You only ever see her on Sundays. It's not a conscious decision but it generally tends to work out that way. Which makes sense, you suppose. She works during the day while you work during the night but Sundays you both have off.

It's always over lunch. Dinner is too much, too formal. Coffee, not formal enough. Besides, coffee dates tend to linger on uncomfortably. With lunch, you just show up, eat your meal, take turns paying the bill and go your separate ways.

You never make an effort to stay longer but neither does she, and for that you're grateful. Knowing she feels exactly how you do removes the guilt. Because you can't do guilt. Rather, you prefer joy, anger, stress; all the high intensity emotions. You know how to deal with feeling like everything is too great, too much, like your body is about to expand with the force of all that it is encompassing. In fact, that's what you thrive on. You charge fearlessly into such emotions, riding them until they start to burn out. Then you will go chase something else, determined to keep momentum going. But all that energy, all that intensity sometimes crashes. That's when it's hard to pick yourself up. That's when you won't talk to anybody for days.

You get that from her, you realize. You have spent your life trying not to differentiate yourself from her, to be your father's daughter and nothing but, but there are certain things impossible to deny when you're sitting across from her. It's certainly not your father who you get the more volatile parts of your personality from, after all. He is the goofiest, relaxed and all around pleasant person you know. But this woman sitting in front of you is not. She is stubborn, selfish and reports only to herself.

Still, she comes up once every couple months. She could easily leave you alone and relegate you to half-hearted phone calls and emails. But she doesn't. She makes the drive down to Larson and meets you at your favorite restaurant. Not that there's any particular grace to your conversations, nothing exemplary about your interactions. In fact, they're rather mundane at this point. Clockwork. It's all safe questions and minced words. With anybody else in the entire world it'd drive you crazy but with her, it's all you can manage. You set the rules, you always have. She is comfortable following your lead.

You don't know if you love her. You do know that you hated her, once. You hated her from taking away from you so many of the experiences that one is supposed to have with a mother. But then you taught yourself not to need her, not to need anybody but yourself, and that's when you stopped hating her. You just became indifferent. Indifference was safe, after all. Indifference allowed you to not care enough to get your feelings hurt. It allowed you to be strong enough to not get your heart broken. You'd rather do the breaking.

Another thing you get from her.

As you watch her finish her meal, you quickly try and compose a list of things that set you apart from her. Just to remind yourself. You care more than she does. You have more ambition than she ever did. You might test the people you love, but you treat them with respect. You have a wide circle of friends. You travel. You've never, ever allowed yourself to settle.

You exhale, put down your fork. You can breathe again.

"I guess I should be off, Hadley. I have to beat traffic and all."

You nod, recognizing the familiar excuse. And you're glad for it. "Right," you agree. "I have to go too."

She pays the bill this time. You stay behind, excusing yourself to the bathroom just so you can both avoid the awkward stigma of walking out to the parking lot together. Once there you take a look in the mirror. You have her eyes, her nose. You have the color of her hair, before she dyed and fried hers. Sitting across from her anybody could infer that you're mother and daughter. You hate the idea of that, but not enough to call off these lunches all together. These meetings, as infrequent as they are, are all you have left of her.

You think maybe she doesn't even deserve that much, doesn't deserve your time. No. You know she doesn't. When she walked out on you and your dad all those years ago, she lost that right. But you give it to her anyway.

When you drive home, you feel emptiness begin to creep in. Not acceptable. You kick into overdrive, doing anything and everything to keep yourself busy. You run errands, buying all those little things you find yourself needing over the course of a few months but usually forget to buy. You wash your car. You go to the movies. You visit your dad. You scrub down your apartment top to bottom. Anything to occupy the remainder of your Sunday.

Unfortunately, you have Monday off too.