Mother knows best.

I was nervous. I had never brought a guy home with me to meet my mom before. Shirly could be a scrutinizing woman with a keen sense of smell for bullshit and sometimes I just want to remain blissfully ignorant.

I had told her all about my last boyfriend and it had only taken her an hour of viewing all of his social media to deduce what I couldn't, or maybe what I didn't want to see. All of his red flags and narcissism were laid out in front of me by my mother and even I hadn't been able to deny he was a bit of a wanker. But now that I had found a genuinely nice guy I was nervous, I wanted her to love him as much as I did. I knew all of her suspicion and scepticism came from being married to a police detective for 20 years and I couldn't blame her after all the things she had seen in all of my dads cases but all I wanted was to bring a nice man home and for my mother love him too.

I looked over to Wayne to make sure he was still there and hadn't run screaming. I had told him all about my mother and what she was like and all he had told me was that he was ready to be scrutinized which made me love him even more. He was holding her favourite bottle of white wine and her favourite perfume. He had done his own online stalk of her socials apparently. We walked up the front steps and I went to knock which was crazy because I had never knocked on my moms door in my life. I shook my head, trying to shake my nerves and opened the door.

"MOM?" I called out

"In the kitchen love" She said all the way from the back of the house. I should have known, I could smell all of the food. She loved to cook and she said she could tell a lot about a person by what foods they chose to eat when given a lot of options which made her seem crazy and if I was being honest with myself she was at least a little bit crazy.

"You ready?" I asked Wayne, giving him one last sympathetic look.

"Yes" was all he said. He had always been a man of very few words. We walked into the kitchen and my moms face lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw me. I was her very best friend and she was mine and it was always so nice to see her face light up like that.

"BABY BOY!" she shouted as she came around the island to give me one of her big bear hugs. I had missed her hugs. I hadn't seen her in months due to Covid. "And you must be Wyatt?" she said turning to Wayne. Mom said she could also tell a lot by how someone corrected her when she got their name wrong.

"Actually Mrs Anders my name is Wayne" he held out his hand for her to shake "It's nice to meet you" he said. She shook his hand, already breaking down his every word and every movement.

"Mom could you please just give him a break? lets all just relax and enjoy the mountain of food you have made" I surprised myself by telling my mom to back off. I had never done that before.

"Okay, only for you and only because I haven't seen you for months" she said as all of hell froze over. I was instantly suspicious. She had never given in that easily in my life and I mean it could be because we had never gone months without seeing each other before but that didn't seem likely. We all fell into an easy conversation about what we had all been up to during quarantine and about how mom had started pottery and was waiting for her very own Patrick Swayze to come into her life via the many dating apps she was on. I was surprised to find that mom had seemed to back off Wayne and was just genuinely being friendly. We all ate and talked over multiple drinks until we all got too sleepy to keep our eyes open.

Wayne and I climbed the stairs to my old childhood bedroom my mom had made up for us and I asked him "So what do you think? she wasn't too bad!" I was a little drunk and a lot excited that she seemed to like him.

"I like her, I think she is very smart" it seemed an odd compliment, or maybe it was the way he said it or maybe it was my tipsy mind playing tricks on me but I just shrugged it off. I was just happy I found someone my mom seemed to like (so far)

Later on in the night, around 4am I got up to get a class of water. I should have gotten one before bed, I knew whine made me sleep deeper which made me sleep with my mouth open and left me with a dry mouth. I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw my mom in the kitchen with her back to me, looking out the window.

"JESUS CHRIST MOM!" I yelled at her. She turned around and pressed her finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet. "Mom what's wrong?" I asked. She pulled me closer and whispered

"You need to end things with Wayne" I instantly felt sick. She didn't like him.

"Why?" I loved him, I knew she was always right about these things but I couldn't just dump him. We had been together for almost a year, we were talking about moving in together...

"I know you love him and I don't want you to be alone or lonely but I need you to trust me on this" She grabbed my hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "I will never tell you to break up with someone ever again, I will never meddle in your love life again if it means you listen to me just this once to end it with him and never see him again"

"Mom I can't, we have made all these plans...." I trailed off. "Why?" I asked again.

"Because I said so" Something in her eyes told me she was scared. Was she scared for me? Was she scared of Wayne? I realised that after all she had seen, after all that she had been through if she was this scared it had to be for a reason and in all my life she had never used the phrase 'Because I said so.'

"Okay mom" I didn't know how, or when but I knew I had to end it.

~ 2 years later ~

Mom and I were sitting on the couch watching the news, it had always been mom's favourite thing to do apart from drinking whine. I usually just sat there on my phone but a new story had us both perked up and on the edge of our seat. A serial killer that had been at large within Boston for 10 years had finally been caught. His victim of choice was men and women with blonde hair and blue eyes between the ages of 20-25. My mom and I had been following the story for about 5 years as I had blonde hair and blue eyes and was the killers preferred age. Mom's favourite news anchor relayed the details of his capture:

"The killer we now know to be Wayne Edmonds was captured on May 1st after growing sloppy and leaving a trail of evidence from crime scene to crime scene...."

My stomach dropped. Mom got up from her seat and came to hug me the tightest she had ever hugged me before with silent tears streaming down her face.

They showed Wayne's mug shot and it sent chills down my spine. He was looking directly down the camera's lens as if he was looking right at me and into my soul. If my mother hadn't said "because I said so" I would have surely been Wayne's next victim. Mother really does know best.