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Van’s mom wasn’t what she, or most people, would consider nice or a good mom, or even a good person.
So in a way it was comforting that she didn’t show up to see Van after they had been rescued. She was dealing with so much change and upheaval since they had been rescued, it was nice to know that Vicky was still herself. The one constant Van could count on, the fact that she couldn’t count on her.
There was a small voice in the back of Van’s mind that told her that surely her mom had cared that her only daughter had gone missing, had been presumed dead, for nineteen months. Van couldn’t let herself listen to that voice, couldn’t handle the disappointment of being Vicky’s daughter on top of everything else she was dealing with.
Instead she sat in the room they were all meeting their families in and looked around at everyone else. Tai’s parents both doting on her, Van could tell how much Tai was hating the attention. Nat’s mom had showed up too, Van figured it must have been hard for her thinking her daughter was dead when her, albeit shitty, husband already was. Shauna’s parents who everyone knew were somewhat bitterly divorced were both so happy you’d think they were one big happy family. Misty’s parents were exactly as she expected and listened intently while she told them about how helpful she had been, carefully avoiding her middle of the forest amputation. Lottie was catatonic while her parents both tried to talk to her, her dad walking away to take a call. She looked over to Travis, alone just like her. They’d learn later it was for a far worse reason than just having a shitty mom.
Eventually everyone’s families filtered out, the doctors insisting that they all needed their rest and to be further evaluated.
Most of their families came back every day or every other day for the duration of however long their individual stays were.
It was a weird thing, to be rescued and to come back. Van stopped hoping for rescue sometime between a wolf biting into her face and Jackie freezing to death ten feet outside the cabin. Some of them had headstones, funerals for people who were alive, or something close to it.
Everyday Vicky didn’t show up she thought about the parents of everyone who had died. How they must have felt hearing there were survivors and then hearing that their child wasn’t one of them. God, how horrified would they be to find out they not only weren’t survivors but instead were supper. So many families who would give anything for their child to have survived and Vicky didn’t even care that her child had.
It was two weeks into her stay when Vicky did finally show up. Tai had been released but she still came to see Van everyday, Van whose face was every doctor's favorite topic.
What Van didn’t know was that Vicky’s first visit lined up with a tabloid headline about the huge lawsuit the girls were filing, Van was only half aware of that, too drugged up a lot of the time and just signing where she was told to.
She was just sitting up in her eye still bandaged from the exploratory surgery they had done earlier even though Van knew the answer wouldn’t change. The feeding tube sticking out of her nose because as if returning after what they had done, how they survived, wasn’t hard enough, they had decided to try and remove some of the scar tissue in her cheek making eating more painful than it needed to be given her circumstances.
She heard the footsteps and turned, confused because Tai had just left, to see Vicky Palmer standing there. Van just stared at her while she walked closer to her. She saw the flash of disgust before she quickly schooled her expression to be sympathetic and caring.
“Vanessa,” She said quietly.
Part of Van wanted to scream at her and tell her to leave. Another part of her just wanted to cry and have her mom comfort her, but she knew that wasn’t in the cards and cards hadn’t let her down yet unlike her mother.
“Mom.”
“How are you?” she asked and got Van did not have this conversation in her.
“Well I spent nineteen months in the Canadian wilderness, how do you think I am?”
Nineteen months, she still couldn’t believe it. It felt longer and shorter than that simultaneously. When they had told them how long they had been gone and how much they missed, Van felt like she was drowning and she hadn’t been able to shake that feeling.
“I guess that was probably a stupid question. Do they know when you’ll get to go home?”
Van was more than confused as to why her mom, who had shown no interest in whether or not she was even alive, was asking when she was coming home. Her best guess was that maybe someone had given her shit for now showing up. She was friends with Nat’s mom, so she figured that could be it.
“I’m not sure, it hasn’t been much of a conversation,” Van said, vaguely gesturing towards her face.
“My poor girl, we’ll have to see what can be done about those scars.”
Van wished her mom would leave just as suddenly as she showed up.
Thankfully a nurse came in just then and cut their visit short.
*
It was another two weeks in the hospital before Van was able to leave, Vicky showing up every three days or so to make slightly rude comments about her appearance and ask when she would be home, promising Van’s room was just the way she left it.
When she entered her bedroom she realized just how accurate that was. She thought about how she heard that the Taylor’s unkempt Jackie’s room like a weird memorial, this wasn’t like that. This was more of a situation of a room that served no purpose and no one could be bothered to do anything with it.
She figured maybe that was a better alternative than her mom touching her shit. Vicky wouldn’t have kept a memorial, she would have tossed it all but Van wasn’t even worth that time to her. Still Van was just glad to not be in a hospital anymore.
Aside from removing some of the badly healed scar tissue on the inside of her cheek they actually weren’t able to do much for her. They tried, it was just an injury that was well over a year old. Van made peace with the black areas in her vision long ago, never telling anyone for fear of being seen as weak or a liability. The scars, they told her, there wasn’t much, if anything they could do for her. It was funny how out there, in hell, they hadn’t mattered but now it was all anyone wanted to talk about.
It was a little over an hour since she had gotten back and given that it was nearing dinner time she figured Vicky would soon be leaving to go have her usual liquid dinner. To her genuine shock her mother was in the living room with a pizza and inviting Van to join her.
Van sat down and took the slice from her mom, she’d probably only be able to stomach a few bites but it was the thought that counts, especially when Vicky usually didn’t think about her at all.
They sat in silence while they ate, some sitcom Van didn’t know playing on TV. It was a few minutes before her mom spoke.
“What happened to you out there, Vanessa? You used to be a certain type of pretty but now you’re all scared up.”
Van rolled her eyes, leave it to her mom to insult her and ask her invasive questions in one breath.
“Gee mom thanks, I was really concerned about my appearance while I tried to survive in the wilderness for nineteen months.”
It was a lie, when it had first happened and she saw how it looked it was all she could think about. Her mom didn’t get to hear about that, hear about what Tai had done for her and how Tai had assured her she was beautiful. No, Vicky Palmer didn’t get to touch that.
“I’m just trying to understand what happened to you Vanessa.”
There it was, the underlying current of tension that always existed between them.
“I was attacked by a fucking wolf mom. A wolf ripped my face open and a fifteen year old sewed my face by candle light with a fish hook, I’m sorry if that didn’t heal well enough for you.”
Van stormed out of the living room and went to her room, grabbing the house phone on her way to her room.
She called Tai’s house, the number still ingrained in her brain, something the wilderness couldn’t take from her.
The phone rang a few times before someone answered.
“Turner residence.”
Van sighed, Taissa, god she was so glad she answered. Not that she didn’t love Tai’s parents but she couldn’t put up a front right now.
“Tai,” Van said, her voice a little broken.
“Van, hey what’s wrong?”
“Can I come stay with you for a night, maybe two?”
“Of course, I’ll be there in twenty, alright?”
“Thank you.”
Van had never told Tai about Vicky, about how awful she was. When she didn’t show up to the hospital for two weeks Tai got the idea. Suddenly four years of Van staying at Tai’s house three to four nights a week and never letting Tai in the front door of her house came into focus. They never talked about it but Van knew that Tai knew, she never wanted Tai to know.
*
Three days later she was still staying with the Turners. They were lovely and they seemed just as happy that Van was back as they were that Tai was.
It was weird to see how they acted, parents who had missed their child and didn’t immediately put her down. More grateful that their child was alive than anything else.
It was on that third day, she had woken up curled around Tai, exactly where she liked to be. It had all the potential to be a good day, or as good of a day as Van could have. She didn’t feel like she was allowed to have truly good days after everything that they had done. Everything they had done in the name of something that was all in Lottie’s head. Van would spend the rest of her life learning to live with that.
They went downstairs to find Tai’s mom, Cheryl, sitting at the kitchen table. She looked stressed, more so than usual for someone who’s child essentially came back from assumed death.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Tai asked, immediately picking up on her moms mood.
“I’m so sorry Van,” she said quietly before pushing a shitty tabloid magazine, like the kind from the grocery store check out line, towards the two of them.
The Girl Who Survived Wolves
That was the headline along with a photo of Van, her scars on full display. The magazine promised a tell all interview about how the crash survivor had acquired her face altering scars.
She knew there was more than one nurse who wanted to tell her story, she figured one day she’d be someone’s retirement plan. Long after the crash was the topic of the hour and when they no longer cared about breaking privacy laws. She figured that this reality was a long way away.
It hit her a few seconds later, she was just staring at the cover when it hit her like a ton of bricks.
The only other person who knew, outside of the survivors and medical professionals.
Her own mother.
*
She had gotten dressed and Tai had driven her over as soon as it hit her. Tai stayed in the car while Van stormed in, magazine in hand. She was passed out on the couch and not unlike the day she left for nationals Van packed the shit she cared about before slapping her mother awake.
“What the hell Vanessa!”
Van just snarled a little before tossing the tabloid at Vicky.
“You have so much fame from this Vanessa, it’s only fair you share the wealth with your mom.”
Van looked at her mom and wondered, not for the first time, how they were even related.
“Oh fuck you,” Van said before talking out the door and back to Tai’s car.
*
She heard through the grapevine a few months later, once they had all been given very healthy settlement checks, that Vicky was asking around about her. It was no use. After the stunt she pulled Van developed what was probably agoraphobia, every reporter desperate for her first hand account.
When Van left a few years later, broken-hearted and with no reason to stay in Wiskayok, Vicky didn’t even know.
Years later when a hospice facility called her she didn’t even know how they found her. She didn’t even know why she said yes to taking care of her. The woman who made Van feel nothing good about herself and who exposed one of her worst traumas to the world for a paycheck.
She never apologized, Van didn’t really expect her to.
*
“I know you and your mom had a complicated relationship…” Tai had said.
Standing there, the cancer that Vicky's genes passed down to her killed her while she lied to Tai.
Complicated didn’t even begin to cover it.