From across the table, Jenny’s smile dropped.She blew out a breath, and then she reached over and put one of her hands on his.
“My sweet boy,” she said, her eyes filled with emotion, “you had no other choice.For years.I let you down.”
“You are not the one who let me or anybody else down, Mom,” he said fiercely.
“I got lost there for a while.”When he went to argue, Jenny shook her head.“I did, and you know I did.And you stepped up.Do you think that I don’t know how it is that you learned to cook so well, Tennessee?How you fed your brother and your sister when I couldn’t?And made me eat when I wouldn’t?How you dropped most of your extracurriculars so you could work in the store so that we didn’t have to hire someone to pick up the slack?How you made yourself into a better version of your father than that man could ever have dreamed of being?”
“I don’t think it was a straight line, not the way you’re making it out to be,” Tennessee said gruffly.Over the lump in his throat.
Jenny swallowed hard.“I can’t take any of that back,” she said quietly, sounding like she had a matching lump in her own throat.“And when I think about how I might have changed things, it gets hard, because look at the man you are.Look at all you’ve accomplished.How could I want that to change?I’m proud of the man you are.I just wish there was a way you could have come to him differently.”
“I don’t blame you for any of that,” Tennessee said after a moment, though he did feel a bit as if the kitchen was spinning all around him.Because he remembered those days differently.Yes, he’d taught himself how to cook because someone had to feed Dallas and Cat and try to tempt Jenny to eat something, but he’d seen it as a duty.And duties were things that had to be done, so there was no bemoaning them.Just doing what had to be done.
“I know you don’t blame me,” his mother said softly now.“Sometimes I wish you would.Instead, you simply shouldered burdens that weren’t yours and you’ve been walking with them ever since.What I hope is that you can put them down now.Because you deserve to live yourownlife, Tennessee.”
“My life is fine the way it is,” he argued, almost by reflex.
“If it was fine,” his mother replied, her eyes on his, “I don’t think that you’d be keeping Matilda Stark a secret.And keeping her secret very badly, I might add.It’s not like people can’t recognize her truck no matter where it’s parked, Tennessee.”
Meaning that what they’d hidden from the street hadn’t been hidden from the windows of this house, and why hadn’t that occurred to him?
He pulled his hand away and found himself scraping his hair back.It always got too long in the winter.He usually cut it by now, but Matilda liked it.“Yeah.Well.I’m not sure that’s going anywhere.”
But he didn’t believe that.He didn’t want to believe that.
And his mother just laughed.
Oddly, it made him feel better.
“Please don’t tell me that you’re going to do to that poor girl what you did to your high school girlfriend.”When he looked at her in shock, Jenny shook her head.“Oh, Tennessee.Love isn’t demanding a show of loyalty and then making unilateral decisions about what that loyalty should look like.Don’t get me wrong.Kacey was a sweet girl.I liked her.But I never thought she was for you because she took you far too seriously.She never made you change course or even consider it.I don’t think there’s any danger of Matilda Stark doing the same.”
“Mom,” Tennessee said, and suddenly it was critically important that he say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way, or all would be lost.He could feel it like a heart attack inside of him.“Mom, the thing is—”
“The thing is, you grew up with a terrible role model of a parent who let herself get crushed trying to love someone who just didn’t love her back,” Jenny said instead of letting him finish.“But I’ve seen the way that Matilda looks at you.The way she’s always looked at you.If you can’t find a way to look at her the same way, then let her go.Because I’ll tell you something, I don’t think you ever truly loved Kacey.Because if you did, there’s no way you could have shrugged her off like that.”
He couldn’t tell if that felt unfair or if she’d hit him square on.“I didn’t shrug her off.I thought that she would be happier without me.And it turns out she is happier without me.”
“She’s happier without you because you didn’t love her,” his mother said, another direct hit delivered so calmly.“And deep down, I don’t think youwantto love someone the way they ought to be loved.Because you’ve seen how that can end.You’ve only seen unrequited love, and it was sad and upsetting for everyone involved.But what do you suppose would happen if you stopped keeping yourself safe?Would the world end?”
When he started to speak his mother only shook her head, and he fell quiet again, that heart attack only seeming to get stronger, except he doubted very much it would kill him.Surely the harder thing waslivinglike this.
Jenny was looking at him with so much compassion that Tennessee couldn’t meet her gaze.It was too much.He couldn’t handle it.Because it was setting off another kind of rapid snowmelt inside of him.It was washing away every defense he’d used, even the ones he’d stopped thinking of as defenses at all.That was how long they’d been in place.
“What I want you to remember is that the fault wasn’t mine in loving too much, Tennessee,” Jenny said then.“There’s no such thing.The fault was in loving someone who couldn’t love me back and not leaving when I knew that wasn’t something I could change.”She paused, studying him.“Is Matilda making that same mistake right now?”
“No,”Tennessee belted out, without even thinking about it.He heard his voice echo back at him, intense and inarguably loud.He ran his hand over his face and spoke more quietly this time.“God, no.”
Jenny smiled, though she tried to hide it.A little, anyway.And maybe more than a little triumphantly, to his mind.
Then she picked up her tea again, as if nothing had happened.As if she hadn’t wrecked him.“If that’s true, Tennessee, then I don’t know why you’re still sitting at my table.”
Tennessee let out a laugh that made it clear that his heart was just fine, or not actively trying to kill him, anyway.Then he pushed back from the table and stood up, leaving his tea untouched.
“Neither do I, Mom,” he said gruffly.Then he went and kissed her on the forehead, making her laugh in delight, before he headed for the door.
Then, at last, he made his way to Matilda.
And it felt like he was finally going home.
