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Mint wasn't sure how it happened, but he had managed, somehow, to get used to this new life. He had trod into it, a series of staircases, missing every other step, stumbling and clutching tightly to Dove's hand and reaching back for someone who would not follow.
Dove was nice enough. She was sweet. She smiled. Her hands weren't soft, but they were gentle. She was awkward at times— oftentimes— moving around Mint as though she had never quite learned how to live with another person so small, like she couldn't truly learn if she tried. Mint never did quite get around to calling her mom.
Dove was not mom, but she wasn't not mom, either. She was an uneasy in-between that flit between the two lines on quick and light feet. Sometimes, Mint thought she treated him like a familiar face wearing a stranger's personhood. It didn't bother him.
No matter how Dove felt about Mint, what she thought of him, she was dependable, and that was all, really, that Mint needed. Safety was all he wanted, he supposed, or perhaps security was a better word. Dove could give him that. Dove did give him that.
Mint looked out at the road as he waited for Dove to drive by to pick him up from school. Fourteen years old, now, and they'd figured out how to remove the plant from the top of his head with hardly a pinch of pain, so he could feel the chill of the breeze ruffling his hair. He had grown taller, too, hit something of a growth spurt— or sprout, maybe; Mint wasn't sure what was the scientifically accurate way of describing his development— which was still a bit disorientating. The world had grown smaller over the years.
Smaller, and stranger.
Mint blinked. He blinked again.
Mint was seeing things. He knew he was. He had to be. He had to be, because that was— that was his mom. Not the mother-in-limbo that Dove was, but Mint's actual mom, the mom that had raised Mint, had loved him. Her thick hair drawn back into a bun, her coat dark, her skirt brushing her ankles, the lines of her face creasing around a familiar smile. That was Magnolia Faragher, and Magnolia Faragher was—
Mint was moving before he could think better of it, before he could talk himself out of it, hardly checking the road before he crossed it, and he was jogging, and then he was running, because his mom had started to move, too, but she was moving away, and Mint was— Mint was seeing things, maybe, but what if he wasn't—
Mint burst onto the opposite path, panting, and he slipped around into the mouth of the alley he had seen her leaning out from, and hesitated. It wasn't dark out yet, but the sun was slipping threateningly downwards, and the alley was dark and empty, and his mom used to warn him about wandering off into the forest alone in the dark, and Dove warned him about wandering away down unfamiliar streets alone. Mint stared down the alley. It looked empty, but it curved at the end, which meant his mom could be hiding in there. He could be seconds away from finding his mom again, after three years of thinking her dead, or if not dead, gone forever from his life.
Mint looked down the alley. He tightened the strap of his schoolbag over his shoulder.
Mint turned away. It physically ached to walk away. Every step of distance he put between himself and the alley— between himself and maybe-his-mom— was a needle stabbing sharply into the soft spot beneath his ribs to prick at his heart. Mint wanted to spin back around and run down the alley and jump into his mom's arms. Mint wanted to feel his mom hug him tight against her, and tell him he hadn't wrapped up warmly enough, and warn him against sticky sweets, and awkwardly smile at his drawings. Mint wanted so badly for his mom to be at the end of the alley.
But Mint had gotten used to this life, and he knew better than to hope for remnants of his old life to invade. His mom was a murderer, he knew. She was a bad person. Dove never talked about her, and Mint got the impression that there was a reason.
Mint wanted his mom.
Mint forced himself to walk back to the school gates, to wait there, to not look back at the dark alley, and when Dove showed up, he climbed wordlessly into the car.
"How was your day?" Dove asked, and it wasn't as stilted as the first time she had asked the question. When she smiled, it was soft, but the lines around it didn't quite crease in the way that they did on his mom's face. Her smile was softness through and through, none of the lingering sharpness of his mom's, her awkward edges filed away by the years in a way time had never quite managed with his mom. Mint's mom had always seemed untouchable, somehow.
"It was okay," Mint said, and it wasn't a lie. School had been no different to usual. Someone had asked to copy Mint's homework and Mint had asked for a fiver in compensation, which had earned him a wide-eyed stare until Mint had broken in and laughed. Someone else had asked about Mint's food. Mint had shrugged and mumbled something about dietary requirements. It had been after that had been unusual, so to speak.
As though compelled, Mint turned to look out the window.
His heart jumped to his throat.
His mom looked back at him from her alley, leaning easily against the brick wall to her left. She smiled, the lines of her face forming their familiar patterns, one side lifted higher than the other as though her smile were still fighting the mould of a smirk. Magnolia Faragher lifted one hand slowly and waved. Mint stared, wide-eyed.
And then Dove had started the car, not noticing Mint's sudden distraction, humming under her breath. "That's good," she said.
Mint's mom watched them leave with a smile on her face.