I don’t get it. I’m not sure I ever will. Her staying with a man who’s done this to her time and time again. I hate hearing that she doesn’t find herself worthy of a partner whose sole focus is her, and that all these years she’s put up with it.
“He does what he does, but at the end of the day, he comes home to us, to me. That’s why I forgive him. Because if he didn’t love us, he wouldn’t do that.”
I scoff, outraged. “He skipped out on my birthday brunch plans to mess around with another woman.”
How does she not see how fucked up this is? All these years I’ve thought of her as a pillar for our family, someone who’s held us up and picked us up when we fell. Now I’m realizing how wrong I was to see her in that light, and it makes me that much happier to have ended my relationship with Webber because if I hadn’t, I’d be her, settling with a person I cared about but didn’t mean enough for.
“And he’s sorry for that,” she says, apologizing for him.
“No, he’s not. I don’t understand how you can sit there and try to convince me otherwise.”
“Because—”
“Let me guess. Becauselove is endless.”
She gives me a look that tells me there’s no talking her out of how she feels about it. It’s clear she’s spent years finding a way that doesn’t make her feel shitty for staying, for putting up with him. One conversation with her daughter isn’t going to pull her out of the fucked-up thinking she’s lived in for who knows how long.
“I’m only trying to explain it to you, honey. I love you very much. Your father loves you just the same. I can see the guilt he carries over this, and I don’t want it to come between the two of you. He’s just…different in his own ways, Violet. Please understand.”
“It’s too late for that,” I grumble, reaching over to grab the straps of my overnight bag.
“Violet, please stay.”
After this conversation? Yeah, there’s no way in hell that’s happening.
“Make sure you tell Olive,” is what I offer back. I harden my emotions, fully aware of how they want to explode out of me. Like a boiling pot of water, it’s all there, ready to flow over the edge and fall, fall, fall. “Because if she asks, I won’t lie again.”
If I were with a man who left me to be intimate with someone else, how would she feel about that? If I just accepteda man’s infidelity, would she say that she raised me better?
She loves him enough to deal with the constant disloyalty. No wonder he said what he did to me outside. That their marriage isn’t my business. Well, I guess not since it seems as though they have it figured out.
Jesus, he’s living a fairytale, one where he gets to come home to the happy, supportive family, but then goes out into the worldand does whatever he damn well pleases without having to pay a price, without any repercussions or people having an opinion over it.
He may love us all, but he still did what he did. Instead of celebrating another year with his daughter, he was getting ridden like a bull in a rodeo.
Gross.
“Violet,” is all she says as I open the door, walk down the hall, and descend the stairs. At the bottom, I give one glance to the scattered family pictures on the wall and yank the one closest to me down; a picture of the four of us on a sailboat off the coast of Florida from the previous Spring—the last time I can recall when things made sense. I let it slip through my fingertips and clatter to the ground, glass cracking and splintering from the impact.
Because right now, this family is not a unit.
I’m not sure we ever will be again.
THIRTY
COLSON
I lay backon my bed, knowing that at some point, I should make the trek to Harrison Heights to see mom. Only, I’m having a hard time. She needs help, needs to get back to a place where she understands that she’s relapsed and needs support. After my last visit home, it’s clear she’s in the thick of her addiction. Hell, look what she did to Finn. She fucked him over and for what? Her own selfish desire to get high.
I’m still trying to understand why she struck a deal with the Lincolns. Was it for the money or just for the drugs? I spent the morning with Aunt Bess, Uncle Thad, and Sebastian, but it didn’t feel right, so I came back in the afternoon after we ate an early dinner.
As much as I like spending time with them, it’s also an awakening experience of the life I lead, a constant reminder of who Mom is, and a mother she is not.
I roll to my stomach, pressing my cheek against the pillow and stretching my arms out. I don’t usually take naps but Aunt Bess cooked one hell of a Thanksgiving dinner, and I haven’t been sleeping the best. Finn is constantly on my mind, and I’m left wondering how long it’ll be until he strikes again.
Clyde, too.
He’s worse than his son, even if he wasn’t the one who drove the ball-peen hammer into my hand that day. I was lucky to walk away with one broken finger instead of many.
