It’s not like I had to walk. I could’ve called a community tram to pick me up. Or I could’ve biked, since I bike now, and the weather’s been unseasonably fantastic these past few days. But sometimes, you just know you have to feel the ground beneath your feet, some sort of connection to the world. So, I’m walking to our meeting spot.
She’d like to hear that I’m biking, I figure. That I’m still keeping active after all these years.
The road is still wet from an overnight rain, making it shimmer before me in the mid-morning sun. It’s a beautiful piece of land, Anchorage, or at least the parts that aren’t clumps of char and desperation. The kids in City Hall have a longer name for our settlement now, some new political phraseology they were itching to use once they got into the driver’s seat. I won’t pretend like I was more dignified when I was in their position, god bless them, but it’ll always be Anchorage to me. I didn’t grow up here, but I like to think I’ve earned some protectiveness over the name; it’s thirty years to the day since we arrived, ashen refugees looking for a safe place to call home.
Does she remember that? She was so young when we fled the West Coast kilo-fires. She didn’t understand much about governments collapsing and the ozone rip, only that we were on some grand adventure to a new and exciting place. Alaska might as well have been the land of make-believe. It wasn’t real for her yet.
Our settlement sits between two parcels of mountains, safe from most of the outside weather and uninvited guests. At the end of the valley, it opens up into more of what is considered the “outside world” these days. I emerge from the shadows and spot my destination: the skeleton remains of a chain coffee shop. It had some horribly bland name before, but the new operators lovingly sprayed “LAST CHANCE COFFEE” over a broken-down sign near the entrance, next to a crude smiling coffee cup. Much better.
I had half a mind to bring my ledger and get some work done. I’m out of official work for the settlement’s government now, but some pro bono projects here and there keep me busy. The kids need all the help they can get. But I ended up leaving it behind, intentionally or not.
No, that was intentional. I don’t know why I’m lying to myself otherwise. I wanted a clear mind to think about what I’d say when I saw her again, but I ended up staring at the horizon ahead of me for the whole trip. I didn’t think I’d go seventeen years without talking to my daughter. I certainly didn’t think I’d need to prepare so much. It took a small army of intermediaries to get to her, to say nothing of the assurances I had to offer that I wouldn’t try to steal her back. The horizon offers me no extra help; just an eggshell blue canvas to find some peace in.
I’m almost sick of staring into nothing when the hum of a particularly abrasive engine cuts across the landscape. Some scared part of me wants to run on reflex, the truck’s song bringing back a few unpleasant memories. But I stand my ground and look to see if I can spot a familiar face in the military truck’s interior. Of course, there’s nothing but tinted windows and bulletproof plating — security, presumably to keep away anyone not deemed friendly.
After an eternity of waiting, the car comes to a gentle stop. A door creaks open, and I hear a steely voice thank its escort. It’s new and hard to discern, but there are traces of a bucktoothed little girl, too kind for her own good. I see her now, in living, cynical color, staring me down from across the road. Despite all its harsher angles and little marks of age, her face is still the same in the ways that matter: my nose and eyes, with her father’s ginger hair and half-smile.
“Sammy,” I whisper. She winces like she found a way to hear the old nickname over the wind and sea of history between us.
“Hey, Mom,” she replies, giving me none of the excitement I hoped for or resentment I feared. Of course, she’s changed a bit on the way to becoming a woman; some new wrinkles and a little bit of weight are to be expected, after all. Her clothes are certainly an upgrade over what the settlement could offer, though I chalk that up to the benefits of her position within the Battalion. I don’t expect her to rush into my arms after so long, but her sustained silence on the road still finds a way to hurt me. Neither of us really move for a moment, until I watch her eyes dart to the coffee shop.
“You know, it’s really fantastic, this place,” I try. “It’s so great that they can have coffee out here, so far from the settlement. Just fantastic.”
“Yeah, no,” she says, eyeing up the shop. “Fantastic.” She must have become used to nicer coffee shops, I suppose, judging by her skeptical tone.
We shrug and nod at each other some more, since finding words seems to be beyond either of us at the moment. The torture continues as we head inside, grabbing the attention of two far more vocal baristas, arguing with each other about something I won’t dare ask about.
“Hi!” One finally chirps at us, looking at us with too excited eyes. “Welcome to Last Chance Coffee, where we… we do…”
“God, Courtney,” the other one hisses, looking similar enough to be an older sister, “how many times do we have to go over this? It’s literally our motto.”
“It’s alright, we’ve all been there,” I offer, snapping them out of whatever feud I walked in on. “Just start from the beginning and try your best.”
“Right, okay.” The girl, Courtney, shifts her feet, closes her eyes in some sort of ritual, then takes it from the top. “Welcome to Last Chance Coffee, where we do… wedocoffeewell! What’ll your order be?”
“Great job!” It’s not the correct script, and her maybe-sister grimaces like she knows it, but Courtney seems happy with herself and that’s good enough for me. “I’ll order a green tea, please. One dollop of honey, if you have it. Sammy?”
I turn to face her heavy eyes glowering at the back of my skull, ones that I assume were trained there during the previous theatrics. She wrestles with herself for a moment, but not about her order. “Black coffee. Thanks,” she mumbles after a pause.
We find a table close to the door, a cool breeze sneaking through an open window nearby. We both sit and fiddle with the chairs for a moment too long, but then we actually have to look at each other.
“Weather’s good,” I try after a pause.
She nods and rubs her wrist absent-mindedly. “No, yeah. That little bit of rain yesterday was good.”
“And it’s not too cold either,” I respond quickly, my vacant words flowing into each other. “This past winter was just dreadful.”
“Aren’t they all?” She doesn’t even bother to laugh at her own half-hearted joke, a sign that she’s already burnt out from small talk. “So, why did you want to meet?” Her eyes spared themselves from outright hostility so far, more awkward than anything else. But I can tell she’s anxious about saying more, her mouth screwing up at the end to ration careful breaths.
“Well, it’s been a while.” Yeah, I should’ve prepared for this ahead of time. “I thought maybe we should catch up, see what’s going on with each other. Especially today, on the anniversary.”
She cocks her head at me. “That was in November, I thought.”
“No, no. Not ‘Serenity Day.’” She recoils at the holiday’s name before I continue. “I meant when our family first came to Anchorage.”
“Oh, right. That anniversary, I remember.” She sits back in her chair, scratching her temple aimlessly. “‘Serenity Day,’ huh? Is that what you guys are calling the day of the pact?”
I watch her some more for a moment, trying to appraise if her lack of decent manners is intentional or not. “Yes,” I reply after a moment. “We decided a while ago that the pact is worth celebrating. The settlement is safe because of it.” Because of me, but I don’t need that to be said.
“Right.” Yeah, it’s definitely intentional. “So, what’s that look like? Gift-giving? A feast of the sacrificial virgin?”
“Of course not.” We both laugh at the absurdity of that concept, and for a moment, it feels good and natural, an interest payment on missed years of family back-and-forth. “That first year after the pact, we started with a remembrance for those who died in the Battalion’s siege. Laying of wreaths and whatnot. It sort of progressed from there into being more of an educational event about the pact; I think some schoolkids put on a play about the siege’s collapse this year.”
“Uh-huh,” Sammy responds, taking a long sip of her coffee. “Did the Battalion have anything to say about that?”
“Oh, well, you know.” Her blank expression tells me that she, of course, does not. “We don’t talk regularly, but it got back to us that they objected to being called the brutish army of a fallen government. So, we made the choice to make it seem like the problem was on a few bad actors within their ranks. That ended up being far more palatable. Now they’re our ‘strategic allies,’ and we take the day to celebrate the peace that the pact brought to both sides.”
Sammy rubs the same spot on her wrist absentmindedly, but her eyes are somewhere far away. “And, uh, who played me last year? In the school play, I mean.”
“We found a girl that had teeth like you did, fourteen years old, with the tooth gap and everything. The perfect bride, really.” I need to bring her back to me, more than I need air between my words. “But it was a hot competition, we must’ve had thirty girls trying to be you!”
We both laugh again, but she’s sharper, more cutting than before. The very act seems to hurt her, a feature she resents more than the pain itself. We’re having different conversations now. Maybe we have been since the beginning.
Things are allowed to simmer down for a long moment, the sense apparently mutual that something isn’t quite right. After looking out of the window at nothing in particular, Sammy tries to get the conversation going again. “And how’s your work for the settlement going? Still Miss Governor or whatever?”
“Don’t be like that,” I reply too harshly, before steadying myself. “No, I retired a bit ago. You should come around, if your husband lets you.”
“If my husband lets me?” She scoffs a little loud for my liking. But then again, she’s not my sullen teenager anymore, despite her insistence on acting like one. “Nice. And whose fault is that?”
“You’re not being fair, Sammy,” I answer. “You know the position I was in, what they were asking for. If you weren’t the one to go, the Battalion was ready to burn the whole settlement down.”
“Stop trying to convince me of what I know and don’t,” she hisses at me like I’m her enemy. “What I know is that I didn’t go there willingly, I was married away against―”
“And here we are!” Courtney-the-Barista proclaims, letting our drinks interrupt what was about to become the litigation we’ve both been waiting years for.
“Thank you, Courtney,” I say, and I mean it. My daughter, who I know I raised better, says nothing.
“Of course! And if it isn’t too much trouble,” she retrieves a vinyl-bound composition book from a back pocket, “we’d love to have you sign our VIP book, Madame Governor. It’s just a silly little thing for us to remember some of our more notable customers.”
“That’s not too much trouble at all.” I try to force a smile back on while giving the book a quick scribble. Sammy glowers while sipping her coffee, even after Courtney gets to leave with a signed book and a good story. Lucky girl.
“Nice to see some things haven’t changed,” Sammy mutters, mumbling into her coffee.
“God, do you even want to be here?” Stupid question.
“No, I don’t.” And yet, that simple answer finds a way to surprise me in all the worst ways. “I came because I, stupidly, thought that this would be an apology, not a social call. My mistake was assuming you’d act like a real human being, and not a politician in search of an easy conscience. And for the record, Madame Governor,” and her tone hurts more than words could describe, “I could’ve visited you any time I wanted these past few years. Mark became the Battalion’s deputy base commander a while ago. I’m important now. Not just a hostage in your schemes.”
“Well, that’s good I guess.” It’s the best I can manage, with the weight of that revelation choking down any better response. I want to scream at her, ask her why she wouldn’t visit, if her husband would even let her out of his sight without a minder and a curfew. But I can’t scare her away, not after waiting so long for this moment. “I’m glad he’s important, then.”
“God, you just can’t help yourself.” And maybe that’s unfair, but she’s already slipping out of my grasp, if I ever held her here at all. “Do you take comfort in that? That horse-trading your daughter to a stranger happened to work out in the end?” She stands to leave, grabbing her coffee cup and shrugging her coat back on, revealing a purplish bruise on her wrist. I move to grab it on instinct, but she’s too fast, already stalking off from the table. “You got everything you wanted, after all. The Battalion stopped their siege and played ball. Your settlement grew into a lovely little town with their protection. And you got to play politics for a while, instead of just being one of the ‘normal’ people.” She sets her coffee on the now-evacuated bar before heading to the door. “You knew the cost when you shipped me away, how precisely small you would make my life. You knew the whole time. I hope it was worth it.”
With that, she silently opens the door, not caring to slam it on her way out. No yelling or vulgar accusations towards me, just words years-in-the-making and something I don’t want to call disappointment.
No.
My daughter is disappointed in me.
No.
My daughter only thinks she’s disappointed in me. She just doesn’t understand. She needs to see how precious she is to her mother, who only ever wanted the best for her and her community. That’s all.
I spring out of my chair with a silent vow to pick up my cooling tea later. I race out of the shop to find her getting into the still-waiting truck, ready to leave me behind.
“Wait!” I shout over the engine’s rumbling, trying to make a desperate point into the wind. “Just wait. Slow down, let’s just talk.”
I watch her sigh and slump her shoulders down, in what I’ll pretend is enduring love for her mother, before getting back out of the truck and approaching me. “And talk about what? Do you actually have something to say now?”
“Yeah, I do.” I shift in my stance, letting a lifetime of politics and peacebuilding help me come off as the loving mother I am. “Do you know how hard it was on me? To be forced to let you go like that? It killed me, Sammy.”
“Did it?” The doubt in her voice is the only thing she knows for certain. “Did it really hurt you to do that? Because you didn’t have a lot of trouble shipping me away when they asked for a tribute.”
“It did.” If I’m unsure in my answer, I try my best to make sure it doesn’t come out. “Just like it kills me now to see you now, saying such awful things to me and pretending like I’m a monster.” And then, before I realize what I’m saying, “―just like it kills me to see that bruise on your wrist, and know that I played a role in you getting it.”
Sammy recoils like I struck her. She slams the car door, the latest version of an adolescent image I had tortured myself for years with, before taking a few angry strides towards me. “You don’t get to say that!” she yells, overpowering the whine of the truck. “You don’t get to pretend like you care! It could be from a fall, or a car wreck, or any one of a thousand ways you don’t know about. You lost the right to know a long time ago, and you sure as shit lost the right to feel bad about it!”
“What do you want, Sam―Samantha? Do you just want me to feel miserable the rest of my life? Would that make you happy?”
“I don’t care about how you feel, actually. I learned a long time ago I couldn’t change that, and you wouldn’t care if I tried.” I try to interject in her venomous memory, but she rolls past me and any sense she needs to hear. “No, I just want you to know that I see you. I see how you’re kind, and brave, and compassionate to everyone you meet. I bet you think that makes you a good person. A good leader, even. But when I needed―” She lets out a sob now, the animalistic sound finding a way to leak into her words. “When I needed my mother, my own mother, to stand up and show a little bit of that kindness I thought she had in her, she couldn’t.” She’s letting some restrained tears out now, but I’m too shocked to reciprocate. “I lived years with the knowledge that everyone got the best of you, except me. And now you get to, too.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how to respond to any of it. I don’t―
I just don’t know anymore. And I don’t want to try to understand. It hurts too much to hold the past that way, pollute my good works with her bile. But she means it in her eyes, and I can’t ignore it, no matter how much easier it would be. All I can do is stand against her in silence, letting the cold wind do my talking for me.
She’s satisfied as she gets back into the truck, or at least I think she is, guessing from her maybe-content quiet. I guess I wouldn’t know how she felt either way. But I can still hear her accusations in my head, louder than a gunshot and twice as wounding. Maybe there’s a defense I could mount if I had time and clarity, some way to convince her of my own goodness, but it’s too late. Her truck heads over the ridge, back to the life she had no part in making for herself. I watch it disappear, then watch the horizon some more. There’s nothing coming over it for me, however much I hope otherwise.
That leaves me alone, with nothing but the shadow of the valley left. I let it come over me as I begin the walk back home, washing out the stain of memory and all of its contradictions. Maybe I could hold on to them, hope to win some sort of perspective over history. But that sort of clarity only begs more hypotheticals, more painful questions on all the ways I might’ve been better.
For the good of the community, for my own sanity, I shouldn’t try to answer them. They’ll be reduced to background noise in the remembrance of a kind, wise, and beloved leader.
P.M. Alexander is a D.C.-based writer, with previous publications in The Hemlock, Altered Reality magazine, and The Pericles Institute. He enjoys writing grounded science fiction and fantasy, where normal people learn more about themselves in irregular circumstances. When not writing, he enjoys the city’s free museums and tolerates its overpriced coffee.