“Nope.”
I’d been startled by a call from my mom a few days earlier. Apparently Dr. Jamison had called them in advance of my disciplinary panel, and to say my mother had been unhappy to hear about all that had taken place was a drastic understatement. I then had to endure forty-five minutes of hearing about her disappointment. It had been the first time we’d spoken in months, which doubly pissed me off. I felt like my parents had lost the right to vocalize any opinions on my life, given that they hadn’t taken the slightest interest in it since Jayme died. So having to sit silently and take the acid oozing from her mouth had almost tipped me over the edge.
As much as I tried not to let my mother get to me, it was impossible to ignore how much it hurt to hear her ugliness. She had gone straight for the jugular. She had been merciless and hateful.Jayme would never have done something like this. You should do better for her if you can’t do it for yourself.
How quickly my mother had forgotten the truth of who my fifteen-year-old sister had been. She had turned a complete blind eye to the grief Jayme had put our entire family through. And even though I loved my sister and missed her every day, I hadn’t forgotten about why she was no longer with us. But it seemed as though my parents had reframed her death in their minds and turned it into something they could live with.
The counselor side of me understood and accepted this. The daughter side, not so much. It made me resentful and angry and less than willing to revisit that particular brand of heartache by answering my mother’s calls.
“Don’t you think you should answer it? You know she’ll just keep calling until you do. Might as well get it out of the way. Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” Brooks advised, and I rolled my eyes, hating his calm rationale.
“Well, you’d better go, then. Because this won’t be something I need an audience for,” I said just as the phone stopped ringing. I knew she would call back in a few minutes, as had become her habit this week.
“Are you sure? I can stay if you need me to,” Brooks offered. Even though I appreciated his thoughtfulness, I knew that nothing would help me deal with whatever my mother had to say.
“Nah. You go on. I’ll meet up with you at the commons for dinner, okay?” I suggested just as my phone started ringing again.
Brooks looked down at my phone and then into my face, his eyes softening. “Okay. But you know how to reach me if you need to. I’m always here. Don’t forget that.”
“Thanks, Brooks,” I said as he leaned down to kiss my forehead, his lips lingering. I ignored the implications of his less-than-innocent gesture and gave him a shaky smile, lifting my phone up to indicate that I was about to answer it.
“Good luck, kiddo,” he called out as he left.
I blew a noisy breath out of my nose and put the phone to myear.
“Hello?” I said cheerily.
“I got a letter in the mail about the outcome of your hearing. I wanted to talk to you about it,” my mother said by way of greeting, getting right to the point.
“Why?” I asked, knowing my attitude would piss her off. But I wasn’t in the mood to really care.
“What is wrong with you, Bre? This is serious. What in the world are you going to do now?” Her use of my sister’s nickname for me made me cringe. It always did.
“Major in basket weaving?” I said dryly.
I could practically hear my mother grinding her teeth. “I think you should come home for a visit. It’s clear that things have gotten out of control up there. You’ve lost sight of what you’re doing and where you’re headed.”
“And what exactly am I doing here?” I countered, knowing damn well my mother had no clue what my plans were for my future. She had never once asked me about what I wanted to do with my life. Those sorts of discussions had gone off the table once my sister’s casket had been lowered into the ground and the heart that had once loved both of her children had shriveled up and stopped feeling anything at all.
“Maybe that’s what we should talk about. You need to come home. Just for a few days. Your dad and I would like to see you.” There was a slight quiver in my mother’s voice that threw me. She sounded, for the briefest of moments, like the woman who had held me after my first breakup when I was fourteen. The woman who had cleaned my scrapes and tended my bruises. The woman who made me sausage gravy on homemade biscuits for breakfast every year on my birthday because it was my favorite.
But I couldn’t let myself be deluded into thinking she had changed. That maybe, just maybe, she was trying to be the mother I needed her to be once again. I had experienced enough crippling disappointment to last me one lifetime.
“I can hear about how I’m failing Jayme’s memory just as easily over the phone, Mom,” I said quietly, trying to speak around the lump in my throat.
My mother didn’t say anything for a while, which surprised me. I was prepared for a hateful comeback. I was on edge waiting for the next barb.
“Aubrey, we’re worried about you,” my mother said, her tone altering into something resembling concern. Which couldn’t be genuine. My mother had stopped expressing anything other than furious displeasure a long time ago.
“This thing with that boy in the support group, being almost kicked out of the program at school—it’s not like you,” she continued.
“And what do you know about what I’m like anymore, Mom? It’s not as though you have bothered to know anything about me in years!” I shouted, losing control of my emotions. I wasn’t used to having this sort of conversation with my mother. I didn’t know how to talk to her anymore.
“Stop yelling, Bre!” my mother snapped, and I was almost relieved to hear her usual irritation.Thiswoman I could deal with. The concerned maternal act was one that I couldn’t stomach. Not now. Not when things were already so off-kilter.
“I’m not coming home. If there’s something you or Dad need to say, then say it to me now.” I sounded petulant, but I couldn’t help it. Clearly my mother brought out the best in me.
“Why do you have to make things so difficult?”
