She wasn’t sure she wanted to replicate them.
“Don’t I owe myself dignity?”
“No. You’re allowed to react however you want. I might call and yell at him. And I’m allowed to. Because I’m his sister, and I’m very disappointed in him. Because I took care of our mother, and it was too difficult for him. How nice that it got to be too difficult for him.”
Guilt nudged Marlowe’s ribs. “I’m sorry, Cara. We both should’ve helped you more.”
“No. You had your work out of town, and I get that. He was the one who should’ve made more of an effort. She was our mother.”
“But she was like a mother to me, too.”
“She loved you like a daughter. You came to visit morethan he did, anyway. If he had done this before she died, it would’ve killed her.”
She nodded slowly. It would have. She would’ve been so disappointed in her only son for the way that he had treated Marlowe.
Aiden and Cara’s family had always been so fascinating to Marlowe because they cared about things like that. Appearances, right and wrong, looking a certain way for the neighbors, and it wasn’t half as shallow as it appeared. It was this deep commitment to a way of life. To the concept of nuclear family, being close to your neighbors, and keeping wedding vows.
Whatever the truth of her in-laws’ marriage, whatever her mother-in-law felt about anything, or her father-in-law, though she had never known him well, no one would ever know.
If they had held any resentment, they had died with it. And they would’ve been proud of that fact.
It made her wonder if that was why Aiden was so determined not to live with regrets. Maybe he thought his parents hadn’t actually been happy. In many ways, Marlowe agreed, people shouldn’t just be committed to that suburban fantasy for the sake of it, not now. But also, she had lived a life where people hadn’t cared about their responsibilities. Hadn’t cared about taking care of the children they’d given birth to, hadn’t cared about maintaining their home, hadn’t cared about being even a slightly reasonable version of themselves for the people who lived with them.
She couldn’t say that that was better.
There was value in pushing back against things that no longer needed to exist. But when it was just a cloak for selfishness, then it lost its moral superiority.
Or maybe that was just her opinion, as the discarded wife.
“I think you should call him and demand the money backfor the car. Or at least half of it. He can’t just take all that money. He has to give it back to you.”
“What if he spent it?”
“Then you need to divorce him, and you need to take all of the things he does have.”
“I don’t even know if I want to do that.”
“Why aren’t you angry?” Cara asked, looking flabbergasted.
Shewasangry. She was. It was just that anger had always been so toxic around her, and in her life, and it wasn’t something that she wanted to surrender to. She could understand Cara’s feelings. She envied them, in fact. Because Cara seemed to have a direct line to the most pure, wonderful anger, and Marlowe just didn’t have that.
She felt sad.
She had shut off her anger so long ago.
Because it scared her.
“You know what my dad would do,” Marlowe said.
“What is that?”
“Make a scene. Show up outside his window, throw some beer bottles at the side of the house. Of course, my dad never lived across the country from any of his… Lovers, or whatever they were. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to do that.”
“Well, I think that you’re owed a chance to at least share a piece of your mind. It sounds to me like when you last talked to him, he was just dumping his stuff on you.”
She wasn’t wrong about that. And that little particular fire in the middle of Marlowe’s chest. Because she hadn’t gotten to say her piece. She hadn’t had a chance to say what all of this was doing to her. She hadn’t shared anything, because she hadn’t wanted to open herself up, she hadn’t wanted to expose her pain.
But shouldn’t he hear it? Shouldn’t he know that what he had done to her had consequences?
