“Of course. I … googled you. Found your socials. Saw you seemed to be doing well, and I was relieved. I was relieved that I hadn’t royally fucked you up.” She half laugh, half sobbed.
“But you did.” I stared at her like she was nuts. “You fucked me up, Maryanne. I … for years, I’ve carried the weight of not just your inability to love me like a mum should have, but the years of abuse and torment from other people because of your actions. I loved you. I was your parent, not the other way around. You slapped me when I told you one of your boyfriend’s tried to assault me.”
She covered her mouth, squeezing her eyes closed, but I wasn’t done.
“I left you because I was scared what might happen to me, to you. Every day I lived in fear of coming home from school to either find you dead or find you so strung out that you couldn’t stop it if one of your loser boyfriends raped me.”
Maryanne made a sound like a wounded animal, but I continued.
“Reading that you felt abandoned by me was like having the worst thing you believe about yourself be proved true. To the whole fucking world. Because I did feel ashamed of leaving you behind. Even though it felt just as much like you were throwing me away. Did I leave you behind, or did you throw me away? My heart couldn’t tell the difference. All I know is that I loved you and cared for you for years and then I went to stay with my dad, so I’m just as bad as you are.”
“No. You were a kid.Iwas supposed to parentyou, soyou need to get that out of your head now, Maia. That isn’t true. That’s not your guilt to bear.”
I calmed a little at her words, hoping they’d sink in and free me over time. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I offered. “But I have other things I need to say.”
She straightened as if bracing herself. “Then say them.”
“I … I bore years of having people look at me like I’m less than, like I’m scum. People who sexually harassed a fucking child because they thought I was less than human because of you. And I know that’s not directly your fault, but it’s something I’ve carried for years. I cared way too much what people thought of me because I was ashamed and embarrassed, like Iwas unworthy. If my own mum could throw me away, could defend a trash human being who tried to assault me rather than protect me from him, then there had to be something wrong with me. I have a beautiful man out there”—I gestured toward the window, to the car parked outside—“who I could have lost because I couldn’t accept …” I sobbed before I could stop it. “I- I couldn’t accept that s-someone could love me like he does. Th-that I’m worthy of that love.”
Maryanne wiped her tears from her face as she stood, as if to come to me.
“Don’t.” I sniffled, wiping in frustration at my own tears. “I can’t.”
She sat back down, her shoulders shaking from trying to keep her sobs at bay.
We sat in silence for what seemed like forever and then finally I spoke. “So, you moved here?”
“Aye. I …got a counseling job in Livingston. I met my husband, Peter, at an AA meeting there. He’s a recovering alcoholic.”
I raised an eyebrow but let her continue.
“He’s been sober for two decades, but he’s never stopped attending the meetings. Anyway, he’d gone through a rough divorce and the meetings meant more to him than ever.”
“Did you tell him about me?”
“I did.” She nodded emphatically. “I told him about everything. He … Peter has two kids, Gemma and Ben. They split their time between us and their mum. We’ve been married for three years, and we moved here about a year ago.”
I wouldn’t lie and say that didn’t break my goddamn heart.
To know she’d pulled her life together and could be a stepmum to kids who weren’t even hers when she was barely ahumanto her daughter.
“When I saw you in that campaign for Pennington’s, I couldn’t believe it.” She smiled, her eyes shining. “I couldn’t believe that beautiful girl was my daughter and that I had absolutely nothing to do with making her into that beautiful woman.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Aye, it hurts, Maia. It will always hurt.”
I nodded, wiping away my silently falling tears.
“I didn’t take any money for that article.”
I tensed.
She leaned toward me. “You can call the paper and they’ll corroborate it, but I didn’t do it for money. I really, stupidly, naively thought that I could say everything I’d always wanted to say to you, and you could hear it in a way that felt safe for both of us.” She huffed bitterly. “Fucking … Peter warned me. He told me not to trust that guy. I should have listened.”
“You did sayIabandonedyou,though.”
“No, actually, he asked me if I’d felt abandoned by you and I said that in a way I did, but that I abandoned you first. He twisted everything, Maia.”
