Page 150 of Ex Somnis

She nods like she’s proud of herself.

I love her.

That’s not relevant to the conversation, but it’s true.

“Do you want me to try?” she asks. “Maybe I could pull you over if we fall asleep together.”

“Hey.” I reach out to take her hand.

“Yeah?”

“Come here.”

She looks down at our hands, then back at me.

“You need sleep. Real sleep. We can think about dream prisons and psychic moms in the morning. Like actual morning. Not whatever this is.”

I put an arm around her again, and she settles in against my side.

“I’m sorry,” Lennon says, quieter. “About your mom being so⁠—”

“Yeah.” I exhale. “I know.”

I’ve known for a long time what my mom is, and I’ve done most of my grieving, but tonight feels different, thinking about her in Jasper’s dreamscape, trying to teach him things, trying to reach him, and wanting to stay to be somewhere she felt like herself.

Wanting to stay in dreams the same as Tessa does.

“I keep thinking about what it would have been like…” I murmur, “… if she’d gotten whatever she needed. If she’d been able to stay in her dreams years ago. Would it hurt less if she had not woken up, like Tessa?”

Lennon’s hand finds its way into my hair, scratching lightly against my scalp, and I groan. “That’s cheating.”

“What?”

“The hair thing.”

“You love the hair thing.”

“I do.”

She keeps scratching, and I briefly forget every problem I’ve ever had.

“Being a mom has to be difficult,” she says quietly. “Wanting things for yourself while also having these little people depending on you. I’m not saying she was right to neglect you. She wasn’t. She should never have had kids if she wasn’t prepared to show up for them. But even good moms struggle.”

I think about that, then I think about Jasper, me, and all the ways things could have gone differently. “I think that’s part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Why I don’t want kids.”

Lennon tilts her head slightly. “Oh?”

I shrug. “I already know what happens when somebody looks at you like you’re supposed to have all the answers. Jasper did that to me often enough. And I don’t ever want a kid looking at me how I looked at my mom.”

Her fingers tighten slightly in my hair, not enough to hurt, but enough to tell me she heard it.

“You’d be a good mom.”

“I would be a good mom because my mom showed me every day what a good mom is like,” she agrees. “But not a happy one.”