“You liar. I was angry because I wanted my little girl,” Mom says, and this time her voice is tight. “All I wanted was my daughter in my life. I want my baby.”
Tears spring up in my eyes, but I don’t know if she’s saying it because it’s true or because she’s fighting with Dad.
“You lost her because she finally understood what Eric and I have always known. You love the store, not us. Lucy only mattered because of what she could give you.”
I feel sick at hearing my own thoughts, my own words, said with such contempt. Did I sound like that when we fought the other day? Shame fills me.
“That is a disgusting thing to say,” Mom says. “You are a horrible man. Horrible. You twist everything in your head to make yourself a victim.”
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come back.”
There’s a long silence. “What are you saying?” Mom asks.
“It’s easy. Come home. Prove you can prioritize your family and not your precious perfumes or your little store.”
“I am prioritizing my family. I’m here with Luling.”
“I regret allowing you to poison Lucy with your stories. I should have put my foot down years ago.”
“You never tried to understand.”
“How could I?” Dad’s voice crackles over the phone. “You never trusted me, right from the beginning.”
“For how long will you punish me over not telling you about my moli right away?”
“It was unfair to me.”
“And I apologized, but you know the moli is the heart of my family.”
“I understood fine. But I’m your husband.I’myour heart and your family. Or I should be. This perfume stuff got out of hand, and I won’t put up with it anymore.”
Then there’s silence. It takes me a second to realize it’s because Mom has hung up on him. Just…hung up on Dad. I don’t know what to do or how to process what I’ve heard. I wish for a moment I could talk to Eric, but I know whose side he’ll take. It feels wrong to tell Rafe or Ana about this, like I would be betraying my parents.
I panic, wondering if I can sneak out without her hearing, but the store is so quiet all I can hear is her heavy breathing from the back. She’s not crying, I don’t think. I don’t know.
Then I hear her walking, so I grab the door and open it noisily. “I’ve got lunch,” I call as cheerily as I can.
“I’m in the back.” I analyze her voice like a CIA agent looking for clues as to the identity of the mole, but she sounds fine. Almost upbeat? That can’t be right.
Mom looks weirdly content as she takes the food from me while I peer at her face. “I got chickpea salad on sourdough and smoked trout on brioche.”
“We can share them.” She adds half of each sandwich to our plates, then checks them over before going to the fridge to get some hot sauce and chili oil. “Just in case,” she says.
We eat our sandwiches in the cool semi-twilight of the store, not speaking much. I have a kind of mental nausea from the call I overheard that’s fighting with the hunger from gardening all day. It’s my own fault for listening, and although I don’t want to talk about it or those texts I saw this morning, I also do.
Then she says, “Your brother and his wife are separating.”
“What?” I only have to fake a bit of shock, since I’m taken aback she’s telling me instead of hiding important information the way she usually does. “Because of my perfume?”
“Perhaps, in part.”
I wince. “Mom.”
“Just because it’s not the answer you want doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“You don’t need to say it.”
“Would you rather I lie? Then anytime you asked me a serious question, you’d never know if I was telling you the truth or not. I didn’t say it was your fault, but what happened with the perfumes could have been the catalyst for a marriage that was already cracking.”
