Julia closure draft

The stairs creak; I pour two mugs and put them at the two places set at the breakfast table. Slow steps shuffle across the floor and I grab the potholders, turning the oven from 'warm' to 'off' before I slip them on. The footsteps pause.

"Sit down, mom," I say as I open the oven door. "Coffee's on the table. Breakfast will be served in a minute."

"Julia..." she sounds like she's not sure if she's glad, or heartbroken.

The strata is golden-brown on the top and it smells amazing. I set it on the counter and turn to face my mother, pot-holdered hands on my hips. "Call into work. Tell Nathan an old friend is in town. We need to talk."

She doesn't sit down. She stands at the kitchen phone, leaning against the wall, and I can hear her shakily tell Nathan that she's not feeling well and won't be in while the serving spoon breaks through the cheesy top layer, releasing fragrant steam. I spoon two generous servings onto the prepared plates with their decorative spray of melon half-slices and take them to the table.

"Julia?" she says again, like she's doubting her sanity.

"Sit," I repeat firmly. "Eat. Before it gets cold."

Eleanor sits. After a moment, she picks up her fork and takes a bite. "This is very good," she mumbles in surprised awe.

"They're called spices, mom," I say dryly. "I'd tell you to try it sometime, but..."

She puts her fork down. "How soon?" she asks. "Until this timeline...ends."

For a long moment I don't answer, because I saw the disapproval flash across her face and heard the ringing ghost of words unsaid: So that's why you're here, hmm? It takes the end of the world to visit your poor mother? And then, of course, the old argument - that she's not my mother, yes she's not but as long as I live under her roof, etc, and then the metaphoric cliff's edge of but I don't live under your roof.

"A couple of days," I tell her quietly. "I don't want to be more specific."

She nods and for a minute we both eat in silence before she says, "Who else knows?"

"Gloria," I say, swallowing melon. "Dave. Vince. Mike Gallagher. Don't bother trying to get a hold of anyone but Gloria."

"Why's that?" she asks with a frown.

"She's going to see how much of her booze collection she can drink without dying."

Another silent stretch while we eat; it really is a good strata, but surprise surprise I do actually know how to cook.

"You're here for closure," Eleanor says as we're sipping coffee.

I put my cup down. "My last words were-"

"You mean my daughter's last words," she corrects with an edge to her voice.

Nope. Tiny angry cowgirl. "My last words," I repeat, "because I watched my life here, I lived that life, and I am your daughter!" A pause to rein in my temper. "My last words were, Is it in yet?. It's not just closure for me, mom. It's closure for you, too. You deserve to know the sort of woman you raised, and you raised a woman who, in her last coherent moments, chose to mock the man doing everything in his power to break her."

Dark laughter while mom looks shocked, probably at me even raising the subject of my death.

"It made him so mad," I tell her gleefully. "He's supposed to be the Big, Bad Crocker torturing the terrified little Carr girl, and she's giving him sass about the size of his penis."

"You shouldn't have," she says sternly. "Maybe if you hadn't..."

Yeah, no. "He was always going to kill me. I knew it from the moment I woke up: that he was going to kill me unless I killed him. So I fought. But he was an adult serial killer and I was a skinny little 16-year-old girl with no combat experience. Still gave him a run for his money, though," I say proudly. "If it hadn't been for that lucky hit with the pipe wrench..."

"I can't believe you're being so calm about this," she says, glowering.

I shrug. "Everything else I've wanted in life, I've had to fight for against someone bigger and more powerful than me, why should that have been any different? It's not like he got out of it unscathed - there's a reason he up and vanished for two weeks afterwards. He may have raped and killed me, but he sure didn't get to enjoy it. He slunk off with his tail between his legs to heal, and then when he came back and tried to take it out on his son..."

Mom looks like she hates herself for wanting to know as vengeful chuckles bubble up out of me, but she says, "Duke killed him."

"With a sledgehammer." I toast her with my nearly-empty mug. "His name's Cam now, by the way. We picked it out together. Having his own name has really helped him move on and heal from the shithole his life was here." The mug gets drained and I stand up. "More coffee?"

She manages to make handing over the mug into a gesture of giving in to the inevitable. While I'm up, I cover the strata and slide the pan into the bottom shelf of the fridge. Then I refill our mugs and return to the table. Mom takes hers with a murmur that might have been 'thank you'.

After a fortifying sip of coffee and a moment to appreciate the good beans I brought with me, I fire the olive branch across the bow. "So, how much of your parenting was Vince leaning on you?"

With a groan, mom puts her mug down and covers her face with both hands. "Every week," she groans. "Every week he'd say to me, 'Eleanor, you need to keep that child under control.' Like you were running around murdering people instead of just giving me attitude. I know I wasn't the best mother, but..." Shaking her head tiredly, she picks up her mug and takes an appreciative sip. "I tried to keep you in line, away from bad influences, but any time you fought me and he found out, you'd think I was letting you run around naked or join a motorcycle gang or...what's so funny?" she asks with well-founded suspicion as I start to laugh.

"I own a motorcycle," I say between chuckles. "I grew up to be exactly what he was terrified I'd become: an active Carver who could look him in the eye and say 'no'. Have you heard stories about my great-grandmother?"

"I've heard that there were stories," she hedges. "Your father - you know he got reports?" At my nod, she continues, "He used to chuckle and shake his head and say, 'just like Granny' at the things that had Vince making me feel like the worst mother in history, but he never said anything else about her." She sighs. "Your father never blamed me, but the way he looked at your funeral...he withdrew after that, barely talked to anyone and almost never left his house. I like to think he blamed Vince," she finishes in a viciously conspiratorial whisper.

Well, that's a perfect opening and I fully intend to mosey on through. 

"He did," I tell her firmly. "I know, because he told me so. And it was Vince's fault. Dave knows, too."

Mom looks understandably startled. "It was? How?"

"Let us adjourn to the sitting room, Mother Dearest," I say with a grand sweep of my arm. "And I shall regale you with the events of mere months before my untimely demise, wherein you might actually discover a few shreds of respect for your son-in-law."

She shakes her head, but she also stands up. "You mean Duke, right? Y-your Duke? Not..."

"Nope." I grin as I stand as well. "I mean Cam. He's the one who legally tied the knot with me. Made his entire month. For days after, I'd wake up to him just watching me in adoration and murmuring 'tiny wife' in an awestruck voice." 

The habitual disdain on her face fades slightly. "At least he appreciates you," she says dismissively, and leads the way to the couch.


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"You!" Dave exclaims as he opens the door and sees me standing grimly on the porch. A furtive look around and he hisses, "Get inside!" while waving me in. Once the door is closed behind me, however, he looks terrified.

"I'm not angry at you," I tell him, despite my nearly vibrating with rage. It's true. I'm not angry at him. "I'm here for my birthday present."

"Y-your..."

"It's on your dresser. Thank you for keeping it safe, but it's mine and I want it back. He got it for me from Jamaica."

Dave looks like he's about to be drawn and quartered. "You know!" he gasps out.

"I know," I repeat shortly. "I'm not angry at you. I'm just here for my birthday present."

"B-but then...the timeline is..."

"Going to end in a few days, yes. Drink all your sodas and spend some quality time with your old magazines and your tapes of Oprah Winfrey. And don't look for Vince."

The terror bleeds out, leaving something hard and wary. "What did you do?"

My chin lifts slightly, rage and defiance. "I'm giving him a taste of the hell he kept my husband in for sixteen years."

He thinks about that for a minute, wary hardness fading into equally hard regret. "I won't ask what you did. Whatever it is, he deserves it for what he did," Dave says quietly. "I'll be right back with your present."

It takes less than two minutes, and then he's hurrying back with an open cardboard box. Tissue paper is peeking out of the top, and he tilts it slightly to display the carved wooden falcon with the smaller falcon inside. For a second I'm sixteen, heart thumping in my chest because it's beautiful, and he got it for me, and then I'm tiny angry dragon screeching impotent fury because that was stolen from us and I died not knowing that he loved me every bit as hopelessly as I loved him...and worse, he went sixteen years through hell not knowing that his feelings were very much requited.

"Thank you." The words are nearly inaudible over the rustle of tissue paper as I cover my precious treasure and close the cardboard. When I raise my eyes, they're wet with tears both angry and anguished. "You were as good to him as you could be. He appreciates that.