Mother's Day was always a holiday that Cami studiously avoided. For one, Vanessa never really wanted to be reminded that she was a mother so it was obvious that she didn't care to celebrate the day. Her daughter's clumsy preschool efforts were callously ignored and then not-so-subtly put into the trash at some point later that day. Camille didn't notice this at the time, of course, it was only after some reflection later on as she aged that it became apparent.

All she knew at eight, at twelve, at fourteen, was that Mother's Day wasn't something that they celebrated at home. It helped that her Maman was always conspicuously not at home, or sometimes even in the country, during that weekend, but it was strange nonetheless. Stranger now that she had her Ama who threw herself into mothering anyone and everyone that would have her, and Mimsy, who was everything that the teenager thought a mother ought to be. Caring, protective, but with a firm guiding hand that made sure everything was going to be alright. Peter was an oddity on the island, the only child that she'd seen, but he was happy. Healthy. Wonderful even!

Considering the lack of celebration of motherhood that had gone on in her life up until this point, it was understandable that Cami was more and more anxious as Sunday approached. Mimsy's preparations had been fairly simple and all too easy; create a card with construction paper and markers, give said markers to Peter, and let him go to town on the inside.

Caroline was harder. Not in the sense that it was hard to please the woman who had come to mean safety, security, and a sense of rightness that had been missing her whole life, but in the sense that this meant so much. What happened if she ******** it up? What happened if Caroline didn't want to be celebrated? What happened if...so much what if!

Up at dawn from a mixture of nerves and adrenaline the brunette teen tried to cook as quietly as possible. Eggs, bacon, sausage mixed into a kind of hash that she'd learned to make only weeks before she came to the island (by her compromised memory). Flowers she'd made out of paper, as it was hard to find real ones on the island, were tucked into a vase and a much more refined, but still homemade, card was arranged next to that.

All of this was taken on a tray, upstairs, as Camille summoned her courage and bared her heart. She only hoped it would be okay....