Her voice sharpens. “What else should I call her? She has no education, no connections, no family of her own. She brings nothing to this marriage except need.”
“She brings me peace.” My voice comes out low. “She brings me joy. She makes me want to be better than the monster you and Dad raised me to be.”
Ma goes very quiet. “Your father would be ashamed?—”
“My father was a brutal, violent man who died alone and unloved because he pushed everyone away. I won’t become him.”
The words hit their mark. I take a breath and keep going.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize to Nora. Sincerely. Not a performance—an actual apology. And you’re going to accept her as my wife and treat her with respect.”
“Or what?” She’s testing me. She wants to know if I mean it.
“Or you don’t see me. You don’t see her. You don’t see any children we have in the future. We go completely non-contact. You know me. You know I don’t make idle threats. I mean what I say, and you know I’ll do it. Your choice, Ma.”
She inhales sharply. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
Silence stretches.
“She’s made you weak,” she says.
“She’s made me human. There’s a difference.”
“I won’t apologize for trying to protect you from a mistake.”
“Then we’re done here.”
“Cillian—”
I hang up before she can feed me more of her bullshit and stare down at the blank phone screen.
I’ve just threatened to cut off my mother. Drew a line in the sand. I’d do it again without hesitation—but that doesn’t mean it costs nothing.
Family is everything in this world. I know that.
“That got heated.” Finn’s voice comes from just beyond the elevator doors, which I didn’t even realize had opened.
“You were listening.”
“Hard not to.”
“She’s wrong.”
“She’s scared.” He steps in and presses the button for the first floor. “You’re her favorite. Always have been. And now there’s someone you love more than you love her. I don’t imagine a woman like Kathleen knows how to deal with that.”
I turn it over. Ma, who held this family together through all of my father’s cheating, his lies, his violence, who scraped and sacrificed and made the O’Rourkes into what we are today.
I hadn’t considered her position from the angle of a woman losing her place in her son’s life.
“Doesn’t excuse what she did,” I say.
“No. Doesn’t excuse it. Just explains it.”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“Didn’t think you were.”
