I had always assumed the young goth woman who visited my mother every Saturday was simply an unexpected friend.
I never understood their relationship.
She was young. My mother was seventy-three. They came from completely different generations and seemed, at least from the outside, to have very little in common.
But Mom welcomed her into the house.
Every Saturday.
And eventually, I stopped asking too many questions.
After my mother died, I learned that their relationship had been far more personal than I ever realized.
It had nothing to do with what I had assumed.
And the more I uncovered, the more I realized that my mother had been carrying a regret for years—a regret none of us had ever fully understood.
I learned the truth at her funeral.
Raven waited until almost everyone had left before she finally came over to me.
I had spent most of the service pretending not to watch her.
She stood quietly at the back of the room in a long black coat. Silver rings caught the light near her eyebrow and nose, and dark tattoos covered her arms.
I’d seen her sitting at my mother’s kitchen table almost every Saturday for months.
I’d never understood why she was there.
Now my mother was gone.
And Raven was walking toward me with one hand closed tightly around something.
“Maeve.”
I turned.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
She nodded.
Then she opened her hand.
A small brass key rested across her palm.
“What is that?”
“Your mom told me to give you this only after she was gone.”
I stared at the key.
“What does it open?”
Raven hesitated.
“She said you’d know when you found it.”
“What does it open?”
My chest tightened.
“Why didn’t she give it to me herself?”
Raven looked at me for a moment.
“Maybe because she knew you’d put it somewhere safe and avoid finding out.”
Her words hit harder than they should have.
“You don’t know me.”
“No,” she said quietly. “But Doris did.”
For one ugly second, my grief turned into anger.
“Why did my mother trust you with this?”
Raven’s expression softened.
“I didn’t know her better than you did, Maeve.”
“Then why do you have the key?”
“Because I knew a part of her you didn’t.”
Before I could ask what she meant, my husband, Tom, appeared near the doors carrying my coat.
Raven stepped backward.
“Don’t put it in a drawer.”
Then she walked away.
I stood there with the key pressing into my palm.
And one question wouldn’t leave my mind.
What had my mother been hiding from me?
The Girl at My Mother’s Kitchen Table
The first time I saw Raven, she was drinking tea from my mother’s good china and sitting in my father’s old chair.
I stopped in the kitchen doorway with two grocery bags cutting into my fingers.
“Mom?”
My mother, Doris, looked up.
At seventy-three, she was still happiest in that same little kitchen, with her garden outside and a book usually open somewhere nearby.
“There you are, Maeve.”
The young woman beside her turned.
She couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five.
She wore black from her neck to her boots. Tattoos covered both forearms, and several silver piercings caught the light whenever she moved.
My mother smiled.
“This is Raven. She’s a friend.”
Raven stood.
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
I set the grocery bags down, still glancing at my father’s old chair.
Raven noticed.
“Am I sitting somewhere I shouldn’t?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “It’s fine.”
I looked at Mom.
“So how do you two know each other?”
“We met over coffee,” Mom said.
“At the bookstore café,” Raven added. “She told me I was reading a terrible book.”
Mom smiled.
“It was terrible.”
I laughed despite myself.
But then I noticed the atmosphere between them.
There was something familiar there.
Something I couldn’t quite place.
I looked at Mom.
“I thought I was spending the afternoon with you.”
“We can do that next Saturday.”
I stared at her.
“You’re asking me to leave?”
“We’re in the middle of something private.”
Raven immediately glanced between us.
“I can go.”
“No,” Mom said too quickly.
That stung.
I picked up my purse.
“Maeve,” Mom said softly. “I love you. But I don’t need you to manage every part of my life.”
“Saturdays are usually ours.”
“I know.”
I looked at Raven, then at Mom.
“Right. I’ll get out of your way.”
I turned toward the door.
Then I noticed a small wooden box beside Raven’s elbow.
Mom followed my eyes.
Without saying anything, she quietly pulled a dish towel over it.
That did nothing to make me feel better.
“Fine,” I said.
Mom sighed.
“There it is again.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“That word you use when nothing is fine.”
I didn’t answer.
I left before I said something I would regret.
I Wasn’t Angry at Raven. I Was Jealous.
“She was there again,” I told Tom that evening.
We were sitting together at the kitchen table.
“Raven?”
“Two Saturdays in a row.”
“Did your mom seem upset?”
“No.”
Tom waited.
“That’s almost what bothers me.”
“Why?”
“Because she seemed happy. Comfortable.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug.
“And I still don’t know who this girl is.”
Tom leaned back.
“She makes you uncomfortable?”
“She’s twenty-something, Tom. Mom barely knows her, and suddenly they’re having private conversations every weekend.”
