“How… How can you still pretend everything is okay?” I choked out.
She was silent. She just sat there, a hollow porcelain doll, while her daughter bled out in front of her from wounds she had helped create.
“I was a child,” I whispered. “I wasyourchild. And he… he made me feel like I was nothing. And you let him. You watched him break me, and all you ever did was turn away.”
She finally set her mug down, delicately. Like she didn’t want it to spill over. Unlike me.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“You didn’t try to do anything,” I snapped. “You didn’t hold me when I needed you. You didn’t ask me if I was okay. You didn’t even look at me when I cried myself to sleep every night. Or when he took his anger out on me.” Bitterly, I added, “Or Camila. Because everything that happened to me, happened to her first. You just stood by while he hurt us. Youlethim.”
She looked away. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Maybe that you’re sorry for not being there for me. Maybe… maybe that you’re sorry I had to keep our family together on my own, forcing the tears down with a smile on my face. Maybe you could tell your daughter you’re sorry for not protecting her.”
Her lip trembled. But she didn’t say the words. Not even then. She just looked at me… like I was someone she didn’t know. Like I was too much to face.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,”she offered weakly.
I shook my head. “That’s not the same as being sorry,” I whispered, still waiting, wanting her to say the words that would make this all okay. But she just looked through me, her eyes as empty as our home. The woman I had spent a lifetime trying to please was nothing more than a ghost—a shadow cast by the man who had truly ruined us both.
“I waited for you,” I said. “Every time he raised his voice. Every time I had to make myself smaller just to get through the day. I thought,maybe one day… maybe today would be the day you’d say something. Do something.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. I didn’t bother to wipe it. “But you never did.”
She stood from the chair, pulling the cardigan tighter around her body before placing the mug in the sink, her back to me as she stared out of the window into the garden, the shallow, manicured garden that hid all the deadly thorns behind fragile roses. Even now, she couldn’t face what she’d done. Or what she hadn’t.
“I went to visit Tristian’s mom in the hospital with him today…” I said. “And Noah... he said—” I swallowed hard, throat tight. “Is it true… are—are y-you...”
She didn’t turn, just carried on looking out into the world beyond the window as she said simply, “I have a brain tumor… It’s inoperable.”
The confession hung in the air. She’d delivered the news with the same clinical detachment she’d used to ignore my screams.
“How long?” I managed.
“Six months,” she said. “Maybe less.”
I stared at her back. The same back that used to face me in every argument. Every time I cried, she walked away. Every moment I begged for attention, and got nothing but the cold turn of her shoulder. Still, even now, confronted with her inaction in the face of all my father had unleashed on me and Camila as she stood by, and the admission of the tumor that would inevitably kill her, my mother still would not try to make things right with her daughter. She still wouldn’t turn to face me.
I took a deep, shaky breath. “I hope when you see him again,” I said, my voice flat and resigned, “you’re reminded of the daughter who kept hoping you’d love her someday.”
…Still nothing.
So I left her there… exactly where she’d always been, facing everything but me.
Going back out into the cold, I found Tristian against the dark gleam of his Mercedes, his silhouette broad and lethal, tracking the front door until I emerged. The moment our gazes locked, the predatory tension in his shoulders released, replaced by relief.
I found myself in his embrace again, with no more tears left to cry, no more sadness, just silence, pain, and the warmth of his comforting grip. His arms wrapped around me tight as he nuzzled his face in my hair like I was the only thing left in this world grounding him, just as he was for me. The weight kept me steady on the ground, reminding me that things would be okay even if they weren’t.
I let out another shaky breath. He didn’t ask for details, not that I would be able to voice anything at this point.
For a little while, he just held me.
I pressed my forehead to his chest and closed my eyes.
“You were right…” I whispered. “She didn’t tell me what I needed to hear, but… I said what I needed to say to her.”
He kissed the top of my head. “You don’t have to explain. Whatever you said, doll, that was enough,” he whispered.
