“Sean, what are you doing here?” I asked once getting through the initial shock.

But he didn’t even seem to be listening. He stepped out of the doorway with relief washing over his face and threw his arms around me.

“Did I hear Fiona’s voice?” Mom cried from inside, and a moment later, she’d pushed Sean aside and was crying on my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing to me, kid?”

“Sorry, Mom,” I said, not knowing what else to say, tears now brimming my eyes as well. I’d expected a scolding and yelling, but not this.

When she finally let go, she stepped back and looked me over. “You look well,” she said. “Not hurt or starving.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Why would you do this without saying anything to anyone?” Sean admonished from the background.

He knew more than anyone about my search for my father, which was the thing that cost us our relationship. If he knew about the letter I left for Mom, then I was positive Alexis and Candace did too. I’d have a lot of explaining to do. I’d prepared myself for Mom, but not the rest of them just yet. So instead of excuses and rationalizations, I went on the offensive.

“You lost your right to accuse me of being selfish,” I snapped. “In fact, I don’t even understand why you’re here.”

“I—” he started, but Mom cut him off.

“That’s enough,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

“Ms. Winter, do you mind if—”

“I think it’s better if you went home now, Sean,” she said sternly. “Come inside, Fiona.” Mom took the rolling suitcase from me and wheeled it inside.

Sean stood just outside the door, dumbfounded and affronted. But before I could close it and shut him out completely, he said, “Were you with Matthew? Your mother said he was harmless, but I’m not so sure.”

“How do you know about him?” I asked, stopping the closing swing of the door.

“The girls told me about him—and there’s more.” He was speaking quickly now, trying to keep me from shutting him out. “He’s been following you for years. He’s in the pictures—the pictures I took. I showed your mom, but she—”

“Goodbye, Sean,” Mom said, stepping up beside me and pushing the door closed.

“There’s something off about him!” Sean yelled from outside, the door doing little to mute his voice.

I let my head fall against the door, already mentally exhausted. “Goodbye, Sean!” I yelled back.

“If you haven’t noticed, he’s been checking up on you,” Mom said. “He’s been worried sick.”

“And you?” I asked and wiped my eyes of residual tears.

“You know I can’t sleep when you’re out,” she said. “So I’ve been awake for—for what? A week and a half? Two weeks? All the days are blending together and I can’t keep anything straight anymore. Yes; I was worried too. You scared me, kid. But after I got over the initial grief, I knew you’d be back before long.” She wheeled my bag into my room while she was talking, then returned to the living room.

“How did you know that?” I asked, leaning against the back of the couch.

“Because I’d like to think I know you well enough to know you don’t want to leave. You want to know about your deadbeat of a father—which is understandable no matter how much I advocate against it—but whatever you found, I knew you’d want to come home. Either the lead you supposedly found led nowhere, in which case you’d come home. Or it would finally lead you to him, but you’d find out he’s not the man you hoped he was, in which case you’d also come home. So, which is it? What did you find?”

I wanted to tell her I’d found him—I wanted to tell her everything like I’d done when I was little. But I wasn’t little anymore and now knew we didn’t tell each other everything. My mother was keeping at least as much from me as I was from her, and it hurt to know we didn’t have the open and honest relationship I’d begun taking for granted. And even if I did tell her about him, what would I say? It wasn’t like I could tell her about the True North Society, was it? I could tell her about his other family—his wife and young daughter—and leave all the secret society stuff out of the story. But even that felt like a disaster waiting to happen.

In the end, all I could do was sadly shake my head. “What did Sean tell you about my search for him?”

“Nothing specific, but he did mention you’d put in a lot of effort over the years in looking for him, and it ultimately cost your relationship.”

“His choice, not mine,” I snapped.

“I’m not on his side,” she said calmly. “I just wish I knew you were so insistent on finding him, so we could have talked more about it.”

“But that’s the problem, Mom. You never want to talk about it, so I stopped trying to bring it up.”

“Alright,” she said, stroking my arm as she walked past to sit on the couch. “I’ll share some blame in this. I wanted to believe we were enough for each other and had a hard time accepting we weren’t. You had questions you wanted answered—ones I couldn’t answer.”

“You don’t want to talk about things that are hard,” I said, joining her on the couch.

“About your father abandoning us? About your sister’s death? You’re right; I don’t want to talk about those things. I’m sorry if that’s not acceptable for you, but it’s taken me many years to cope. Bringing all those crushing emotions back to the surface is something I have a very hard time doing. I’m always afraid I’m not doing enough—that I’m not enough. Your unyielding search for your father simply reinforces that belief.”

“Just because I want some answers doesn’t mean you’re not enough,” I said.

“I thought it was you and me against the world.”

“It is. I’m here and I’m back, and I won’t do anything like this to you again,” I promised, then immediately wondered if it was a promise I could keep. “What was Sean saying about Matthew?”

“Oh, that friend of yours,” she said, without skipping a beat. “Alexis mentioned he was someone coming to see you at work. I can’t keep track of all your boys.”

“I don’t really have any boys anymore,” I said, my mind returning to how I’d left things with Matthew.

“Sean showed me some of the pictures he took of you, and it seemed this Matthew boy was in the background of a few of them. A little strange, but things like this happen. You don’t have to think the worst of people all the time. He tried to convince me Matthew was in more pictures when he pointed to blurred figures in the background who could have been anyone.”

“I didn’t know he was in any of our pictures.”

“Life is full of funny little surprises,” Mom said, finally cracking a small smile.

“Ain’t that the truth,” I said, shaking my head, wondering why I’d never noticed Matthew in any of my photos before.

I knew there was more she wasn’t telling me and wondered how much she really knew about Matthew. If she was somehow tangled up with vampires, did she even know he was one too? It was obvious she wasn’t going to admit to anything out of the ordinary, so we continued to play our little game of dancing around our secrets.

“I didn’t make any dinner—I don’t eat much when it’s just me—but I can whip you up something really fast if you’d like.” Mom stood up expectantly, almost seeming eager to break from our conversation.

“That sounds great,” I said, feeling obligated to give in to her request. “Do you want any help?”

“No; you just relax. I’ll take care of everything.” A minute later, she had half the food from the refrigerator out on the kitchen counter. Then came the mixing bowls and frying pans. Before long, I heard sizzling from a fragrant mixture of food on the stove.

“I’m sorry you didn’t find your father,” she said as she continued to sauté some vegetables. “See? It’s just his way of disappointing you again.”

The argumentative streak in me so wanted to reply, but I bit my tongue and let her have her stories and lies, feeling less guilty about my own.