what you said that day… at the cemetery.” Noelle nodded. “Souls are both the strongest things in the world and the most fragile. I agree. I’ve seen it. Felt it. I didn’t know that McCrae would come to the house. And I certainly didn’t know that Ciela would react like that.”
Her mother rubbed her back as they walked into the kitchen and took their seats at the table. “That’s the worst part of this. There’s no telling what’s going to happen on a random day. She might see a picture or a sign. She might hear a word, or the sound of breaking glass.
“There’s no telling what will happen in the future.”
“Then what,” Noelle struggled to ask the question, “are we going to do to protect her from these memories? Or worse, if it’s not a memory but… a trigger that just… that sends her over the edge?”
Her mother lifted the lid to the serving dish and used a large spoon to give Noelle a good sized portion of the chicken and chorizo casserole that was still warm and steaming.
“You know the answer to that, which is that we don’t know.”
Noelle picked up a roll and added some garlic butter to it before passing it over to her mother. “It’s the problem with being human, right?” She picked up a second roll and buttered it for herself. “If we were like cars, you could just go to the parts store and fix whatever was broken.”
Noelle set the roll on her plate and her butter knife slid off of the side of her plate, making her grind her back teeth together.
“But that’s where I think what people have been telling us is wrong, Ma.” Noelle drew in a breath through her nose and slowly let it out as she pulled her thoughts together.
“I don’t think we’re broken. Or that we ever were.” She tapped her finger on the stem of her fork. “We were stretched thin. Sometimes brittle. Sometimes sagging under the weight of our grief. We were going under the assumption that we had to pass a line to be ‘better’ or ‘healed.’
“Holding her today and feeling her fight me. I think I realized that she wasn’t ‘fighting’ me… she was fighting the memory. Fighting the fear.”
Noelle looked across the table at her mother.
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No more than I am.” Her mother shook her head. “There’s a certain amount of insanity that comes with being a parent. Thinking you can control the world around your children. That you can protect them from all of the dangers in the world, both emotional and physical.”
Noelle smiled at that. “You did a great job of it.”
Her mother lifted a hand to her hair. “And I ended up with more than my share of white hairs because of it.”
Noelle shook her head. “You barely have any.”
“I have a great stylist who does my color.” She fluffed up her waves. “You know that.”
“What I know, Ma, is that you’ve set a high bar as a parent.”
“I never tried to do any such thing. I just did my best to raise you into a functioning adult.”
Noelle lowered her chin and looked at her mom. “Does that include my fascination with ‘gross’ stuff?”
“Gross?” Her mother shook her head. “It’s probably the cultural connection with skulls and skeletons. People forgetwhat a large part of our culture is connected to beliefs like Dis De Los Muertos.”
They ate in quiet for a few minutes before they heard a voice from the hallway.
“Mama? Abuelita?”
Noelle was out of her chair before she thought about it, crossing the open part of the floor to crouch down beside her daughter. “Hey, baby,” she lifted a hand and brushed the damp curls from Ciela’s face. “Are you hungry?”