“You were trying to control me like you’ve been trying to control me my entire life.” Janie moved around her desk and walked toward the door; her grandma’s gumption was fading as the consequences of the conversation were beginning to take root. She needed her mother out of her space. “I’m done, Mother. I’m done trying to earn your approval and trying to be who you want me to be. I’m done allowing you to make me feel small and insufficient. I have a family who actually loves me. I don’t need you.”
“You can’t just—Janie, please…” Her mother’s voice actually broke. “You’re all I have.”
And there it was. NotI love you. NotI’m sorry. JustYou’re all I have.
Because Janie’s father had left her fifteen years ago, tired of the criticism, the impossible standards, and the way nothing was ever good enough. Because her mother had alienated anyrealfriends with her competitiveness and her need to constantlyone-up everyone. Because she’d built her entire life around appearances and status and money, and now she was sixty-one years old and completely alone but for the sycophants and shallow sidekicks.
A heaviness sank down into the pit of Janie’s stomach. Was it pity? Perhaps a little, but mostly, it was exhaustion. “You could have had me,” she said quietly. “If you’d actually been interested in knowing me instead of controlling me. If you’d supported my choices instead of criticizing them. If you’d shown up for my wedding, met my wife with an open mind, been excited about your granddaughters instead of seeing them as obstacles to money you think you deserved.”
“I never meant?—”
“But you did. And you do.” Janie opened the door, a clear dismissal. “I hope you figure out how to be happy, Mother. I really do. But I can’t help you with that. I have my own life to live, and my own family to love. And you’re no longer part of it.”
Her mother stood beside the chair, still clinging to it for a long moment, her perfectly made-up face flitting through emotions Janie wasn’t interested in reading. Then she smoothed her skirt with hands that trembled slightly and walked toward the door.
She paused in the doorway, not quite looking at Janie. “When you were little, you used to tell me you loved me every night before bed. Do you remember that?”
Of course Janie remembered. She remembered being five years old, then six, then seven and all the subsequent years after that, desperate for her mother’s affection, saying I love you like a talisman that might ward off criticism or earn a smile instead of a correction. “I do,” Janie said.
“You haven’t said it in years.”
That was because she’d learned that saying I love you just gave her mother another tool to manipulate her. Another pressure point to exploit. Love, to her mother, had always been conditional. Transactional. Something earned through compliance rather than freely given. Janie swallowed againsther dry mouth, the rawness of this exchange worsening with every word. “No,” she said. “I haven’t.”
Her mother blinked rapidly, something Janie had never seen before. Whatever was going on behind her mother’s crumbling façade, Janie didn’t want to know. It was too late. Whether her mother was hurt, or angry, or even if regret was swimming around in her dark soul somewhere, Janie no longer cared. “Goodbye, Mother.”
“Goodbye, Janie.”
And then her mother was gone, her Louboutin heels clicking down the marble hallway toward the elevators, and Janie was alone in her office with the door still open and her heart pounding hard against her chest like it was trying to escape.
She closed the door softly. And then she just stood there, breathing, feeling like she’d run a marathon, or climbed Mount McKinley, or done something equally exhausting and monumental.
She’d just cut ties with her mother. Completely and finally.
She dropped into the chair her mother had just vacated and sat with her feelings, as Rae had impressed upon her to do. Beyond the galloping panic and the disappearing gumption, what was it straining for recognition?
Freedom.
The word settled into her consciousness with surprising clarity. She was free. She’d been carrying that weight for far too long, and she’d just hefted it from her shoulders.
Janie stared at the discovery documents from the AI copyright case that had seemed so important an hour ago. Now she was somewhat disconnected from it, like that was someone else’s work, someone else’s life.
Her phone buzzed.How’s your day going?
Janie stared at Hannah’s perfectly timed message for a long moment before responding.My mother just came to my office. I told her I’m done, and I cut ties completely. I think I’m okay. I don’t know. I feel weird.
I’m coming to get you.
Janie smiled. Her handsome, strong rescuer wife clearly wasn’t about to let her deal with the aftermath of this alone.You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.
I’m already in the car. Be there in fifteen minutes x
Janie set down her phone, and tears burned the back of her eyes. They didn’tfeellike sad tears. Not really. They were a simple, emotional release after she’d finally opened the pressure valve after years of keeping it screwed down tight.
She thought about the way Grandma Susan had looked at her when Janie told her she was gay. She’d been freshly out, terrified to tell her family but needing to tell someone. Her grandma had listened, nodded, and said, “Your mother’s never going to understand you, sweetheart. She doesn’t have the capacity. But that’s her loss, not yours. You build your own family. You build your own life. And you don’t let anyone tell you how to live it.”
Janie moved to her desk and pulled up the trust documents on her computer. It was something she did occasionally when the imposter syndrome got bad, when she needed to remember that someone had believed in her and thought she was capable and trustworthy, someone worth investing in.
Thank you, Grandma. Thank you for seeing me. For believing in me and protecting me even after you were gone.
