Chapter Four: A Minor Breakdown

Part 3

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There wasn’t even a gift waiting for Moira when they got back to the Dollohan estate. She and Sergei had both checked, wandering the three-story mansion for the better part of an hour asking wait-staff and security alike. No one had been asked to set aside a gift for her. No one had been instructed to put up a banner or bake a cake. Sergei told them to start on both right away, but Moira overrode him.

No, if her mother had forgotten, then Moira didn’t want even a trace of a reminder available. This was a new low, and she was going to hold it in reserve to pull against her mother later. She’d give it a week, maybe two, see if her mother bothered to remember. It’d be interesting to see how she might try to possibly make up for such an insensitive oversight. Probably the same way she tried to solve all of her relationship problems with Moira – throw money at her and hope that came across as love.

Two years ago was the first time her mother had forgotten. It had been a time of campaigning, in her mother’s dogged pursuit of landing a position among the Thirteen. She’d gotten her wish, and apparently the cost meant little to her. That time, Sergei had bailed her out by calling her before she got home. So she’d swung by a store and bought Moira a cassette player she’d wanted. Of course, only Sergei knew she wanted it, so both of them failed that test. At least then, she’d said something to Moira the day of.

Last year, her mother had been away from home that week for business, as was always the case, but she’d called Moira that evening to wish her a happy birthday and generously given her fifteen minutes of her time to feign catching up on each other’s lives. It had really been two minutes of talking about school and thirteen minutes of listening to how her mother’s pursuits were setting up such a wonderful future for her. 

So the radio silence this year? Unsurprising, but still infuriating.

After giving the primary staff explicit instructions to not breathe a word to her mother, and promising to never forgive Sergei if he so much as considered bailing her mother out this time, Moira locked herself in her room.

She’d barely made it to the bed before the tears came. The enormous pink surface had been purchased to allow for up to a half dozen girls to sleepover, but night after night, it only held her. Leaping straight for the center, Moira balled up the covers and buried her face with a scream.

It seemed months since her mother had given her so much as a smile. Ever since the other Thirteen had come under attack, her mother had been even more distant. Once or twice a week, their breakfasts or dinners would coincide, but her mother was constantly reading reports or talking on the phone. When she acknowledged Moira’s existence, it never came with a smile.

Bitter as that was, Moira didn’t even want a smile anymore. She just wanted to feel like her mother wasn’t dead too, or worse, that she herself had died and her mother didn’t care. Moira wasn’t any more of a troublemaker than her teenage peers. At least her troublemaking usually only caused grief to idiots and bigots who deserved it. She’d tried pursuing that avenue as a way of getting her mother to acknowledge her as anything more than a pit to throw money at, and it had just made the problem worse. Now, her mother just assumed she was being delinquent because she was “still a kit”, and she left Sergei to handle the aftermath for her. She chided Moira sometimes, and those always devolved into shouting matches.

The bitter truth was–the older Moira got, the more she felt invisible and alone. She had no pull of any kind to pursue business or politics like her mother. She liked music and people, but she had no talent for playing any instruments. Her mother had paid for the best, and it hadn’t helped.

The one thing Moira could do was sing, but what comfort was that when you were surrounded by hundreds of paid staff and still the loneliest person in the whole Bulb? What good was singing if the real problem was that there was no one to listen?

A knock sounded at the door, and for a moment Moira’s heart betrayed her. Excitement swelled in her chest at the possibility of her mother waiting just outside. No! Bad Moira! That was stupid! She was supposed to be mad at her mother, not ready to let her off the hook!

Wiping at a few soggy patches of fur above her cheeks, Moira finger-combed her horribly disheveled hair and stumbled over to the door. Her hand shook against the lock, grief and rage both fighting for a majority vote in her emotional parliament. With a few steadying breaths, she opened the door and…

It wasn’t her mother. Of course it wasn’t brakking her. Why would it be?

It was Sergei, dressed in his immaculate suit, his clean white gloves covering hands that held a small wrapped package and a plate with a slice of a dessert that was nearly swimming in fresh strawberries.

“Pardon the intrusion, Miss Moira, and I do apologize profusely if I have gotten your hopes up. As your mother is on factory tour and not returning home this evening, I thought perhaps I might take the liberty of bringing you a few things with which to celebrate your special day? Would that be all right?”

Moira’s fangs sank into her lower lip as she fought desperately to hold back tears. If Anima had been behind the birth of her mother, then surely Seedmother had given Sergei to be Moira’s angel. Before she knew what she was doing, her arms were wrapped around his waist, her wet face wrinkling his warm, pressed dress shirt.

“Sergei, don’t ever leave me.” Her voice was fighting against her, ruining any pretense of being older than she was. “I know that’s unreasonable, but if I ever lost you too…no one would remember me.”

“Oh, Miss Moira, I hardly think…” He stopped, then shifted until she felt a warm, gloved hand rest on her shoulder. “You have my word. The only way you shall ever be rid of me is if you dismiss me yourself.”

More than any gifts, any food, any attention, that reassurance was the single thing she needed today. It seemed this was to be the one source of it that she would ever have. At least one person in Moira’s life cared that she existed.

Seedmother, what a dross-drenched birthday...

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