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Despite their many years living alone on the open road together, Alice had yet to find rhyme or reason in her mother’s moods. Mary’s fits of anger were an unfathomable construct, her triggers ever-changing and quick to ignite. Sure, there were the obvious provocations: they were not to discuss Alice’s father, nor her mother’s distant relatives in England. Alice was not to complain or want or cry. She was to be strong, and if she failed, her mother would let her know it.
Although Alice had learned to be wary of these hair-triggers, she hadn’t anticipated the violent reaction against her idea. It was outlandish, certainly, and perhaps selfish, but not entirely stupid.
It started when they were spotted in a bustling French market. One of Nathan’s nameless henchmen made eye contact with Mary, recognition lighting up his face. Alice could see the sick glee on the man’s face; she assumed there was a high reward in place for the person responsible for their capture. Perhaps the man had an exorbitant debt to pay, or Nathan had dirt on him.
Mary didn’t care about what the man’s motivations were. She was across the square in seconds, with a knife discretely slipped into her palm. The fight was short-lived-- the man didn’t know how to handle his own weapons but seemed to underestimate Mary. He fumbled with a handgun (no silencer, idiot), but couldn’t turn off the safety before a blade embedded itself in his throat.
The man’s eyes widened for only a moment before he dropped like a ragdoll against the pavement. He had positioned himself in a shadow, but it was only a matter of time before his blood leaked onto the main street.
Mary slid the knife from the body, wiped it on the man’s shirt, and tucked it back into the sheath on her forearm. Finally, she grabbed Alice by the sleeve and dragged her away from the scene. They could only hope that the man had died before sending a message to his comrades, that he had been selfish and wanted the prize for himself. Of course, they were never that lucky.
Alice’s trained eye picked up on several sets of footsteps trailing them, but couldn't be sure of how many. They picked up their pace, but it was futile. The end of the market was fast approaching, the crowd thinning with each long stride forward. Fewer people meant a higher chance of being ambushed sooner rather than later.
Their pace at a run, Mary led Alice through winding cobblestone streets. They skidded through crowded lanes of traffic, into alleyways, and through drafty archways, but they could not lose their pursuers.
Three men surrounded the pair in a deserted plaza. Apartments towered above them, empty as the midafternoon sun blazed overhead. Lines of linen laundry drifted in the slight breeze, and a small fountain trickled in the center of the square.
Distantly, as she drew a blade into her hand, Alice imagined a life in one of those apartments. She and her mother would live without the ever-pressing fear of death. They would go to the park, get lunch at a local cafe, sit on the fountain's edge, and talk for hours. Not about escape plans or the best way to incapacitate a man, but about school and work and the weather.
Those sorts of fantasies were not worth her time. Eventually, a little French family who lived a life Alice could only dream of would wander home from lunch to find three men bleeding out on their doorstep. Their blood contaminated the fountain, staining the water a bright red. It reminded Alice of those acid-colored drinks she saw in American gas stations. She had never wanted to try them anyway.
When she and her mother had finished off their attackers, they booked it out of France. They had planned to stay longer, but with four corpses attributed to them, it was best to leave.
It was on a train that Alice quietly voiced her idea.
“We’ll need to switch things up again,” she said, voice low. Their car had a few other travelers, and it wouldn't draw their attention. There was still blood under her fingernails, looking like mud with its rotting brown hue, but if someone looked too closely…
“Yes, and?” Mary was still jittery from their fight, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and the corners of her eyes pinched. She always got impatient and irritable when their plans were interrupted.
Maybe Alice should have waited, but it was too late now. “We could-- well, I could--”
“Spit it out, girl.”
She hated it when her mother called her that. It was what Nathan called her as if he couldn’t bear using the name he bestowed upon her at birth.
“We could cut my hair. Use a different name. It would throw them off our trail.”
“That is what we do every time.” Mary rolled her eyes. “If you want to spout off old ideas like they’re new, keep them to yourself. I need to think.”
“I-- No, I mean… Everyone is going to be looking for a woman and her daughter… not a mother and son.”
Mary stared at her incomprehensibly.
“It-- it would be easy enough. Just cut my hair and--” Mary scoffed in Alice’s face, making her clamp her mouth shut.
“Just?” the woman intoned, “just? You think it’s that easy? It’s as if I have taught you nothing. A mother and her daughter are much less inconspicuous than a woman and a girl trying to look like a boy.”
A girl trying to look like a boy.
“Besides, your father remembers your childhood fantasies all too well. He never let me forget your imperfections.”
Her mother’s words were slaps against fragile skin. Mary could not actually hit Alice, as that would certainly draw attention, but she made sure her words struck just as forcefully.
Alice had not cried since she was five years old; she thought she lost the ability to. Now, though, she had to bite back a tremble in her jaw and squeeze her hands into fists to prevent them from shaking.
Mary had already moved on, staring out the window with a critical gaze, but Alice was stuck in the past.
She remembers playing with one of her cousins when they were young, bouncing plastic trucks off the walls and making vrooming noises in the backs of their throats. She remembers asking her cousin to borrow a pair of his trousers, as she only had skirts and dresses. She remembers her father walking in and his red face. She remembers the pain of being dragged up from the floor by her hair. She remembers the black eye her mother wore the next day.
That day Alice vowed to tuck away the monster growing inside of her. She wouldn’t bring such an expression to her mother’s face ever again, not if she could help it, and certainly not because of this.