Me too,I thought. For a moment I imagined saying it aloud. Maybe even discussing the things on my mind with her. She could give me some motherly advice for a change, and we could find some common ground. A little camaraderie.
I hated how much I longed for that sort of relationship and how little she wanted it.
Mom returned to the table looking paler than before. She placed a cigar box on the table and didn’t take her eyes off the little container as she sat.
“What is that?” I asked.
What felt like unspoken fear filtered across the space between us and seized me.
I nearly leaped from my chair when she finally flipped open the lid.
A thousand miscellaneous buttons lay inside.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, unsure what to make of a box full of buttons.
She pushed her fingers into the contents, causing the little disks to slide and spill over one another. “I need to tell you something,” she said. “I should’ve done it long ago, but as you are keenly aware, I’m a coward.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? I’ve never thought you were a coward.” Mean? Yes. Odd? Of course. Pointedly determined to remain alone and miserable? Clearly. But I’d never considered her anything less than hardheaded and steadfast.
Her searching hand stilled inside the box. “Your dad is in France,” she said. “Or he was. I don’t know where he is now.”
I folded my hands and silently questioned her mental health. Even drunk, she never forgot Dad was gone.
“Mom, Dad died when Camilla was three,” I said, gently. “Maybe you should lie down. You’ve lost a lot of weight. I don’t like the sound of your cough, and I think we should make an appointment with your doctor. Just to see that everything’s okay.” I mentally ran through my schedule for the rest of the week. I could coordinate the appointment, pick her up, and take her.
“Not necessary,” she said. The words floated from her mouth like a sigh. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I just want you to know he’s out there.”
“Dad is dead,” I said flatly, shamelessly thankful for that truth. The echoes of his angry words, and her screams, permeated the ceilings and floors, the walls, and my heart.
I blamed Robert for my infrequent visits, but in truth, I hated coming. It was too hard to be here.
“He wasn’t your father,” she said.
Her words pulled me back to the moment, and I felt puzzled. “What do you mean?”
She freed an old photo from the button box, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. Her gaze lost its focus, and she turned her attention to a nearby wall. “We were in college the first time he hit me,” she said. “Carl, not Bastien.”
Goose bumps rose on my arms. “Who’s Bastien?”
“Bastien Allard. Sébastien, I suppose.”
What were the early signs of dementia?
How could I get her the help she needed? What would that cost? How pissed would Robert be?
Could I get ahead of something this big and mitigate the fallout?
“We broke up,” she continued. “Carl and me. He loved to yell, and he’d pushed me once or twice, but I told him if he ever hit me, that was where I’d draw the line.” She set the photo before me. Her expression tightened with anger, and she wiped a tear from her eye. “I went to France for summer semester and time to heal. I racked up a ton of debt running wild for three months. Then I came home with you.”
“I was born at a hospital ten minutes from here,” I corrected. “I have an official copy of my birth certificate. Come on, Mama, let’s go upstairs and rest.”
She shook her head. “I was pregnant but didn’t know for nearly a month after my return, and Carl had wooed me back to him by then.”
My muscles tightened as what she said sunk in. She wasn’t delirious or delusional. She was telling me that she’d been with someone else during a breakup with Dad. “Holy shit.”
“I didn’t have a way to contact Bastien back then, so he never knew about you. It was the nineteen seventies. Everything was casual,” she said. “No cell phones. Long-distance calling cost a small fortune. No one around here could afford that. Letters took a month to reach a destination that far away. I didn’t know his home address anyway.”
My gaze dropped to the photograph with its curled corners and faded image. “I don’t understand,” I said. But that wasn’t true. What she’d said was crystal clear, once I’d started listening. The tyrant who’d raised me wasn’t my father.
