I wanted to write another chapter for either story, but I couldn't get into the right mood... so I wrote this instead.
Title: Wonderful Now
Author: Me... MM, or Sara.
Author's Note: I tried something new this time, I put my playlist on shuffle, listened to the first song that played, and wrote a story based on it, whatever idea I could find within the song. I think it worked quite well, so I may try it again. Let me know if it's effective?
Disclaimer: The characters don't belong to me, the story does. The idea came from the song Wonderful by Everclear. This story is based VERY loosely on that song.
Rating: PG-13, just to be safe.
Warning: This story starts out very dark. It gets better from there, but it DOES start dark. It made me cry well writing it, not sure if it might invoke the same reaction from any of you, but... You have been warned.
Feedback: Should I try this experiment again? Let me know what you think of me doing one shots, if it works or not.
Now... on to the story.
**Wonderful Now**
*
Tara heard her mother’s scream from her bedroom, she knew already that her father was very drunk. Usually he never hurt her enough to make her cry out. A scream like that only sounded when he was so intoxicated that he didn’t hold back at all. In other words, when he didn’t care if she lived or died.
There was a loud crash, accompanied by another yelp of pain, and that was enough to start the tears flowing in a river down Tara’s face.
She held her favorite teddy bear close to her chest and sobbed silently, learning long ago that her older brother would make fun of her if she cried out loud, say she was as weak as her mother.
She swept her pigtails behind her shoulders and kissed the bear, telling herself that Donny had always been a liar.
Tara never saw her mother as weak; instead, she’d always admired her. She was strong.
So strong.
Tara only hoped that she would be that strong one day, strong enough to handle everything life threw at her. Donny said she was a sissy, but Tara knew better.
Tara knew there was no shame in tears, there was shame in causing others to cry them. She knew who the actual weak one was, between her mother and father- Even though she was only 8 years old, she could tell.
Her father was weak. So weak that he needed to beat on someone less physically strong than him to feel like a man. Tara pitied him, he must’ve gone through something horrible to end up that way…
But…
Tara hated him also.
Her mother had told her to never hate anyone, and she tried, she honestly tried to love him… but how can you love someone that doesn’t love you? Someone that makes the one person you love more than anything else scream like…
Tara winced as she heard another cry of pain.
Her mother taught her that forgiveness was a part of love- that she forgave Donald for what he did, and she loved him. Maybe that made her mother weak too? But no, her mother couldn’t be weak, she was too strong for it.
Tara sighed and laid on her bed to try to sleep. It was already past midnight, and she had to be up for school in only a few hours. She always got up early to do the morning chores before her father drove her to school. Sometimes her mother would drive her, but that was only when she didn’t have any visible bruises- which was rare.
The girl fell into an uneasy slumber, curled around her teddy bear, a few tears still falling off her cheeks and soaking into the pillow.
**
A few hours later, Tara wasn’t sure what time since there wasn’t enough moonlight in the room for her to read the clock on her wall, her door creaked open softly and she felt her mother slide into the small bed in front of her.
She was pulled into a warm embrace as her mother’s fingers ran through her hair, the pigtails had fallen out as she slept and her hair was now somewhat tangled and wavy. Her mother’s fingers avoided the tangles skillfully, bringing only solace where they touched her scalp.
She had expected this, it always happened after the louder fights. She began sobbing into her mother’s shoulder, the security allowing her to release fully the stress and fear she’d felt earlier.
Her mother held her close, still caressing her head softly. She kept her voice low, the walls were thin in the old farmhouse, and her father’s bedroom was right next to them.
“Shh… babygirl, it’s going to be alright… I promise you, Tara…”
She kept crying though, the words not enough to calm her, not this time.
“Tara, look at me.”
Tara slowly pulled her head back, looking up into her mother’s face. The moonlight streamed in through the window, shedding a small amount of light onto her mother’s features. It was enough that Tara could see the tears in her mother’s eyes.
Even though the tears were quite visible and Tara could tell she was about to cry, her mother’s voice was strong. “Tara, everything is going to be wonderful one day… your life will be everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I promise you this, Tara. Everything will be wonderful.”
And as Tara looked into her mother’s eyes, she believed her.
***
Ten year old Tara sat on the ground, her knees together in front of her and her bottom resting on her heels. She stared at the hard slab of stone in front of her, reading the name carved into it over and over again, etching the look of the letters into her brain.
Eliza Brown Maclay
Devoted Wife and Mother
The small girl ran her fingers slowly over the words, the letters of her mother’s name, the four words that broke her amazing existence down into two simplistic titles.
Devoted Wife and Mother
Tara almost thought the epitaph her father had chosen was a joke- there was no reason why her mother should be devoted to the man that had killed her…
But she died of kidney failure, not because he’d beaten her so badly.
Because he’d prohibited her from going to the hospital.
But this town was small enough, he’d never even see a pair of handcuffs for what he’d done. Tara knew that, and all at once she was filled with hatred for everything the men in this town represented to her.
And she was so angry at her father, he’d taken away the one person she knew she could trust. The one person that had faith in her future.
The one person who knew how everything would turn out.
“I promise you this, Tara. Everything will be wonderful.”
Her mother’s words filled her mind, her body. They reached her heart and clenched it in ice, holding tight.
All at once she was filled with anger of a different kind, and she dug her fingers into the dirt on either side of her, squeezing with all her might.
Her mother had left her. Things could never be good again, not without her Mama.
Things could never be wonderful, not ever.
Tears ran down her face in torrents, falling to the ground beneath her as she partially collapsed, her forehead hitting the dirt.
Her voice filled with all of the pain and anguish she’d felt in the five days since her mother’s death, and she cried out at the top of her voice.
“You promised me, Mama! You promised!!!”
And she fell to her side on the earth covering her mother’s grave, curling naturally into a ball, and sobbing uncontrollably.
****
It was a cold October day when Tara turned 18. She had spent the days prior packing her bags and hiding them in her closet.
She had saved up enough for a bus ticket out of town, and it was a long walk to the bus station. At two AM the morning of the 16th, she took the two suitcases filled with all of her possessions and left behind her childhood home for good.
She got there at 5:14, sixteen minutes before the bus left.
She sat on a bench and silently waited, fingering the locket around her neck. It had been her mother’s, and she had swiped it one night when her father was passed out on the couch, from the jewelry box that still sat in her parents’ room.
She still didn’t, and doubted that she would ever, know why her father hadn’t gotten rid of her mother’s jewelry when he trashed all of her other possessions. Maybe he thought one day he could sell them for a profit, if money ever got tight enough…
But it didn’t really matter, it gave Tara the chance for a keepsake. Something to remember her mother by.
She had long since lost the bitterness she’d felt when her mother died, she’d lost the anger for the unfulfilled promise that had been made to her ten years prior.
Instead she held hope for the future. Hope that she was sure her mother had given to her through unremembered, but highly significant dreams.
The bus pulled up and the doors opened. A few other people boarded the bus, some chatting with eachother, others silent.
Tara boarded the bus last, waiting for everyone else out of politeness and a still ingrained sense that she should.
She silently handed the ticket to the driver and gave the seats a cursory glance before seeing a window seat in the very back. She carried her suitcases quickly with her to the back of the bus, noting that there were enough empty seats for her to take up both seats in the row without putting anyone else out.
She sat down next to the window and set her bags down in the seat beside her, watching as the bus began moving and the fields gave way to deserts, then mountains, then buildings, then a city, as her past got further and further behind her.
*****
It could’ve been the same bus that took her away twelve years ago, by the looks of it, except it looked the same as that bus had, and that bus would probably have broken down completely by now.
Tara boarded the bus, this time saying a polite ‘good morning’ to the driver, and sitting near the front, her five year old daughter in the seat next to her.
Her wife joined her soon after, their three year old son in her arms.
Willow sat in the seat directly across the aisle from Tara’s, giving the little boy the window seat, just as their little girl had the window seat on Tara’s side.
They had been married for seven years now, and Tara was happier than she could ever remember being.
But there was one thing she still had to do.
The four hour bus ride deposited them back in the town Tara grew up in, the one she had vowed to herself she would never visit again.
It was a short walk from the bus station to the hotel, and they had already made reservations for one night.
Tara kissed her wife gently, saying that she was going for a walk, and left the room.
She walked the twenty minutes to the cemetery on the edge of town in silence. It had grown since she’d last seen it, to accommodate the other residents of the town who had died since she’d last been here.
Still, she found her mother’s grave without a problem.
Tara sat on the grave, her knees in front of her and her bottom resting on her heels, and reread the letters that were already etched into her memory.
She touched her mother’s name softly, reverently.
“I’m sorry, Mama… I’m sorry I thought you’d broken your promise to me.”
A tear slid down her cheek as she remembered her last visit to this spot.
She leaned forward and kissed the stone, as if it were her mother’s cheek.
She would’ve sworn she could actually feel the warm smoothness of her mother’s skin beneath her lips.
She sighed and stood up, looking down at the grave.
“Mama… I miss you so… so much… I wish you could meet Willow. She’s amazing… and… We’re married, Mama… and we have Aidan and Eliza…”
Tara’s voice choked up with the tears that were falling down her cheek.
“But Mama… You were right… Everything is wonderful now.”
! 
I liked it 
