Hidden desires and feelings made it better – 02

I got on the phone to order Pizza. Mom was now looking around like she was missing something.

“Damn girl, always borrowing my stuff,” she stated. “Oh, never mind, there it is,” she amended. I looked over, nodding at her as I finished ordering dinner.

Thirty minutes later the pizza arrived, and mom hadn’t come back down the stairs yet. I went to the landing calling up to her, but there was no answer, so I climbed the stairs until reaching the bedroom hallway. Her bedroom door was shut. I walked over, knocking.

“Mom? Pizza’s here!” I announced. It took a moment before she answered.

“I’ll ah…be down in a few,” she said. She had an odd tone of voice, figured maybe she was just tired, like she said.

“Ok, well…can always warm it up for you when you’re ready too,” I added.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said. And all was silent again.

Oddly enough, she never did come out of her room, so I figured she had simply fallen asleep.

I was in the den watching TV when Stacy arrived home later on that evening. To my surprise, she had a kiss and a smile for me when she came in. “There’s cold pizza if you want some,” I told her.

“Nah thanks. I’m tired. Headed to bed. Long day tomorrow,” she told me, and then headed upstairs. It wasn’t long before I heard her suddenly racing downstairs again.

“Steven?” She asked worriedly.

“Yeah? What?”

“You didn’t happen to take my memory stick for some reason did you?”

“No, why?” I followed Stacy into the kitchen however as she hadn’t responded yet. She seemed to be looking for something.

“Lose something?” Now she looked panicked, still looking around.

“I called earlier. Told Angela I would leave a memory stick out for her on top of my laptop. She needed to download something for me,” she said.

“Yeah, I vaguely remember her saying something about that,” as I recalled.

“She told me she put it back, but I didn’t see it when I went to check.”

Just then I glanced down at the floor. There was a black memory stick that had obviously gotten knocked off the table somehow. I walked over picking it up.

“This it?”

“No, that’s moms. Mine is silver,” she explained. And then suddenly she looked up at me. “Oh my god!”

“What?”

“Was…was mom working on her laptop earlier?” She asked nervously.

“Matter of fact, she was. And matter of fact, come to think of it, mom thought that maybe you’d borrowed or taken something from her. Have anything to do with that?”

I thought for a moment that Stacy was going to get sick up.

**

It was rare that mom ever called in sick. I couldn’t even count the number of times on one hand that she had in the last two years.

“Hmm, maybe she was coming down with something last night,” I mused. Maybe everybody was the way that Stacy had looked shortly after that. Soon after heading upstairs to her room without a further word.

I had stopped by mom’s room on the way to class, though I didn’t dare knock, not hearing anything, and figuring she was still sleeping. So I left. Oddly enough, Stacy had left already as well. Usually she didn’t leave until an hour after I had, having later classes. I figured simply she’d planned on some extra study time, with Angela no doubt. Off to an early start. And with that, I headed off to school.

Little did I know, it was going to turn out to be…”One of those days.”

**

I got home later that afternoon, soon after heading upstairs to the kitchen to fix myself a late afternoon snack. There was a letter sitting on the table addressed to Stacy and I. It was in mom’s hand, so I opened it. It read:

“Steven, I know you’ll be home before your sister is. When she gets home, don’t let her go anywhere. I need to talk to the two of you. So come upstairs to my room as soon as she gets here.”

It was a very strange note to have gotten from my mother. And now it worries me. Was she indeed sick? Was there something she wasn’t telling us? Some secret she’d been keeping from the two of us? I was almost beside myself when Stacy arrived home a short time later. She looked as bad as she had yesterday.

“Seen mom?”