Mom made a frustrated huff before swapping the phone to her other ear. “I’ll get some of the charcoal and drive in to see you. Where in Boston are you?”
“Oh my gosh, Mom; are you even serious?”
“Emmie, one day, you’ll learn what it’s like to be a mother. Then everything I do might not surprise—or annoy—you so much.”
Her words tore at my heart. In choosing a life with Nick in Tudor England, I’d all but abandoned my devoted mom. I wished that I’d never had to choose between them.
After she assured me that her car hadn’t acted up in ages, I said I’d meet her at the library up the street. While reminding her of the time urgency, I asked her to chuck anything edible into her bag and to give our dog Ruby a massive cuddle from me.
It was a relief to enter the library, its warm atmosphere wrapping around me like a hug. I settled into a comfy armchair, flicking through a fashion magazine. Holy smokes, I’ve missed fashion magazines. When their garish colors and stories about celebrity spats became overwhelming, though, I dropped the dog-eared booklet back into the rack and scanned the nearest bookshelf.
It was the boring language section, and I went to move on until the thick spine of a lime-green tome caught my eye. It was a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, and I flicked through to the ‘L’ chapter, scanning for the phrase Lex talionis.
There it was, in black and white.
* * *
Lex talionis: the law of retaliation, e.g. ‘an eye for an eye’.
* * *
An uncomfortable feeling slithered into my gut, settling there. An eye for an eye—why would the witch say that to me?
I tried to distract myself with an old crime novel that someone had left on the table, but three chapters in, I felt like I hadn’t absorbed a word. I was eighteen and married with a husband at war, my friend was dying, and I was trying to read about a celebrity murderer who took out predatory men with her stilettos.
A middle-aged woman with scraggy blonde hair pushed through the library doors. It took me a second to recognize my mom. Her cheeks were sunken, and she’d lost weight. She hugged me without saying anything.
“I missed you,” I said into her shoulder. She squeezed harder.
She shook her head at my billowy kirtle with bell sleeves but said nothing about it. I dragged two armchairs closer together, and Mom uncoiled a knitted scarf from her neck.
“I gather you don’t have long,” she said, handing me a crumpled shopping bag. Inside was a white plastic bottle labeled ‘Activated Charcoal: Poison Antidote’ alongside the directions for use and a bunch of medical jargon.
“Thanks so much for this,” I said, the stiff plastic bottle unlike anything I’d seen in the sixteenth century. I should’ve brought an apothecary jar to transfer the contents into. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay long,” I added, my voice cracking. “My friend’s really sick.”
Mom had also brought me a packet of trail mix and two yogurt-coated granola bars. I downed the lot in a few bites, gulping water from her bottle. She tried to give me money, but I insisted that I didn’t need it. US dollars didn’t buy much in Tudor England.
“Is the charcoal for your friend Nick?” Mom said carefully. Her eyes were roaming all over me, searching for signs of injury or perhaps unhappiness.
“No, it’s for a friend of ours...her name’s Lucy.” I left out the part about Lucinda having a baby daughter who’d just survived a form of tuberculosis.
Mom’s hands twisted together, fidgeting. “If you take me to her, I can administer the medicine properly. It should really be given through a nasogastric tube, but I assume you don’t have one of those.”
“Yeah, we don’t have one of those.”
We do have leeches, though, and bloodletting. Oh, and that gallstone thing.
“It’ll stain her teeth black if she drinks it,” Mom warned. “Possibly permanently.”
“It’s okay. A lot of people where she lives have black teeth. It’s actually kind of trendy there.”
Mom frowned. “It’s also critical that your friend doesn’t aspirate this. That would make everything a heck of a lot worse. I also told you the charcoal will probably have absolutely no effect after this much time, right?”
“Yeah. But you never know…I have to try.”
She paused, her fingers still fidgeting. “Can I come with you?”
My face fell. “You know you can’t.”
Mom wound her scarf back around her neck. “I know. Time travel and all that.” Her posture stiffened.
My voice cracked with exhaustion, but—as usual—I had no time to lose. I stood up and gave Mom another hug that signaled it was already time for me to head off.
“Your dad wants to see you,” she said as we pulled away, my hands sliding down to her bony wrists. “He asked me to call him as soon as you got back in touch.”
“Is everything okay?”
She nodded, a blush creeping across her skin. “He just wants to catch up with you. It’s a shame that it took all this for him to wake up, but I think he finally has. Can you believe it?”
My teeth dug into my bottom lip. After a decade of Dad being largely a no-show, I’d expected my mom to give the guy a tougher time about wanting a free pass back into my life. The problem was that Mom had zero sense when it came to my old man, and this time I wasn’t here to help her handle his miraculous comeback.
You can always visit your mom now and then, Emmie. That’s if you can find some medieval charger-cable thingy for the blue-diamond ring so it doesn’t conk out.
“I have to go,” I said tightly. Mom’s hollow cheeks blurred through my tears.
She wrapped her arms around me again. I wasn’t the only one crying. I reminded myself that college-aged kids across America were living apart from their parents. This was normal. If only Tudor England didn’t feel so many centuries away—literally.
Mom brushed her nose with her knuckle. “Can I drop you off somewhere?”
“No, thanks...I’ll just be here for a little bit longer.” I eyed the quiet corner with the comfy armchairs that were out of view of the security cameras. With any luck, I could fall asleep there without ending up on a paranormal reality television show about mysterious vanishings.
Mom nodded at the blue-diamond ring on my thumb. “Ah, right. You have to disappear.” She waved a hand magically.
I clutched her delicate fingers one last time. “Thank you so much for driving all this way. I know it was a big ask, and I’m so grateful.”
“You didn’t ask; I offered,” Mom corrected. “And I’d do it again tomorrow if it meant I got to see you, even for a few minutes.”
“Mom,” I pleaded, reaching toward her as she stepped backward. She nodded like she was going to be okay, but her crumpled face betrayed the gesture.
I watched her stop at the book display by the entrance, grabbing a title that caught her eye. She held the book up in the air and smiled at me before returning it to the shelf. After blowing me a tear-stained kiss, Mom slipped away from me through the double doors.
I felt like the worst daughter who’d ever lived.