“Why is it I can admit that my big mouth nearly got me and all the good and decent people I was working for killed, but you and Dad can’t admit to your parts in it?”
Her mother eyed her critically. “Maybe because you’ve always had an overinflated sense of personal responsibility?”
“Have I?” Cami blinked myopically. “Or is it possible you and Dad both haveunderinflated senses of responsibility?”
A snarl curled her mother’s perfectly painted mouth. “I didnotdrive all this way to be insulted by my only daughter.”
Her mother’s words were like a slap in the face. “I’m your only daughter because the life Dad has chosen to lead, the life you’ve led with him, got your other daughter killed.”
This time it was a real hand that stung across her cheek. Her mother’s hand.
Cami gritted her teeth and kept from lifting a palm to the print she knew stood out in red relief across her face.
“Don’teversay that again,” her mother hissed, her nostrils flaring wide. “It wasn’t your father’s—”
“How could you forgive him, Mom?” Cami cut off whatever excuse her mother had been about to make. “How could you go on living with him,lovinghim after what happened to Carlotta?”
Again, her mother’s eye twitched. And a terrible expression crossed her face. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been in love.”
Cami snorted and thought,Oh, if you only knew.
But her days of sharing personal details with her mother were over. Aloud she admitted, “If I ever do fall in love, it’ll be with a man who is good and kind. A man who thinks about how his actions affect others. A man who’d sooner cut off his own arm than put the people he loves in danger.”
A man like Dalton Simmons, who has more honesty and integrity in his little finger than you and Dad combined.
“Pfft.” Her mother snorted. “And now we know why you’re still single. Men like that don’t exist.Peoplelike that don’t exist. You’re too old to be this idealistic, Cami. It’s time you grew up.”
Cami gritted her teeth against the nasty response sitting on the tip of her tongue.
What’s the point?she thought.Nothing will make either of them see themselves for who they are.
She had suspected as much was true. But she’d made the trip to New York because she’d had to be sure. To do what she planned to do next, she’d had to be sure.
“I won’t be calling you anymore, Mom,” she said quietly.
A windy sigh left her mother’s pursed lips. “And there you go being dramatic again.”
“I’ll never feel safe having a relationship with either of you. And I can’t forgive either of you for feeling no responsibility for what happened to Carlotta.”
As horrible as it was to contemplate severing her last tie to family, Cami knew she had to for her own mental health. She had to cut the toxicity and corruption from her life as surely as she would cut a cancer from her body.
“Blood is thicker than water, Cami.” Her mother’s expression twisted her mouth into a cruel mew. “You can’t walk away from family.”
“Funny.” Cami shook her head. “You’re the mostCatholicCatholic I know, and yet you probably think that’s actually scripture, don’t you?” When her mother narrowed her eyes, she continued. “The phrase dates back to the twelfth century. To some German guy. And what he said was, ‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ Covenant meaning the pledge between people who’ve sworn to tie themselves together. Like spouses or best friends. The phraseliterallymeans that the bonds we share with the family we choose are stronger than the bonds of blood.”
“And what bonds do you share, Cami?” her mother asked sneeringly. “Last I heard, all you do is work. You have no friends. No boyfriend.”
The tears Cami had been holding back filled her eyes as she thought of Doc and all the men and women of Deep Six Salvage. Her tears spilled down her cheeks when she silently admitted the truth of her mother’s statement.
“But I have my dignity, Mom,” she said wetly. “I have my principles. And, most importantly, I have my life. If I don’t set a boundary with you and Dad now, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep any of that.”
“You self-righteous, condescending little—”
Cami didn’t wait around to hear the end of her mother’s sentence. She hit the button on the key fob and slid into the sedan’s driver’s seat.
As she pulled from the parking lot, she didn’t allow herself to glance into the rearview mirror. She didn’t allow herself to look back at her past. She made herself keep her eyes straight ahead. On her future.
Even if that future was destined to be a lonely one.
