Nodding once more, she says, “So you’re going to Grand River, then?”
“I am,” I confirm. “I think it will be good for me to have a change of scenery. Skye needs a roommate now that Alis and Sunny are moving in with Dex, and I’m sure I can find a job in the city somewhere. I have enough saved to hold me over for a few months while I look for something.”
Mom crosses her arms on the table, leaning into the conversation and entering inquisition mode. Now that she’s accepted my fate, she may as well gather all the details. “Does Alis know?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No. She’s had so much going on, and with things finally coming together for her I didn’t want to burden her with any of it. Skye is the only person who knows anything about it.”
“She’s wild, but she’s loyal.”
I smile, thinking about my purple-haired firecracker of a friend. “Yeah,” I say, smiling.
“And you’ll be safe?”
“Always.”
Mom is quiet again for a moment, then clears her throat. “How long have you known?”
I blink. “That I needed to leave?”
She nods.
I exhale slowly, picking at a thread on the edge of my sleeve. “I know this sounds cliche, but I think on some level I’ve always known we weren’t compatible. In pieces. In moments. But the night he punched the wall… that was the breaking point. I knew in my bones it was over.”
“And before that?”
“Before that, it was the backhanded comments. The distance. The way I felt lonelier with him in the room than I ever did by myself.”
She sighs, the sound full of something heavier than judgment. “I wish I had been more help to you before now.”
“You did the best you could with what you knew,” I say gently. “I see that now. And I forgive you for not seeing it then.”
Tears threatening to spill over, Mom reaches over and wraps me in a hug. “I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
“I do, and I love you, too.”
“And I’m proud of you.”
Now that, I did not expect.
I pull back, looking her in the eyes to gauge the sincerity behind her words. “Really? You’re not disappointed in me for leaving?”
Mom laughs, wiping the tears now falling from her eyes. “Victoria, I’ve never once been disappointed in you in your entire life. You’ve put up with more crap than any one woman should ever have to go through with that man, and you’ve handled it with grace. To be honest, I’m almost jealous.”
Say what?
I arch my brow, clearly asking for her to go on.
She shakes her head, still chuckling. “I love your father, I really do. But if I had half the courage you do, I would have stood up for myself years ago.”
“You still can, Mom,” I assure her.
“Maybe,” she shrugs. “You just keep doing what you’re doing, and maybe you can teach this old dog new tricks.”
This conversation is completely bass-ackwards from the one we shared on the porch swing two years ago, and for the first time all day, I feel like I can breathe.
Suddenly, leaving my marriage doesn’t feel like failure. It feels like freedom.
A freedom I thought I might never get to taste. A freedom that I now realize I had to carve out with my own two hands. I feel the weight lifting, not all at once, but enough to believe that something better is possible.
