Chosen (House of Night #3)(7)

"There you are. The traffic was just awful. I hate leaving Broken Arrow and fighting my way to Tulsa during the holiday rush."

As if my thoughts had somehow tragically conjured her, my mother's voice threw cold water on my happiness. Grandma and I let go of each other to see my mom standing beside our table, holding a rectangular bakery box and a wrapped present.

"Mom?"

"Linda?"

Grandma and I spoke together. It was no surprise that Grandma looked as shocked as me by my mother's sudden appearance. Grandma would never have invited my mother without letting me know. Both of us saw totally eye to eye about my mother. One, she made us sad. Two, we wished she would change. Three, we knew she probably wouldn't.

"Don't look so surprised. Like I wouldn't show up at my own daughter's birthday celebration?"

"But, Linda, when I talked with you last week you said you were going to send Zoey's birthday present to her through the mail," Grandma said, looking as annoyed as I felt.

"That was before you said you were meeting her here." Mom told Grandma, then she frowned at me. "It's not like Zoey invited me to come herself, but then I'm used to having an inconsiderate daughter."

"Mom, you haven't talked to me in a month. How was I supposed to invite you anywhere?" I tried to keep my tone neutral. I really didn't want Grandma's visit to deteriorate into a big drama scene, but my mom hadn't said ten sentences and she was already totally pissing me off. Except for the stupid Christmas-birthday card she'd sent me, the only communication I'd had with my mom had been when she and her awful husband, the step-loser, had come to parent visitation at the House of Night a month ago. It had been a complete nightmare. The step-loser, who was an Elder for the People of Faith Church, had been his usual narrow-minded, judgmental, bigoted self and had ended up basically being thrown out and told never to come back. As usual, my mom had scampered along after him like a good little submissive wife.

"Didn't you get my card?" Mom's brittle tone started to crumble under my steady look.

"Yes, Mom. I did."

"See, I've been thinking about you."

"Okay, Mom."

"You know, you could call your mother once in a while," she said a little tearfully.

I sighed. "Sorry, Mom. School's just been crazy with semester finals and all."

"I hope you're getting good grades at that school."

"I am, Mom." She made me feel sad and lonely and angry at the same time.

"Well, good." Mom wiped her eyes and started bustling around with the packages she'd brought. In an obviously forced cheerful voice she added, "Come on, let's all sit down. Zoey, you can go into Starbucks and get us something to drink in a minute. It's a good thing your grandma invited me. As usual, no one else thought to bring a cake."

We sat down and Mom wrestled with the tape on the bakery box. While she was busy, Grandma and I shared a look of complete understanding. I knew she hadn't invited Mom, and she knew I absolutely hated birthday cake. Especially the cheap, overly sweet cake my mom always ordered from the bakery. With the kind of horrible fascination usually reserved for gawking at car wrecks I watched Mom open the bakery box and reveal a small square one-layer white cake. The generic Happy Birthday was written in red, which matched the red poinsettias blobbed at each corner. Green icing trimmed the whole thing.

"Doesn't it look good? Nice and Christmassy," Mom said as she tried to pick off the half-price sticker from the lid of the box. Then she froze and looked at me with overly wide eyes. "But you don't celebrate Christmas anymore, do you?"

I found the fake smile I'd been using earlier and replanted it on my face. "We celebrate Yule, or Winter Solstice, which was two days ago."

"I'll bet the campus is beautiful right now." Grandma smiled at me and patted my hand.

"Why would the campus be beautiful?" Mom's brittle tone was back. "If they don't celebrate Christmas, why should they decorate Christmas trees?"

Grandma beat me to the explanation. "Linda, Yule was celebrated a long time before Christmas. Ancient peoples have been decorating Christmas trees," she said the words with a slightly sarcastic intonation, "for thousands of years. It was Christians who adopted that tradition from Pagans, not the other way around. Actually, the church chose December twenty-fifth as the date of Jesus' birth to coincide with Yule celebrations. If you'll remember, the whole time you were growing up we rolled pinecones in peanut butter, strung apples and popcorn and cranberries together, and decorated an outside tree that I always called our Yule tree, along with our inside Christmas tree." Grandma smiled a kinda sad, kinda confused smile at her daughter before turning back to me. "So did you decorate the trees on campus?" I nodded. "Yeah, they look amazing, and the birds and squirrels are going totally nuts, too."

"Well, why don't you open your presents, then we can have cake and coffee?" My mom said, acting like Grandma and I had never spoken.

Grandma brightened. "Yes, I've been looking forward to giving you these for a month now." She bent and withdrew two presents from under her side of the table. One was big and tented with brightly colored (and definitely not Christmas) wrapping paper. The other was book-sized and covered in cream-colored tissue paper like you'd get from a chic boutique. "Open this one first." Grandma pushed the tented present to me and I eagerly unwrapped it to find the magic of my childhood underneath.