“No,” Elsie groaned, rolling over and smothering herself with the pillow.
Elsie felt her mother sit down next to her on the couch. “How did you sleep?”
“Fine.” She hadn’t slept at all. She’d spent the entire night sobbing into her pillow. She’d been such an emotional disaster that she’d hired a ride share to protect the other drivers at large. She hadn’t even been able to stomach going to the house to collect some of her things, so she’d come straight to Harriet’s looking for one of her grandmother’s heal-all-the-hurt hugs, but Harriet was in Vegas living large. Which left Faye.
That had been two nights ago, and Elsie was still on the couch waiting for her grandmother to come home and make it all better.
In her mother’s defense, Faye had given a valiant effort in trying to fill the void of Harriet’s absence, but it wasn’t the same. Faye had listened and nodded at the right moments and even held Elsie when the worst waves hit, but something had been missing.
“Well, when you’re done with your pity party, I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen.”
Elsie whipped the pillow off her face. “What do you mean pity party? I am a scorned woman.”
“What’s the saying? Oh right. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”
Elsie bolted upright. “Are you kidding me? You barely know Rhett and you’re taking his side?”
A fresh wave of hurt rolled through her at her mother’s comment. After their moment on the porch, Elsie thought they’d moved their relationship forward. It shouldn’t surprise her to be wrong twice in two days.
Faye’s face softened. “Oh honey, why does there always have to be a side? Hurt doesn’t choose sides and I imagine you’re both hurting right now.”
She didn’t have to imagine what Rhett was feeling because she was feeling it all the way to her core. It was as if her chest had been carved out so that if she screamed it would echo through her body. She’d seen the same emptiness in Rhett’s eyes when she walked away, the look of anguish and loss.
“He’s a jerkface. He helped Axel railroad me and then didn’t say a word. Not a single word,” Elsie whispered. “We talked about the divorce, how awful it all was, and the whole time he’d been a part of the destruction of my life.”
“He’s also been a part of your healing.”
“Is this something you read in one of your books?Healing by Drive-by?”
“It’s something your grandmother told me when your father walked out and I wished I’d listened,” Faye said, and Elsie was taken aback. Her mother never,ever,talked about Elsie’s dad. “I was so caught up in the anger that I let it hold me back from healing.”
“Are you saying you would have taken Dad back if he’d come around?”
“God no.” Faye cringed. “The man was a cheat and a liar, but when he walked out, I let the anger consume me until I shut myself off from other opportunities. I spent years looking for red flags rather than possibilities. And it robbed me of experiences, not just with others, but with you.”
Her mother’s admission was unexpected and touching.
“I stopped looking for red flags, went for the experience,” Elsie said. And she’d gone big. “And ended up burned.”
“Stop assuming bad intent. Sometimes people make mistakes. That’s part of life, it doesn’t mean that their love for you is any less.”
She snorted. She knew Rhett cared for her, a lot. But love? She was afraid that was a one-sided emotion. She’d know if he loved her. Right?
“But mistakes that cut soul-deep shouldn’t be a part of love.”
“Oh honey, love doesn’t play by rules,” she said. The wordlovejolted Elsie. “It’s free-flowing and ever-changing, otherwise it would shrivel up and die.”
Is that what she’d done? Boxed in the chance at something great with her rules? Rules that Rhett had gone along with—for her. Had she killed off any chance of more because she’d been scared? Or had her instincts been right that this would end in heartache.
“He broke my heart, Mom. Worse than Dad or Axel. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s like all the air was yanked from my lungs and I can’t breathe.”
“I know he did,” Faye said. “And I’m betting that you broke his. And the only thing sadder than one broken heart is two.”
And his heart was equally as damaged as hers. She knew it. The look of desperation to fix things quickly turned to desolation when she’d walked away.
“Oh my god,” she said, pulling the blanket to her chest as if the motion would stop her heart from falling right out. “I walked away.” Tears stung her eyes. “I walked away, Mom.”
“Fear will do that.”
