The clock on the wall moves painfully slow.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Each passing second feels like an eternity to both Mara and her mom. They sit in close proximity, in near silence and in absolute discomfort.

"Is there a reason you came here?" Mara questions her mom as the damaged matriarch sits on her daughter's damaged couch. Mara briefly assesses the poor state of her living situation but swiftly remembers she has nothing to feel sorry about. All her surroundings are a result of her pride-worthy independence. She's living the life her mom always secretly wished she herself had lead, whether her mother wanted to admit it or not.

Mara paces to the kitchen, her fingers grasping the fridge's handle for a distraction for them both. Her eyes scan its contents. Leftover baked goods. Old cheese. Burnt biscuits. Half-filled bottles of wine.

"Now why would I need an excuse to check on my own daughter? My flesh and blood!" Kathleen melodramatically throws her head back and awaits her daughter's return.

"Wine it is!" Mara grabs the bottle and retrieves two mason jars from her practically-bare cabinet. She pours her and her mom two hefty glasses of sauvignon blanc and makes her way back to the tense living room of her apartment.

"I promised your dad that I—" Kathleen initially refuses the drink.

"Mom, grow a pair." Mara shoves the cool glass into her mother's hand. She's never talked to her mom in such a way. She's never talked to ANYONE that way. But she's come to a point in her life and a state of comfort with herself that she has no qualms in this moment to take charge.

"Did you just tell me to 'grow a pair?' How archaic of you." Kathleen grabs the drink and devours it in three giant gulps.

Mara smirks to herself. Regardless of her impression of her mom, she's always seen the rebel behind her domestic eyes. The sight of her mom chucking back the alcohol is one for the books. She recognizes something different in her mom's stare. Something desperate for help. Something complicated. Something Mara hasn't been a part of for quite some time.

Yet as Mara looks at the gleaming fluorescent lights in her mom's irises, the colors of hope and optimism reflection off the blue-gray color. She realizes there's much she hasn't been made privy to. The basics of her mom and dad's complicated relationship play in loop at the forefront of Mara's mind but the details of her history at home are still somewhat a mystery. A strange concept considering she's been a part of that life for many years.

"Mom, are you okay?" Mara tastes the wine pass by her lips. She watches as her mom's expression turns from frigid to distinctly worried. Both looks are similar on paper but once you see them reflected in another person's face — someone that you've known your entire life — you see a distinct difference.

"I've never been better." Kathleen holds the mason jar out in front of her. A request for more wine. "We have more important stuff to discuss. Like what happened with Rob. The end came out of nowhere and he always seemed like such a nice boy."

"We just didn't work out, mom. End of story." Mara collapses beside Kathleen on the couch. The springs under her creak. A metaphor for her own discomfort.

"What?" Mara's mom's eyes search for answers to the questions she asks in her daughter's face. It was so easy before. For so many years she was able to read the situation just in the squint of Mara's eyes and wrinkles between her brows. But now is a different story. Now there's a stranger in her midst. "What do you mean?"

And it's the same for Mara. "We're going to need some more wine..."

"Let's have a night then." Kathleen wipes the white wine off her upper lip.

* * *

Mara's eyes observe the walls of her apartment. They're textured and a dull-white color. She finds shapes in them. A dog there. A cloud here. She never realized how great of an escape her own plain walls are. She can hear the drivel of her mom in the background but they hadn't even begun to scratch the surface.

Why is it that Mara just now has the courage to stand up and explain the demons she's had to face? And what is it about this moment that has pulled her mom into a realm where she believes in Mara's opinion?

It's as though there's something in the vents of The Mare's Nest apartment unit. Something pulsating through the ducts and veins of the rooms that makes someone feel more compassionate and understanding of the struggles of another. Something that turns people into beings like Mara's neighbors. Lovely creatures with open hearts, ready to hear another person's issues.

It is this feeling that gives Mara the courage to do something unlike any human. She can control the elements. She can drive the rain. Fuel the winds. Bring out the sunshine.

In this brief moment — in this INSTANT — Mara revels in the feeling of her mom being at her side. She has no idea how long the high will last and chooses to appreciate it for the eternity she thinks the quick minutes will sustain.

Mara clenches her fists, frustrated by the memories of her past with Rob. How he got her fired from her job. His aggressive behaviors over the years. She's ready, and albeit drunk enough, to tell the whole truth.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Kathleen sits up from the couch. She slurs her words in anger. "He put his hands on you? HE GOT YOU FIRED?"

"Right?" Mara yells, sitting beside her mom, the seriousness of her situation pushed to the back of her mind. She passes her mom more wine and pours herself more from the bottle. The room starts to spin a bit but in a delightful sense. She's never experienced this type of closeness with her mom and the fuel of the alcohol seems to have warmed the reciprocated interaction. "It's fine. I'm getting past it..."

"And you're fine here? In this place?" Kathleen's words have a tinge of disdain. She's somewhat saddened by her daughter's living state but is also unaware of the good that it's brought into Mara's life.

"I'm better than fine," Mara responds, shaking the wine bottle to examine its final drops at the bottom behind the stained yellow glass. "You really need to meet Betty and the neighbors and... and Harry... Mom, I really need you to like Harry..."

"The boy from earlier?" Kathleen finishes her glass and slams the fragile material on Mara's even-more fragile coffee table. "It's so out of character for you is all. Finding some new guy so soon after everything that's happened with Rob. Color me confused."

Mara stands up to face her mom at a dominant level. Not to appear intimidating but to drive her point home.

"People who make you feel special about yourself when you're sad are IMPORTANT, mom. I've gone through years, not only with Rob but with friends too, that have made me feel so fucking insignificant and small. And the worst part of it all is — I believed them! Then I move into this beautiful, quaint apartment building with character and history and I feel the roots. I put my feet on this splintered ground and I feel welcomed. I haven't felt that in so long." Tears begin to gather in Mara's lower eyelids as she continues her unpracticed monologue. "And the cherry on top of all of this is there's a guy here that sees me. I mean really sees me. And makes me feel beautiful and smart and important and showed me all the things I should have already felt about myself. Rob wanted me to be as quiet as a mouse but Harry loves even my stomping because he knows that I'm close. He takes care of his grandmother and tends to the garden and chickens on the roof and reads my favorite stories just so we have something to talk about when we have dinner. He's an amazing person and has made me realize that I'm an amazing person and I'm not willing to give that up. And you didn't even give him a chance, mom! You treated him so fucking shitty down there and it broke my heart. We're sitting here, finally connecting about shit we've never even discussed before and you dismissed him so quick because you didn't want to shake his dirty hand. But his hand was dirty because he's been fixing me and the lives that share these walls with me! He takes broken and damaged bits and makes them into something even more spectacular than they even thought possible. Like a broken painted plate thrown on the ground. He breathes every bit of himself into every single piece. He picks up the shattered fragments and turns them into a gorgeous mosaic of light and color and life."

"Mara..." Kathleen stares at her daughter's angry, passionate eyes.

Mara exhales, her chest heaving with heated vigor and sweetness. Moisture streams down her face. She attempts to catch her breath. "And you didn't even give him a chance, mom..."

"You're right, sweetie."

Sweetie. Sweetie. Sweetie.

The term of endearment rings in Mara's head. The repressed memory linked to the word comes to the top of her mind and she suddenly remembers a moment in her history she never wanted to recall.

Kathleen's cheekbone is a deep pink color, the veins broken just beneath her fair skin. Mara heard her parents argue. She lay witness to their escalating volume. This was all something she'd become accustomed to, though her pulse told her this wasn't something she should be familiar with.

She remembers the sound of her dad's hand hitting her mom's face. The sounds of furniture scraping against the hardwood floors as Kathleen attempted to move away. How she was instructed to keep her grandmother on speed dial if anything were to happen that left her feeling unsafe.

As Mara crouches down in the corner of the pink walls of her childhood bedroom, Kathleen runs in. Her eyes are frantic and bloodshot. Sad and exasperated.

Her mother's shaking hands grasp Mara's face.

"Mara sweetie, are you okay? I'm sorry." Kathleen looks at her stunned daughter's face. "Please, sweetie. Listen to my words." Mara nods in confusion and Kathleen continues. "Sometimes when we really care about someone, we accept the parts of them that frustrate us. But it'll be okay. I'm sorry you heard this. I'm so sorry. He didn't mean it."

Mara drops the phone and reaches out to touch her clammy hand to her mom's reddened cheek, mirroring her mother's maternal instincts.

"Mommy?" Mara calls out as the voice of her worried grandmother can be heard in the distance on the other end of the line.

Kathleen reaches for the phone and hangs up before looking at her daughter. "Mommy is okay, sweetie. You know how clumsy we are. We'll be fine."

The memory hits Mara like a ton of bricks.

"Mara sweetie?" Kathleen asks beside Mara on the couch. Her tone is like a howling puppy, newly abandoned. A tragic vibrato calling for any semblance of belonging and comfort. It's as though the old memory is playing on a projector from Mara's mind onto her mom's mind. They're both remembering the same moment and both have the same contrition for staying silent so many years ago.

"What happened to grandma and grandpa?" Mara shakes her head free of the vivid thoughts and refocuses on her mom.

"I... I don't..." Her mom brings her empty glass up to her lips — a nervous tick to glaze over the discomfort of the answer — half drunk off alcohol and the other half drunk off honesty. "I don't know."

"Mom, please. I know you were thinking the same thing."

Kathleen looks at her daughter. Regret and dismay ping her heart as though she's reliving the painful memory all over again. "Mara... I don't want the same life for you. The same life I've had. My mom... your grandparents... they..." Mara's mother chokes back a myriad of emotions. Sadness. Anger. Pain. Disappointment. "Your grandparents wanted nothing more than to take care of me and for me to leave your father and I didn't have the courage. Now I'm looking at you and I'm so damn proud of you. I'm so proud that you had the courage to look Rob in the eye and admit you deserve better. I'm so sorry I didn't support that. I really had no idea this was all happening." She wipes her crying away with the back of her hand. "No wonder he reminded me of your father."

Mara and Kathleen share an awkward laugh. It's all they can do. They've both made it to the point in their lives where they aren't dismissing or justifying anyone's actions, but they can't believe it's taken them so long to realize they've been through such similar tragedies.

"I'm sorry I didn't stay on the line with grandma. Life could be so different now." Mara embraces her mother in a way she hasn't for decades. The kind of embrace where you can feel your sadness physically leave your body.

"There is nothing you need to be sorry for," Kathleen comments as she swipes Mara's brunette curls behind her ears. "Your grandparents would be really proud too. Like I said, I'm really proud."

Mara puts her hand over her mom's as it brushes the side of her face, much like the time they both so ill-fatefully shared. "But honestly, where is grandma and grandpa now? It's been so long since we've seen them."

"My sweet daughter!" Kathleen stands and holds her hand out for Mara to grab. "We need a do-over. Let's go re-meet that boy of yours."