“I know!” Anne set her tumbler down and sank into the tub. “All I’m saying is, maybe this started out being about him, but it might not be anymore.”
Jenna avoided Anne’s gaze. “You’re saying this is a me problem?”
Anne exhaled. “I’m saying that there might be a chance you’re still trying to protect yourself.”
Tina pinched Jenna’s thigh with her toes. “It’s not a bad thing. With what we’ve all been through, why wouldn’t we put up armour?”
Jenna dropped her head back, looking up at the stars. “What if he changes his mind? What if five years from now he thinks he made the wrong choice?”
“But, oh, my dear, what if he doesn’t?”
_____
Jenna got into her car wearing her sheepskin boots, joggers, and sweatshirt and tossed her wet swimsuit onto the backseat. She really needed to remember to bring a bag with her for future hot tub therapy sessions. Her coat still lay in the passenger seat where she’d left it, and she pulled it on after starting the car. It would take at least five minutes to warm up, and she was already shivering with the wet baby hairs melting against her neck.
She was about to pull out onto the street when her phone buzzed. Jenna lifted it from the passenger seat and froze.
A text message.
From Travis.
Hey. Did Mom and Dad talk to you?
Jenna stared at the words. They weren’t sent on the family group chat, just to her. She couldn’t scroll back to see when Travis had last texted only her because it didn’t exist in her phone. It had been 2012. A quick “happy birthday” that she’d never responded to.
Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She could ignore this message just as she had that one. She could click the screen off and wait until new messages came in and this one got buried beneath work texts and SMS marketing blasts.
But Jenna couldn’t bring herself to click and make the screen go dark.
Your conclusions aren’t valid without all the information.
No, you knew what he wanted.
Country and Tina’s words blended within her, melding into a sucker punch of a concoction as the conversation with her mother bounded into her head.
“Should I come out? I could book a?—”
“No, your father’s here, and Travis is here helping out with the basement.”
“I just think I should be there.”
“Let’s wait and see how it goes. Then we can make more decisions, okay? And in the meantime . . .”
Her mother had said no. Jenna had wanted to be there—she would have returned home—but her mother said no.
Jenna suddenly saw herself on the other end of that phone call, her heart aching for someone she loved even when she was being eaten alive. Her mother had gotten a test result and told her not to come. Then, less than a month later, she’d done the exact same thing to Gentry.
Her heart felt like it was paper-thin glass and she’d just tapped it with a hammer. All these years that she’d felt like an outsider in her own family. The guilt she’d carried from Travis’ words all those years ago. Was that what Country had gone through? Was going through?
Her mother loved her, she knew that. But maybe loving someone didn’t mean you tried to save them from their own choices or their own suffering. Maybe loving them meant you let them love you back.
Even if it meant they had to give something up.
Even if it meant they would hurt.
Even if all the data pointed to love being the wrong choice.
Hey, Trav. They did, and I think a huge congratulations is in order
