Dee's Hard Limits by Trinity Blacio

Dee hugged her Mom tight.
    “I’m sorry about earlier, Mom. I shouldn’t have spouted off like that. You didn’t know what was going on.” She stepped back and moved to the fireplace. “With you always gone, it got lonely here. I was going crazy all by myself here. You would never stay long. I promised myself if I ever had a daughter, I’d stay with her and that’s when the idea took form.” She turned tears rolled down her cheeks.
    “I didn’t want a man. I’d been in three relationships. The guy that I really liked was murdered by Koti about six months into our relationship. I should have known then not to get close to anyone, but I didn’t listen to the warning signs. Oh, I never stayed long with anyone, too afraid what would happen, but I needed someone to hold me. Night time was the worst. He’d always invade my dreams.” Dee shook and hugged herself.
    “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come back.” Maya asked and went to stand by Dee, who shook her head.
    “I gave up asking a long time ago. Every night when I’d go to sleep and Ester would tuck me in, I’d ask for you, but I always got the same answer. “She’ll be home soon, and you’d pop in for a few days, then you’d be gone again. It hurt too much to keep seeing you go. Don’t you think I saw the way you cringed sometimes when you looked at me? Or how you put me on your wall of shame?” Dee moved to the table of food as Akaos and the others came in.
    Talhrn glared at him. “Outside now, while these two make up their differences,” he demanded.
    “We will stay and wait. You are giving orders? I thought you gave up the command?” Akaos asked, but Talhrn said nothing. The Fellchanter stepped way over the boundaries and he was about to set new ones.
    Maya plopped down on the chair. “I tried. I really did, Dee, but those first few years….” She shook her head. “I just couldn’t get past the nightmares and the guilt. I’m sorry.”
    “Why didn’t you come back later? Did you know he visited me on Christmas? You were away in England I believe and I was 16. Of course I didn’t know it was him until after he left his little gift under the tree.” Dee sat next to her mom.
    “His gift to me...a box of dead snakes? God, I hate snakes.” She shivered.
    Talhrn stepped forward, but she looked at him and shook her head. “I’m okay. Mom, I’m telling you this for a reason. He did what he did to you in one night, or one whatever it was, but me...”
    She placed her hand to her chest. “He does it to me every single day. If I don’t hear from him during the day, he’ll be there at night when I try to sleep. So don’t ever tell me I don’t know how you feel, because I do.” Tears ran down her cheeks and Talhrn could take no more.
    He scooped her up and sat on the couch with her in his lap. “I was selfish and alone. I wanted a child.” Dee curled up tight against him.
    “I had one of my eggs fertilized by a sperm donor. Mom, she was the most beautiful baby in the world. I called her Hope. She was my Hope for the future.” Dee took a drink of the water he handed her.
    “Thanks. I hired a nanny, but I never left her. At two she was into everything.” Dee smiled and played with a charm wrapped around her neck. It was the first time he’d noticed it, which really angered him. He should be on top of everything when it came to their meru .
    “Hope would look at something and study it the way you do. In so many ways I had part of you with me, until that night you called and told me you were coming in.” Dee got up and threw her bottle of water into the fire.
    “I should have never left her. It was the only time I ever left her alone overnight and I’ll always blame myself. He ripped her apart, Momma. He even made a movie of it, making sure I’d see it.” Dee turned.
    “That was over 50 years ago and every time he takes a child, he writes Hope’s name in blood for me to find. So I’m sorry if I snapped at you earlier.