I don't blame her. I understand where this desire for control comes from all too well. But it's my job to balance our growth and potential and my life against her need for control and risk averse thinking. Well, risk averse when it comes to business. Apparently not so much when it comes to teaching kids how to navigate their way around an open flame.
She shrugs off my concerns, smiling. "You and your siblings learned how to roast hot dogs in a bonfire as soon as you were tall enough to reach your roasting stick into the flame and stable enough to not topple over into it."
I remember that. We went camping a lot before my dad got sick. It was the only sort of vacation he would ever allow himself to take. A night away here, a day trip there. Never too far from the business, and never on a Friday or Saturday.
"It's only right I keep the tradition going with the next generation," she says, folding her napkin and setting it aside with her empty plate.
I frown at the sentiment. "They're not my kids, Mom," I remind her, but the second I say the words, they sound wrong.
"Aren't they?" She arches a brow at me, as if she's waiting for me to catch on to something I haven't figured out yet.
"Liz is their guardian," I say, sticking to the facts. Especially in light of Tammy's efforts, it's important everyone is clear on this one simple truth. "Their hers."
My mother rolls her eyes like I'm an idiot. "And she's yours. With the kids. It's a package deal, Jovi. I don't see how you're not understanding this."
I blink, caught off guard by my mother's blunt statement. "Liz and I aren't together." Another set of strung together words I hate the taste of on my tongue. But they're technically still the truth. For now.
My mother actually snorts a laugh at that. "Did you forget I was there the night you brought her in to see Dee Sparks?"
"That wasn't what you thought it was," I insist.
"Oh?" She turns in her stool to face me full on. "That wasn't you doing something special for the woman you love for no other reason than you knew it would bring her joy? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I as I recall it, those were your words."
I fidget, like a damn teenager, and when I open my mouth again, the words are a sputtering mess, "That's not... I don't...Mom, it's Liz...and things are...complicated."
My mother's bottom lip jumps. Something I've seen it do a million times over the years when she's trying not to laugh. Something I've only recently started to understand on a whole newlevel since spending so much time with Gavin and Remmi. That elder wisdom seeing the light and humor in a situation that seems dire and intense to the young and naïve. Fuck me. I did not think I could still wind up on the receiving end of that look, but apparently, when it comes to my love life, I'm still an inexperienced idiot.
"Life is complicated," she says and for a second, I'm almost pleased that she sounds like she agrees with me after all. "You and Liz are simple."
Oh. So not in agreement. "How can you say that? Liz and I have been the opposite of simple from the moment we met."
She chuckles and it's not lost on me that her amusement is at my expense. "I could argue the opposite. You've been the constant in each other's lives from the moment your paths collided. You fought it, sure, but at the heart of everything, you've always shown up for each other. You've seen each other. Been honest with one another. Been your truest selves in the presence of the other. What do you think love is, Jovi, if not that?"
I turn my face toward where my fingers are wrung together in my lap. I know she's right. Have known for a while. But we still have some hurdles ahead of us. Things I'm afraid will continue to haunt us if I don't find a way to help her see them for the lies that they are and let them go.
Even if it's not to set her free to be with me, I want that contorted vision she holds of herself to be gone. For her to see herself the way I do. As the fierce, strong, fucking amazing, selfless and boundlessly loving woman she is.
"Fine," I admit. "I love her. I love the kids. And I love the fucking life I have with them. The glimpses of life I catch that we could have moving forward."
"But?"
"But I'm afraid it's so damn good that Liz won't let herself have it. She's so sure she doesn't deserve it, that if she's entrusted with it, she'll ruin it, hurt everyone the way her mother did."
My mother's brow crinkles at that, and it's the first I see her look stumped since this conversation started. "What happened with her mother was an accident. It was horrible, but I hardly see why Liz would be afraid of sharing that fate."
I frown. "What are you talking about? What accident? Liz and Lena's mother walked out when they were kids. She packed a bag one night and left. Liz remembers the whole thing. Her mother crying to her father that she was sorry, but that she had to go."
I think that's the piece that's scarred Liz the most. Witnessing her mother break not only her father's heart and hers and Lena's, but that the drive to do so was so strong, she was willing to destroy everyone to do it. Herself included.
There was no sense to it. No logic for her brain to conclude anything other than the possibility that she has this same self-destructive time bomb ticking away inside of her.
My mother's eyes close, and her chin tilts in the slightest nod, as though she's just made sense of something. When she opens them again, there's pain there. And when her hand reaches out to untangle mine and give them a reassuring squeeze, I brace myself for what I'm about to learn.
"Rebecca Penny didn't walk out on her family," she starts, and her voice has that tone I used to dread, the one when she'd tell me that my father's cancer was back. Or that his treatment had stopped working. "I don't know why it never occurred to me that you didn't know, that the girls didn't know. I suppose you were all too young to hear the full story unless an adult told you, and clearly, we all chose not to burden you. If likely for different reasons."
I want to tell her to spit it out already, but I keep my mouth shut, grind my teeth together, and wait it out.
"It was all over the news, so what I know, I know because it was public knowledge. I never got a firsthand telling from anyone, not even in all the years I was friends with Harold."
