Chapter 59: Cured Sleeper
Finally, finally, after the 48 hours that she’d had, Emily was finally home.
There was nothing quite like nearly being attacked and beaten to death in a foreign place to make a person glad to see the same washed out buildings that she had been seeing for most of her life. Even the dirty polluted air smelled fresh to her. She took a deep breath, inhaled someone’s second hand cigarette smoke and coughed, yep, home sweet home. To celebrate, she stopped by the grocery store and bought a tub of ice cream, before making her way go her apartment building. Now she was in front of her door and trying to work out a way to open it. Jiggling around a bit Emily got a hold of her keys without having to put down he shopping bag, nor her bag of clothes. Had anyone seen her, they would have thought that she had ants in her pants, or maybe a scorpion down her back. Luckily no one was there to witness her key dance. Then she inserted the key into the hole and turned it. She opened the front door to their apartment with a flourish, took one step, two steps, and was halted in her tracks by her mother all but slamming into her.
"Ems!" She squealed, enveloping her in a hug. All of the effort Emily had taken to make sure that she did not drop anything at the door was suddenly wasted effort. She let go of her bags and they dropped onto the carpet. But in that moment she did not care. All that mattered was that she was home. And not only was she home, she was with her mom, and her mom was hugging her. Emily returned the hug, clinging just as tightly to her mother as her mother was to her. Laughing freely, the two of them jumped around in place. And then they broke apart, looked at each other, smiled.
Then they went in for another hug. The process repeated several more times. If anyone were to come in a see them, they would probably think that the two of them had not seen each other in years, given how they were acting.
But Emily did not care, seeing her mother again, getting to hold her, to hug her, was just too big of an opportunity for her to mess it up, by thinking of what other people would think when they saw them.
When they finally broke apart for good, they were both crying.
"Come on now, this is a happy occasion. There is no time for crying, wipe those tears, Ems," Her mom, the hypocrite said, a big smile on her face as she wiped away the tears on Emily’s face.
But if the older woman was a hypocrite then Emily was a liar. Reaching out to wipe her mother’s tears she told a bold faced lie.