Not because they're wrong, because I haven't let myself think about it in those terms yet.
Love. The girls.
It's been PT exercises and homework help and dinners at the kitchen table and Sadie Jo migrating to whatever room I'm in.
It's been Wrenleigh asking for me by name when her friend OD'd.
"They're good kids," I say. "That's because of Coin, not me."
"I know." Her voice breaks on it. "I know that's because of him. That's the worst part. He did everything I was supposed to do, and he did it better, and he did it alone because I was too selfish and too broken to stay."
I look at this woman: blonde, thin, shaking in a parking lot, and I feel the thing I've been trying not to feel since she sat at that kitchen table.
Not sympathy, exactly. Not forgiveness.
Something more complicated than either of those.
The recognition of a person who is genuinely, deeply damaged, who made choices that destroyed the people she was supposed to protect, and who is standing in the wreckage of it with nothing left but the knowledge that she did this to herself.
I've seen that look in the ER.
On addicts who've relapsed.
On parents who've hurt their children.
On people who hit bottom and found that bottom was further down than they ever imagined.
It doesn't excuse anything, and it sure as hell doesn't fix anything.
But it's real, and I'm not built to look away from real.
"I'm not trying to replace you," I say. "I couldn't if I wanted to. You're their mother. That's biology, and it doesn't change no matter how many years go by or how angry Wrenleigh is. But being their mother and being in their lives are two different things, and right now, you being in their lives is Coin's call. Not mine. Not yours."
She stares at me.
The tears are back—running down her face now, not the careful, controlled tears she used on Coin.
These are messy. Ugly. Real.
"You're not their mother," she says. And there's a shift in her voice. The grief hardening into something sharper. Something desperate. "You'll never be their mother. You're just the latest woman warming his bed. How long do you think it'll last? A month? Two? You don't know him the way I know him. You don't know what it's like to?—"
"You're right." My voice is steady, through and through. "I'm not their mother. Their mother left. I stayed."
She has no answer for that.
I watch it process—the ugliest, truest thing either of us has said—and I watch her face collapse around it like a building with the foundation pulled out.
I should feel triumphant. I don't. Instead, I feel sick.
"Go back to the hotel, Angelica. Get some rest. And when Coin decides the girls are ready, show up. Be present. Be honest. Don't make promises you can't keep." I pause. "That's all any of us can do."
I turn and walk to my car.
My hands aren't shaking. My voice didn't crack. My face didn't change.
I did good, I think.
I suck in a deep breath, and take a look around.
