Dress shopping with her mother had not been an option; it was an order. Fallon had been "schlepping around the house like a lame donkey" the entire week, according to Iva, and it was time to break that cycle and embrace the fresh air outside. When Fallon attempted to avoid this little mommy-daughter shopping trip, Iva pointed out that Fallon had also taken the time to shop for dresses with some of her friends as recently as the day before. So why not get in some quality time with her mother too?

Fallon wanted to say "because you are making me miserable right now." Instead, she just nodded and kept her mouth shut. When it came to her mother, talking things out was not always the best option. The morning had been spent window-shopping mostly, her mother popping in to check out handbags and high heels at a moment's notice. She would hold up a pair of gorgeous earrings and ask Fallon if she liked them. Of course, she did; the pieces were beautiful and entirely the kind of things Fallon would pick for herself under normal circumstances. But she lied. Time and time again, she found fault in the lovely pieces, avoiding eye contact with Iva.

Fallon knew what she was doing. This was psychological warfare.

After threatening to take away all of her possessions should she refuse to go to France, Iva was now forcing her daughter to confront how much she really did love things. The afternoon was peppered with, "Not so many little girls are as lucky as you to have a credit card for shopping!" and "I wonder how many daughters can say that their mother offered to buy them diamond earrings on a whim!" and "Don't you just love walking into a store and knowing that anything you see could be yours?" Iva was playing dirty, appealing to the consumer in her daughter.

The worst part was that it was working.

At the first three stops, Fallon rejected all offers for presents, but then they stopped at her favorite shoe store. And they had just gotten in a new shipment. And the heels that Fallon had back ordered were there. And had she seen the latest pump from Chanel? The mother and daughter left the shoe store with armfuls of bags, smiles plastered across both of their faces.

The day only got better. France was never mentioned -- just friends, shopping, a trip to the stables so Iva could meet Taillevent. Fallon forgot to be skeptical of her mother and instead embraced the day for all its happiness. The alarm bells were silenced until her mother pulled up in front of the finest restaurant in Destiny City, a restaurant that Fallon had wanted to go to ever since she started at Crystal Academy. Reservations were nearly impossible to get yet, somehow, Iva Novette-Naim had secured the chef's table in the kitchen. She knew how much her daughter loved sitting there, the one table reserved for true foodies so they could watch the chefs preparing everything for the entire restaurant.

Fallon stopped dead in her tracks. First from awe, then from fear. "Mom," she said. Iva turned. "Is something wrong?" Her brows drew together, worry pinching around her mouth.

Iva waved a hand and then hooked it around her daughter's arm, pulling her over to the table. "I just wanted to do something nice for you," she said, rubbing Fallon's back. "You were trapped in a hospital for over a week. I know you want to eat the good stuff." A waiter came over to take their bags from them and helped them into the booth.

Fallon couldn't shake the feeling that there was something sharp and pointy looming above her head and her mother was just waiting to cut the string. She fixed Iva with a serious look, which her mother promptly ignored. "I know what I'm getting," she announced, tapping the menu with a nail. "I read online. The scallops are supposedly to die for. I'm such a sucker for some good fish."

"Technically, it isn't fish. Scallops are mollusks. Like clams."

Iva beamed. If Fallon was talking food, then that meant she was feeling positive. Her daughter was in high spirits, and that made her happy. They might fight, but Iva loved Fallon desperately. Her little miracle baby, the baby she thought her body might never be able to bring to term. "Mollusk, fish, chicken -- who cares! All I know is it sounds delicious." Iva didn't have the same discerning culinary palette that her daughter did, but she was happy to sit and listen to Fallon rant for hours on end about the difference between sauce consistencies, or why a particular food item she ordered was sub-par.

Eating with Fallon at a restaurant always resulted in some kind of culinary lesson.

The wait staff was practiced and immaculate. Fallon loved this about high-end restaurants. It was like a dance, waiters swelling around your table and placing dishes down at the same precise moment. It made Fallon ridiculously happy to sit in the presence of a master staff with a master chef working in the background. Their orders were taken promptly: the scallops for Iva, the chef's tasting menu for Fallon. The dishes came just as swiftly and were removed just as fast. It was still early for dinner, and the chef was kind enough to answer some of Fallon's questions. He even crossed over to the table at one point to demonstrate a knife technique that he thought would help improve her cutting speed. The food was delicious, and both Iva and Fallon spent the majority of the time laughing and drinking in all the happiness in the room.

When the main courses were cleared and the dessert plates emptied of their treats, Iva let her smile drop. She took Fallon here to a place that she would love for a reason. She had spared no expense in securing this table for a reason. She had purchased her daughter everything she had asked for that day for a reason -- and not the nefarious one Fallon assumed. The meal was done, and the time had come for Iva to summon up the strength to confront something serious with her daughter, something that she had been meaning to tell her since the day Fallon got out of the hospital.

Iva folded her hands on the table. There was something strained in her eyes. "Fallon," she said, calling her daughter's attention. Fallon pulled her intent stare from the chef and turned to face her mother, mouth grinning ear to ear. The smile was kilowatt-bright, stunning on the lips of a girl who gave careful, polite smiles more often than grins. Iva looked sadder to see it. The smile slowly melted off when Fallon saw the pain in her mother's face.

"Mom?" she ventured, tentative.

Her mother straightened, reaching out to grab her daughter's hand. "Are you happy, honey?" she asked suddenly.

The practiced blade strokes of the chef's knife echoed in the background. Fallon could could fall asleep to that noise. Fallon could fall in love to that noise. The smile returned in spite of her mother's drawn face. "Right now?" She laughed. "I am deliriously ecstatic. This day has been perfect, the best day I have had in a really long time." She craned her neck to check out what the chef was doing. He sliced fruit into pieces and then reassembled it on a clean white plate as if it had never been cut. Useless, but amazing!

Quietly, Iva watched her daughter smile. It was the happiest she had seen her this entire trip. It might have been one of the happiest smiles she'd ever seen on her troubled teenager. Tears pinched in her nose. Fallon turned back, saw them. "Mom," she said, leaning forward. "Is something wrong?"

Iva shook her head, sending a mass of dark brown curls bouncing around her. "No, honey, everything's perfect." Her thumb traced comforting circles over her daughter's hand. Fallon looked back to the chef, enraptured. Whatever Iva needed to tell her daughter, she lacked the strength to do it then. She couldn't hurt her daughter like that. She couldn't steal her happiness.

Later, she promised herself. I will tell her later. For now, like so much else in the lives of the Novette-Naims, it was left unspoken.