The injustice of that shocked Teri speechless. Her mother drove at night in winter all the time. Everyone in northern Montana did, because if you didn’t, you were stuck inside after about four PM all winter long.
“Well,” she said finally, “I’m sorry my driving habits didn’t meet with your safety standards. Clearly you’re much safer than I am, considering you’re going seventy in a thirty-five zone right now.”
“What did you say to me?” her mother asked dangerously.
Teri had a choice, she knew. She could say, You heard me, and wait for the consequences. Or she could back down.
She knew she’d been rude. But her mother didn’t seem to hear anything that fell short of rudeness. If she couldn’t be courteous and make her point, what was she supposed to do?
She didn’t know. And she didn’t want to have a screaming fight while her mother was already driving too fast.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and slumped down in her seat.
She really did feel like she was fourteen years old again. It was awful.
The drive home was finished in frigid silence. Her mother stalked into the house, leaving Teri to follow several steps behind.
“Now,” her mother said, “you will do your physical therapy, and then you will go to your room and stay there until you’re feeling more yourself. Do you understand?”
Teri wanted to shout, You can’t send me to my room, I’m twenty-five! at the top of her lungs, but if anything would make her feel more like a child, it would be throwing a tantrum. So she just left the room and went to the den.
Then she changed her mind. She went upstairs, quietly enough that her mother didn’t hear her attempting the so-dangerous task of climbing stairs, and went into her old room.
Her bed was downstairs, but the desk and chair she’d used in high school were still there, and she sat down to start the first of her physical therapy stretches.
The exercises were pretty vigorous by now, and she felt pleasantly tired by the time she was done. She remembered back at the beginning, when physical therapy was agony and left her completely wrung out for the rest of the day.
She’d come a long way. She had to keep reminding herself that she’d improved more quickly than usual and with fewer setbacks than the doctors had expected. Maybe that was why her mother was so overprotective—she’d been expecting Teri to have a relapse all this time, and she never had.
She had another appointment later in the week. Maybe she’d ask Tina, her physical therapist, to talk to her mom. At the last appointment, Tina had told her, These are exercises to improve your strength and flexibility overall, and you can keep doing them even after you’re well. Right now, we’re just focusing on getting your muscles used to moving around normally again. You’re almost done!
Her mother probably wouldn’t take the word of a mere physical therapist over Dr. Campbell—he’s been our doctor for over thirty years, Teri, of course he wants to help you!—but maybe it would help.
Be real, Teri. It’s not going to help.
It wouldn’t. She knew that. She’d grown up with her mother, and ultimately nothing really helped.
The hardest part was that she knew that her mom was truly, genuinely concerned for her. She was afraid that Teri would hurt herself again, and she was trying to do everything she could to stop that from happening.
It was the everything she could that was the problem. That, and how she wouldn’t listen to any arguments, completely ignored logical reasons that she was wrong, and used her worry and hurt feelings as a weapon to make Teri do anything she wanted her to do.
So really there were a lot of problems.
At least she’d gotten out of the house today. And she knew that she could do it again, if she needed to. Spring was here; there were going to be plenty of beautiful days ahead, and anytime her mother was out of the house, she could go out, catch the bus, and spend the day in the Park.
Just the prospect of having a temporary escape made her feel so much better, even if she knew she’d pay every time she used it.
And then
there was her date tonight.
She’d been putting off thinking about it because part of her didn’t even believe it was real. Could that gorgeous, kind, intelligent man really have asked her out?
Maybe it was out of pity. No, probably it was out of pity, Teri corrected herself. He’d made the invitation right after she’d told him she was basically under house arrest. He’d already seen what her mother would do to get her back home where she belonged, and he wanted to give the poor girl who was recovering from a terrible accident a night out on the town.
That made the most sense, Teri told herself firmly. That was probably what it was.
Still, though...surely he’d felt that thrill of attraction, too? When their eyes had met, hadn’t there been a connection there? Or was she imagining things, projecting her own desires onto him?