She shook her head and blotted the tears from her cheeks, careful not to smear her mascara. “I can’t apologize for leaving, Jill. It was the right thing for me.”
“And Sean?” Every part of me shook. “Was that the right thing for you too?”
CHAPTER 26
Iscrutinized every minute detail of her face when I said Sean’s name. I think I might have eased up if I’d seen a flicker of remorse, a tiny movement of her eyes that indicated that she understood how much she’d hurt me. But she batted my words away like a fly buzzing around her head.
“That was nothing. You know how Sean is.”
All that I had left for her, the tiniest speck of an ember of affection, snuffed out.
I wanted to slap the pitying smile off her face. I wanted to scream and rage at her. I wanted to be frightening.
I wasn’t.
I was small and weak. I curled in on myself and I cried for so many things. “I loved him. You knew I loved him.” Through tear-blurred eyes I saw her move and then she ran her hand over my hair, petting me.
“I know, sweetie. I know.”
I lowered her hand but kept my fingers locked around her wrist. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you understand that this is your fault? What you did to Dad, to me, to Sean, was wrong. You ruined us. You broke everything and you will never put it back together. Never.”
I made it to the door before she stopped me, sounding much more composed than she should have, given the distraught show she’d just put on.
“Jill.” She barked my name like I was in trouble. “I understand that you’re angry. You’re a teenager, you’re supposed to be angry. And I’m your mother, so I guess I get to bear the brunt of it. I was hoping that you’d use this time we spent apart to figure out a few things, to understand me better and why things—” she made a gesture in the air “—happened the way they did. I’d hoped that we could move past this, but I can see that I was being overly optimistic.”
Standing across from her in the sauna that was my garage, I looked at my mom, really looked at her. She hadn’t come to me with tears of remorse and pleading words of forgiveness on her lips. She hadn’t come with concern or contrition for what Dad and I had been through since she left. She hadn’t come with any kind of admission of wrongdoing on her part. She wanted something from me, that was all. There was no way she’d be standing in my sweltering garage as she bypassed “glowing” and went straight to sweating otherwise.
“I need you to know that I’m not the bad guy here. I’m really not.” She was babbling, her words tumbling out over top of each other.
I didn’t bother asking that, if she wasn’t the bad guy, who did she cast in that role? Dad? Me?
“I don’t want you to hate me. That’s all. I am your mom,” she said. “Me, I’m the one who gave birth to you!”
This was a side of Mom I’d never seen before. She kept reaching for me, her voice breaking when I wouldn’t let her touch me. She was actually wringing her hands. If I cared, I might have been concerned.
“I told you I don’t hate you.”
“Right, you don’t anything me.” She made a choked laughing noise that sounded painful. “But that’s not fair. I don’t deserve your antipathy. I really don’t.”
She was starting to freak me out. Was she sick? Was she going to ask me for a kidney or something? “Okay, tell me what you do deserve.”
“I don’t know. But not this hostility. You’ve always been Daddy’s little girl. The two of you from the beginning. He never gave me a chance…”
Up until that point she’d been fidgeting and biting her lip the way I did sometimes. I don’t know what happened between one word and the next, but she stopped all of it.
“I really hate him for that.”
Goose bumps broke out on my arms when she said that. She was taking her time talking. I wanted her to get it over with. Tell me whatever horrible thing she wanted that had upset Dad so much. I had a momentary flare of panic that pushed the pain of my sunburn and the still stinging memory of Sean aside: maybe it was a custody issue after all. Maybe she was going to ask me to come live with her.
I was breathing faster, panting almost, as I waited for her to say it, hot, dry air filling and leaving my lungs with greater and greater speed. I would never leave Dad. She had to know that. I’d resort to something truly childish like running away before I’d let her take me from him. I’d get a job somewhere, hide out until I turned eighteen. Maybe I could still take Daniel up on his offer to drive to Mexico.
Suddenly she was standing right in front of me, close enough that I could smell her cinnamon-scented perfume. It tickled my nose and I started to back away, but she grabbed my hands and curled them in hers. She was completely calm. “I want you to come live with me.”
Live with me.Hearing them out loud, those three words stole my breath. “No.” I pulled my hands from her. “No.”
She reached for me again. “But I’m your mom. You belong with me.”
“No. I belong with Dad. You left us.”
