Jacey

“Vera knows her cue. The police officers part so she can race up the steps to where Daphne's open arms are waiting. She hugs Daphne tight, breathes in that dishsoap and hairspray smell that means rules and disapproval and safety.
Her mother's hands rest lightly on her shoulders.
After a few seconds, Vera allows her mother to push her away. She looks up and sees warm satisfaction in the pressed-thin line of Daphne's mouth. Vera has accomplished the necessary task of showing strangers that she is loved, that she is cared for, that everything at home is just fine.
Her mother's approval settles over her like a jacket that's just a little too thin for the weather.”
― Sarah Gailey, Just Like Home

“Heat flared in Vera's chest, because it wasn't time or circumstance that had pulled them apart. Old fury warred with a deep and profound hunger to hear these words, to hear her mother telling her that she was wanted, that she'd always been wanted, and Vera pressed her palm to her mouth to keep from gasping at the pain of those two emotions meeting each other.”
― Sarah Gailey, Just Like Home

“She just needs to do this. She needs to act so mad and scary. That's how Francis had explained it, back when Vera was little enough to be surprised and frightened by her mother's moods.
Sometimes, moms just need to be mad like that, he'd said. Sometimes they need to say and do things that hurt you. It's how they love you. It's part of what being a mom is all about. You'll learn someday he'd added, laying an affectionate hand on her head.”
― Sarah Gailey, Just Like Home

“She'd learned to stop thinking of her mother as a person a long time ago, back when it still hurt to want Daphne to love her. Forgetting that her mother was human had been necessary. It had been the only way to survive the years when she still lived with a mother who looked at her daughter as if she were black mold blooming across the kitchen counter. It had been the only way to get through the years after that, when Vera was all alone in a world where someone always seemed to find out who she really was.
But now, she had to think of her mother as a person. As a person who needed things. As a person who was sick and deserved care and dignity.”
― Sarah Gailey, Just Like Home