“I'm sure being here is going to put a real damper on your dating life."
WHAT: A Mother-Daughter Chat™ WHERE: 300 "Fox Way" WHEN: August 5 (backdated) WARNINGS: None! STATUS:Complete!
Blue didn't know what she would do without her mom. That silly underground business during the summer before her senior year—which wasn't silly at the time, but hindsight often brought humor to situations—had made Blue appreciate her mother more. And yes, after her graduation she had packed a car with two boys to drive to the other side of the country, as far from Henrietta as she could get, but the knowledge that her mom would always be there, just a phone call away, made it not so scary.
Being in Vallo for months without that certainty made her question herself more than she liked. Blue was used to falling back on that motherly support when she needed it, knowing that someone would unconditionally be on her side. Not that Gansey and Henry weren't, but if Blue was feeling particularly Blue, she didn't need to apologize for it. And she had her mom to back her up. Kind of.
Now she didn't have to worry. Now her mom really was that close.
She had missed Maura, but Blue couldn't say that outright—it broke mother-daughter code, or whatever was in that "handbook". So what Blue did instead of speaking it into existence was that she went over to Fox Way that now lived on some other street, jasper or juniper or Jenkins, something with a J. She had tea. She sat in a kitchen that was no longer exactly hers, but not a place she was unwelcome from. Blue was folded up in one of the chairs, unable to sit properly, with a fit tucked under her and a knee near her chin.
Eying her mom from across the table, Blue asked, "On a scale from one to never in the existence of time, how likely is that the tree that is supposed to be in this backyard will magically work its way back there from the Barns?"
There were many ways that one might be able to tell that the Sargent matriarch and her daughter were related. Physical appearance, general air about them -- all of that were sure tells, without a doubt. But in that moment, it felt altogether more obvious as Maura sat in the chair opposite Blue, hands around her own cup of tea, hair pulled up into a messy bun that seemed to be staying put by means of a chopstick (the other half of the pair sitting abandoned in the middle of the table), and sitting crosslegged in a way that dining room chairs weren't really meant to be sat upon.
It was a normalcy, this whole scene. Though the house was much quieter without the other residents and the constant chatter and white noise that they brought to Fox Way, sitting in the kitchen with her daughter made the situation feel real. Maura had been accepting of the twist that being brought to Vallo had made in her life, but she knew that she had only been able to do so because Blue, Persephone, and so many others were here -- though it was mostly Blue and Persephone, as such large sections of her heart were devoted to them.
At Blue's question, Maura sat forward and let her mug and her hands that were circling it come to rest on the surface of the table. She glanced once in the direction to where the beech tree was supposed to rest, or at least did back in Henrietta. "This place seems to work in its own mysterious ways," Maura said, the words feeling like an understatement and a half, if half of what she had been told had happened before she arrived was true. "But maybe wait a bit before holding your breath."
"He's kind of cramping my style," Blue said, her style being loud and free-ranged—god, she sounded like she was more chicken than a girl. But it was true. Every time she stomped outside to do work at the Barns, or knit, or bother Ronan with the sheep, the tree haunted her, like an annoying sibling, or the hotline ringing in the middle of the night, or Orla's general presence.
She had gotten better at ignoring its branchy self (if Artemus wasn't going to pop out of it when she kissed Gansey right in front of the tree, there was no way he was going to come out for anything less) but now there were two Sargent women hovering in a magical place.
Double trouble.
"You technically didn't answer the question, but based on what you said, I'm going to go with never but maybe which translates to roughly a seven out of ten," Blue said, taking a sip of her tea. Then another. An obvious stalling tactic. She wanted to ask Maura an actual question, but no time felt right. So Blue decided to deflect by projecting, a tried-and-true Blue Sargent skill.
"I'm sure being here is going to put a real damper on your dating life."
Maura arched an eyebrow at the statement, mostly because it was a very accurate observation on Blue's part. It was also something that Maura had been operating under the age old tradition of denial about, though she logically knew that both wasn't the healthiest way forward and wasn't going to last forever. Eventually she would need to consider the Mr. Gray shaped hole in her life now that she was here in Vallo and he was, she assumed, still in Henrietta. That was a long distance that she hadn't been anticipating.
Damper, indeed.
"It would seem that way." Maura lifted her tea once more, breathing in the aroma before taking a deep drink from the cup. Eyebrow still arched, she added, "The same can't be said for you, hm?"
Blue's eyes narrowed at her mother. How dare she turn this back on her! Blue had it all planned out: give Maura a hard time about Mr. Gray; poke about the other men in her life; ask for more tea, explain about how weird everything in Vallo was; and then completely embrace her birdiness and chicken out. But now, cup in hand and in an epic eyebrow-arching war that Blue was going to lose, she made a slightly dramatic huff.
"Nope, my dating life is fine, thank you very much," Blue said, with all the finality she could muster. But the beat of silence that followed was just a smidge too long, so she added, "I mean it wouldn't be considered dating anymore, we skipped all that. I live with them." Another beat, another inability to hold in her words. "Which some people might think is rushing."
She shrugged, now attempting for nonchalant. "But I don't believe in parameters or milestones of dating, like you must date for such-in-such many months before you say I love you, then this many months before living together, and this many years before getting married—"
That seemed to stop Blue in her tracks. She frowned. "Some people never have to get married, and it's not a big deal."
Maura let Blue speak, as she always did and always would (unless she didn't, but there would be a good reason for such an interruption, surely). She may have deftly side-stepped talking about her own personal life, but she would gladly allow her daughter to pick up the slack in her place, so to speak.
Especially when she sounded so much like Maura herself.
"You're right," Maura said, having waited a beat to make sure that Blue was really done. "Forcing a relationship to follow certain milestones or paramaters -- that's just going to suck the joy out of it. Besides, you aren't Other People. Other People aren't you. So why try and be like them?"
She shrugged, mirroring her daughter from just moments before. "All that matters is," she went on, "is that you're happy. If you find something or someone or someones that makes that happen, then you're on a good path."
Maura may have been a psychic, but Blue thought her mother was much more than that. Any time she was around her, Blue felt better, at ease, even if her insides were twisted into complicated knots. She contained multitudes, but they aligned so much with her mom—duh!—that she didn't feel so misunderstood.
Blue nodded along, because Maura was right; Blue wasn't Other People, she didn't want joy sucked out of her relationship. She had enough dangerous, cursed things orbiting it. But when that was all stripped away, all that was left was Blue. Was that enough?
"What if those someones want something you don't?" Blue asked. It's not that she actually had these conversations with Gansey or Henry in explicit terms, but. "I'm happy now. And I think, I think they are too. But what happens when they're not? I just don't see myself wanting anymore than I have."
She looked out the window where she could see the empty corner of their backyard. "Is there a tree for me to hide inside for a dozen or so years?"
"You don't want to hide in a tree," Maura said immediately, a small smile there at the corners of her mouth. "Someone may build a treehouse within you, most likely your spiteful mother as she tried to coax you out of it."
It was a joke, of course, meant to do little more than soothe what was clearly something that had been on Blue's mind. It once more made Maura want to curse the powers that be that waited so long to bring her to this world, leaving her daughter without her for such a long stretch of time. Blue was independent, of course, and Maura was exceedingly proud of how capable she was. She knew that there was much that Blue no longer needed her mother for, but that didn't stop Maura from wanting to be there for her for the things she did need.
All Maura could do was be happy that she was there now and hope to whoever was listening that it might be enough.
"I can't tell you just how that might turn out." Honesty had always been chief when it came to Maura; the last thing she would ever do was bullshit her daughter, of all people. "But I do know that talking about these things with the someones in question and not just your wise mom is a very good first step. You may never want to get married, but they may never want it either. They might be just as content as you are to continue on as you are. And if it's something that they want in the future, you'll have to talk it out. See if you can come up with a compromise without losing sight of yourself. Do all of those other things that are important in real, adult relationships that they never seem to talk about in movies and smutty books." Maura smiled again, this time a bit more firm. "Open communication. Maybe not the most exciting part of a relationship, but a pretty annoyingly important one."
"Real adult relationships?" Blue said, clinging to the few words that were probably the least important of what Maura said. It was easier to think about being an adult than what open communication between Gansey and Henry would look like. She felt terrible for being mad about how understanding her boyfriends would be and how supportive they were of her choices. Blue always had an opinion, because of principles and morals and whatever else made everything very black-and-white to her.
What she was really worried about was saying something unintentionally cruel that both of them would carry around forever without Blue being wiser. Honesty was sucky.
"But I like talking about things with my wise mom. She gives me good advice before I go rushing into things. And she's never let me do something stupid without giving me really good side eye when I do it anyway." Blue sighed and put her cup down, folding her arms on the table and resting her chin on them. She was tired—tired of feeling stupid when the answers were easy. When did she become someone who made things purposely complicated? Ugh.
"Thanks," Blue said. "I'll talk to them, eventually. I just needed to get all my weird hangups out to someone who—I don't know, gets it." She smiled a little, almost mischievous. "You did too good mom-ing. I'm going to come to you first for all the advice instead of saying you don't understand me! and stomping away. I still could, for dramatic effect?"
Though she tried to quell it, Maura felt a brief swell of pride within her chest at Blue's words. She remembered all too well when she had found out she was pregnant. She had been young and hadn't a single idea what she was doing, but she had decided to go all in. Calla and Persephone had been help in every which way and she'd been convinced plenty of times over that she was screwing up this poor, innocent girl's life during those early years, but she knew that she had to have done a pretty good job. Maybe she was biased, but she knew that Blue was one hell of a person and she knew that she'd been at least marginally involved in shaping her that way.
So, yes -- it felt pretty damn nice to be appreciated, even if she didn't actually need Blue to come out and say the words to know she was.
"I do get it," Maura confirmed, "and I also recommend any and all dramatics for the sake of dramatics. I won't stand in your way. You could even slam the door, if you wanted. Just this once." She smiled herself, matching Blue's mischievousness. "I would ground you for the behavior, but I guess I can't do that anymore since you don't live here. Not that I was ever successful in doing that when you did."
"You've created a paradox, or oxymoron, or whatever. You support dramatics, but dramatics do include not listening to what my parent says and ignoring being grounded," Blue said, throwing up a hand in a casual shrug; an 'I don't make the rules, they just are' gesture. If Maura didn't want her daughter to have a little bit of cheekiness, she should have done a crappier job at raising her. Blue liked her childhood, and her teenage-hood, and whatever young-adulthood she was slowly drifting into.
"Sorry, mom. I literally broke all the rules, and all the curses, and it's actually worked out better for me." If someone told her that she was going to kiss a boy, fight a demon, fall in love, and befriend a slew of Raven Boys who had become her closest friends, Blue's head would have exploded with the impossibility of it. Even the things her family had told her some of it.
"Does it—" Blue paused, reconsidered her words, and tried again. "Is it weird for me not to live here? It's just you and Persephone, and it's way more empty. Are you going to, like, rent my room out to other psychics?"
"It's weird," Maura admitted, because it was true and she dedicated herself to being honest with Blue -- at least as often as she could. "But I think that is just natural in an empty nest sort of way. I've worked so hard to be unpredictable, that I have become predictable in my reaction to my kid moving out to live with her boyfriends on a farm."
Her gaze rose then, looking up at the ceiling as though she could see the empty rooms above her. The quiet itself was weird, too. She almost expected for the hotline to suddenly start ringing and Orla's voice to echo through the hallways and rooms in that uncanny way it always did. She almost expected for Jimi to breeze into the kitchen, unfazed at her interrupting a mother-daughter moment. She almost expected Calla -- no. She couldn't expect Calla. She felt her absence too much for even her wandering thoughts.
"I don't know what Persephone and I will do." They hadn't had that conversation yet, largely because Maura didn't know if she was ready for it and didn't want to broach the topic. "But I do know that your room will always be here, should you ever be in need of it." It was a sincere admission, one that she meant completely. So, of course, she added, "I won't even change anything. It will be like some sort of creepy shrine to your childhood."
Blue knew that face and frowned at the way her mom looked up at the empty rooms. And out of commiseration or just because they were both Sargents—like mother, like daughter—Blue looked up, too. In some ways she appreciated this moment of silence, to feel how the house would be with its own levels of privacy not previously offered. But as she sat across from her mom, thinking about all the people not here, she decided Fox Way being empty was unnatural. The quiet was not quite right.
"I'll come back," Blue said, though she was realizing the irony of saying that as she sat in her kitchen. She scrambled up from her side of the table and dragged a chair closer to Maura. "I'll sleepover so you don't feel too predictable about becoming that kind of parent. Just the regular kind who can not make a face at mentioning her daughter living at a farm with her two boyfriends."
Was it approval for her life choices? Blue didn't know, but she leaned over and kissed Maura's cheek as a thanks.
"And, I also have to make sure you're keeping up my creepy shrine! You have to promise not to, like, sniff my shirts or my scarves or hairclips or anything. I'll know. It is organized chaos, everything has a place."
Maura laughed softly, reaching up to tug gently at Blue's earlobe just once in an apparently affectionate manner. "No sniffing, no reorganizing. I'll just burn some incense in your honor now and again to stink up the place."
Things looked different here than in Vallo, but that was all right. Maura could handle change. There were people missing and that would always be felt, but she had Blue, she had Persephone, she had Blue's boys, in one way or another. And while Maura made an effort to err on the side of sensible, rather than sentimental, she could make an exception -- just this once.