The shock on their faces would be almost comical if I didn’t feel like I was going to vomit.
“We raised you in this house,” Mum says, her voice eerily quiet. “Yet we can’t come and go as we please?”
“That isn’t what I’m trying to?—”
“If we’ve been so awful to you, why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Mum, I’m not trying to point fingers. I’m trying to be open about how I’ve been hurt so we can find a new way forward together. If you’ve been hurt, you should say so as well.”
She glares at the door. “I can’t even stay in my own house.”
“But it isn’t your house anymore. I bought it.” To help them, or so I believed at the time. Now I realize they never intended to remain here. I would offer to sell it back to them, but I know they can’t afford it.
Dad puts his hand on Mum’s. “We know we’ve asked a lot from you. If you can help us with the campervan, we’ll be out of the way as soon as possible.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “That’s not what I’m saying, either. I don’t need you to leave. I just want to be told things. It’s hard to wake up, expecting to see my parents, and find out you’re gone.”
“You don’t think it was hard for us to lose everything?” Mum says. “To crawl to oursonand beg him to help us keep our house, only for him to take it for himself?”
A cold bucket of water splashes me in the face. Or that’s how it feels. My mouth hangs ajar as I replay those words over in my head, trying to make sense of them. “What?”
“You know. We had to humble ourselves, asked for help, and you spat on us, taking it for yourself. We know you’re successful, Gav, but you didn’t need to throw the reminder in our face. Every time we come home, it’s a struggle merely to see this house and all we lost, but to know our son took it away? That hurts.”
My mind takes a moment to catch up to everything being lobbied at me. “You asked me to buy the housefor you?”
“Aye, we did that. But we didn’t expect you to move back home.” Dad shrugs lightly, but I can see the pain in his eyes. “It was a fair amount, though. I know.”
A fair amount? It was a bloody house on a large bit of property. It was an investment for my future. I’m so shocked, I have no ready reply.
Mum frowns at the quilt on the bed. Dad looks at me. I shake my head. If I’d understood what they were really asking for at the time, what would I have done? At that time, I was vulnerable. Coming out of the massive depressive episode and having my books take off and the show getting picked up was a lot to handle. I was coming into a good deal of money, and I might have just bought the house and gifted it to them. But now? Knowing how much they intend to lean on me, I’m glad I’m in a position to set boundaries. To help how I can without giving everything to them.
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t made clear to me. I assumed we were all going to live here together.”
Mum looks up at that, her brows furrowing.
“But I think we’re past that. If you’d like, I can write you a cheque for the campervan. I’m willing to give you ten thousand pounds to help cover an upgraded vehicle, but I can’t do more than that.”
The room is silent while my words sit over us.
“I’d love having you here,” I tell them. Maybe things are difficult with my parents, but they’re still my parents. “I hope you know you can stay here anytime you’re in town.”
“Thank you, Gavin,” Dad says. “If you write a cheque, that would be grand.”
Something in my chest unlocks at this. Maybe I’ll never be close to my parents. Maybe they’re incapable of it. It’s not lost on me that while I tried to have an open conversation, Mum just wanted to point the finger back at me. That makes me feel likeshe’s not ready for an open discussion about our feelings, and she might not ever be.
But after almost thirty years of being her son, I think this is a step in the right direction. I have begun to implement a boundary that we can build on together over time. My body feels tired. I’m raw from opening myself up and holding my chest bare for them to see into my soul, but there was something cleansing about it too.
Dad stands as if he’s going to walk me out. “Should we take care of it now? Better to do it privately than in front of your cousin.”
“Might as well.”
Mum says nothing as I leave the room with Dad and head to my office. I sit at the desk and pull out my chequebook. I’ve only ever written a handful of them in my life, but Dad’s old school, so he prefers this to PayPal.
I write out the amount and look at it, surprised my life has come to this. But I can part with ten thousand pounds. I’m unwilling to part with eighty thousand.
“Where do you plan to go next?” I ask, taking my time writing.
“We’ve thought about France. If we take the Channel Tunnel, we can spend quite a bit of time over there. Germany, Spain, Switzerland. You know your mother loves Italy.”
