“No Ma, that man is seething with anger. Let’s give him a few minutes to pull it together. He doesn’t like people seeing him when he feels out of control.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Lauren dared to ask the question she’d avoided asking since her mother’s arrival.
“Are you gonna divorce Daddy?”
“How would you feel if I said yes?”
“Sad at first, not as sad as I would’ve been before I knew the truth about what went down between you and Daddy. More than anything else, I’d be proud to support any decision you make. These last few weeks I feel like I have my old Ma back. The one who loved me without all that fear and anger.”
“Could you ever forgive your father and Lahn?”
“I was making plans to go back home to practice forgiveness. Santi said they needed to ask for forgiveness before I forgave them for shit.”
Ma Mable laughed.
“Then they show up today out of nowhere and it threw me off. Their sudden appearance felt like an intrusion.”
“Like mine did?”
“No, you’re coming here was way worse.” She shrugged at her mother’s thunderous look. “Daddy’s always been the good guy, the one who tried to maintain balance and peace, the shoulder to cry on, the hardworking father who took care of his girls: you, me, Lahn. Him remaining silent hurt but him avoiding conflict is not out of the norm. Lahn, I didn’t expect the betrayal, but I’m also aware that outside of her career, she has always relied on one of the three of us to take up the slack when she needs us to, and we have. I also know Lahn has a big heart and would give me the clothes off her back.”
“Even if they would never fit,” Ma said.
“God, could you imagine?” Lauren laughed, sobering.
“When you came to my condo, coddling and defending Lahn and expecting me to do the same despite her betrayal...that was the thing that threw me over the edge. I thought you really didn’t give a shit about me.”
Her mother started to apologize all over again and Lauren waved it all away.
“I was too in my feelings to believe anything else, but I’ve always known who I could go to when my back was against a wall.”
“Your back was rarely against a wall. You knew how to make sure that rarely happened. Especially once you graduated from your master’s program.”
“Oh, there were a few times,” Lauren said, remembering when she and Reese went out to a club one night and some dude slipped a date rape drug into Reese’s drink. Lauren found him trying to drag Reese out of the building and had busted his head open with a bottle and beat the shit out of him. She was hysterical when the cops were called, and Reese wouldn’t wake up. She’d called Ma Mable who brought her a lawyer to the club and they threatened to sue everybody because Ma Mablehad somehow found out that the guy who spiked Reese’s drink worked at the club as security and had prior accusations.
“You’ve always been a direct, fearless, anti-nurturer,” she informed her mother, butting her shoulder.
“Even Deborah trusts you. You made an altar for her. That’s a special level of mothering. If you want to leave Daddy, you can stay here with me in Shrouded Lake.
“So you’re staying,” her mother said.
Lauren shrugged. “I kind of love it here. And though it feels like it shouldn’t be possible, I love that man downstairs. I trust him. I feel free when I’m with him.”
“Love doesn’t make sense. It’s up to us what we do with it. Me and your daddy, we’ll work things out. He’s been dedicated to us, faithful, begged for my forgiveness long ago. I think now I can finally give it. I was so angry when you left because he wanted me to stay out of it and I listened to him, and I broke you in the process. I will forever have to live with that… But I’ll never leave my home to move here. They’d end up getting angry with me, throwing me in some hole, and forgetting where they left me.”
“Probably.”
“I’ll come to visit though, vacations and holidays.”
Lauren kissed her mother on the temple and rose, walking to the door. “Come on let’s go see how?—”
Santiago was in the hall, in the process of creeping away from the door to sneak back downstairs.
“Really!”
Ma Mable laughed.
“It was time for you to take your medication,” Santi said. Lauren walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
