I turn to face her. She doesn’t look like her normal self. Her hair is pulled back into a low ponytail. Her face is bare of makeup, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen. She’s not even wearing her jewelry and designer clothes. She’s wearing a velour tracksuit. I’m sure it’s probably an expensive brand, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so dressed down.
“Darling, we need to leave.” She grabs my arm. “I refuse to allow my daughter to stay another night in the house with that… that… man.”
“What are you talking about, Evelyn?”
She stops pulling my arm to turn and stare at me. She tugs at her jacket, looking down at the ground before placing her eyes back on me. “Last night,” she goes on to say. “I couldn’t sleep. So, I came into the house to get some water. Well, I noticed your husband was just coming in. I went to see why a married man and father would walk in the house at damn near four in the morning, and the man practically accosted me.”
I shake my head trying to gather my thoughts. “What?”
“Darling, will you listen? Your husband….” She swallows, placing a hand to her chest. “He tried to assault me.”
My mouth drops open as anger flares up in me. “He what?”
“Yes,” she goes on to say. “He grabbed me, begging me to sleep with him. I fought him off, but we don’t have time. We need to leave before he gets back.” She grabs my arm trying to pull me out of the kitchen. “I hope you didn’t sign a prenup. I’m sure you can get a nice alimony after the divorce, and you have his son…” Her words trail off when I laugh.
She lets me go and turns to glare at me. I laugh until the laughter is gone and only tears are left in my eyes.
“Imagine my surprise when I woke up to this video.” I turn my phone around and hit play on the video I’ve watched multiple times this morning in bed. The speaker blares out my mother’s words to my husband.
“I just want to make you feel good….”
I put the phone back down at my side. No need to play the rest. She knows how it ends.
Evelyn swallows and lifts her chin higher. I can see her brain turning, trying to figure out how to lie her way out of this.
“It isn’t what it seems.”
I shake my head. “After I watched the video, I called James. I figured I should finally return his calls since he’s been blowing me up.” Two days after my mother arrived on my doorstep, her husband started calling me. I refused to answer because, although I didn’t care how good the man was to me and Noah, I didn’t condone domestic violence. Looking back, I wish I had picked up that phone.
“He let me know he never put his hands on you. The man was damn near disgusted I even accused him of it. He did let me know you left him with a bullshit letter talking about greener pastures. Now that sounds more like you. You are known for your letters. Although neither he nor I would’ve thought your green pastures would be my fucking husband.”
The shock has worn off for Evelyn. She’s looking at me like the evil bitch that she is. I watched that video so many times trying to see where the hell I missed the conniving piece of shit that she is.
“What do you want me to say? Sorry? You should be thanking me for testing your husband’s loyalty.”
I scoff, shaking my head. “Wow, you are fucking insane. You weren’t testing anything for me; you wanted him for yourself.”
“You don’t deserve him,” she shouts. “You know nothing about this lifestyle. Don’t even have enough sense to put on a face of makeup before you come down to breakfast.”
“Oh yeah, and what has putting on makeup done for you? Divorced five times, three broken engagements, and left at the altar once. Let’s not even talk about all the men who didn’t even last long enough to think of marrying you. You love to talk about being a high-valued woman, but you can’t even keep a man.”
I toss my hands up in the air.
“You know I can’t even be mad at you. I allowed you to come into my home knowing you weren’t shit. I thought that the trifling, self-absorbed, gold digging, bitch that I’ve alwaysknown could have changed. But I guess I was the stupid one. God forbid I thought somewhere down in that fake ass body you had a motherly bone. But I guess it was scraped away with all the plastic surgery and fillers.”
“That’s what this is about,” Evelyn frowns. “You’re jealous.”
I chuckle. “Of what?”
“Me,” she shouts. “Because even though you hate what I did, you hate even more that I left you behind in that tiny home with your father to live out a boring suburban middle-class life. While I traveled the world, wrapped in silks and furs and diamonds, you wore cheap clothes, eating box dinners every night. You wanted me to suffer for leaving you, and I never did.”
I stare at my mother, considering everything she said. When I was a child, I’d always hoped that my mother would find that the lifestyle she chased would one day grow tiring and she would wake up and miss us. I dreamed of her coming back to my father and I, pleading to be a family again.
And then one day while I was in middle school, I stopped waiting for her to change her mind. I stopped hoping she would walk back through our door.
I shake my head. “The sad part is that you really think that’s true. Let me tell you something, Evelyn.” I step closer to her.
“Although you weren’t happy with that tiny house in the suburbs, that place was my everything. The man that you so callously left behind with a three-year-old, was the best father a girl could ever ask for. He made that house my haven. I never wanted for anything. I had love, support, guidance, and a strong foundation.”
