Page 111 of The Frog Prince

Mom’s hovering in the kitchen anxiously. “Holly?”

“I’m tired, Mom. I’m going to bed.”

“You don’t want any tea?”

I stand in the shadows near my room, dashing away tears. “No. I just need sleep. I’m tired. It’s been a long weekend.”

“But tea will help you relax better.”

I want her to stop talking. I can’t bear it right now. I can’t think, can’t feel, can’t. Can’t.

Can’t.

But she won’t leave me alone. She turns on the hall light, comes toward me. “You’re crying.”

“I’m not.” And I step back, and I dash away more tears because I am crying. I can’t stop.

She reaches for me, and I snap, “Don’t.”

Mom freezes, and I shake my head, angry, so angry, and I don’t want to be angry with her, God knows I don’t, but when she starts talking, when she has that expression on her face, the one that says she’s trying so hard to please me, I just want to get away.

I want her to go away.

I want to run away.

I’ve needed her my whole life, and I still don’t know how to have her, the mother I want. I don’t know how to let her comfort me or talk to me. I don’t know anything anymore.

“Holly, I hate seeing you so sad.”

I look up, fiercely wiping away tears. “Well, Mom, I hate seeing you so sad, too.”

“I’m not sad.”

“You are. You live in this horrible little house all alone. You don’t travel or do things. You just wait for us to come home.”

“Because I love it when you come home.”

“I know, but we’re adults. We’ve got lives of our own, and I know you want me here, and I know you need me here, and I can’t be here—” I break off, cover my mouth, and I don’t know if other people feel this way about their moms. Does anyone else worry and struggle and feel guilty for growing up and going away? “Mom.”

“What, Holly?”

I shake my head. I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain anything, and I don’t understand what I’m feeling or what I want from her. I go sit down at the round oak table in the kitchen, and Mom sits down, too.

“You’ll get another job,” Mom says.

I know she’s trying, and I give her credit for that, but she’s not saying what I need to hear.

What I need to hear is that she knows she’s hurt me, and that she’s sorry.

That she’s sorry she didn’t see me as I wanted to be seen instead of as the daughter she was so sure she knew. Yes, she knew me as one thing. But I wanted to be the other thing.

I wanted to be magical and special, strong, tender, invincible. I wanted to be like all the daring heroines in fairy tales. Not the ones who were waiting to be rescued, but the ones rescuing, the ones saving. Not the sleeping princess needing to be awakened, but the warrior woman like Belle, who’d rescue her father from the monster’s dungeon, a brave woman who’d fight a powerful curse.

That’s the me who has always been here, but maybe she was buried so deep inside that no one—not even me—knew how real she was.

She is real. And she wants more.

So much more. She wants the big adventure she’s never had; she wants the victories; she wants to be the confident, daring hero, not the damsel in distress.