Blinking, I frown. “But… she insults me all the time. Which is why I think she’s a cranky old twat.” I say, shaking my head. “I can apologize for letting it slip out, but I think that’s as far as I can go with a genuine apology.”
Mom’s mouth is open, but no sound is coming out. She just shakes her head. “Harriet—I don’t think you understa?—”
“Please, Mom. Of course, I understand. It’s rude to insult people.” I shake my own head. “I’m not disagreeing with that. But if I owe Grandma Eloise an apology, she owes me like 293.”
“B-but she’s your grandmother.” Mom’s frown is somewhere between distress and confusion.
And now I’m confused too. “I know that. And I’m her granddaughter,” I say simply.
“She has a point,” Margaret murmurs, now wearing a sly smile.
I don’t understand why this point even needs to be pointed out. And I don’t understand why Mom seems confused.
“Are you saying… that she doesn’t need to apologize for rudeness, but I do? Because she’s a grandmother?”
Mom fretfully readjusts herself in her chair like she badly needs to pee. “I’m saying her position in the family deserves respect.”
I blink. “More than mine.” It both is and isn’t a question.
Mom’s gaze falls to the tablecloth. She picks up the hem of the fabric and fiddles with it.
“W-well, I’m not saying you don’t deserve respect. But she’s your elder. She’s my elder so?—”
“So she gets to be rude to me, say whatever she’s thinking, and never apologize, but when my thoughts slip out, I can’t just apologize for the slip?” I wrinkle my nose. “I have to apologize for the thoughts too?”
This makes no fucking sense.
But Mom is nodding, still not looking at me. “If you want there to be peace in the family, yes, I think an unqualified apology is needed.”
I say nothing for a minute, parsing out each of her words. She’s not talking about what is right. What is fair.
She’s saying the opposite. That what is unfair is what I am expected to do. That what I’m expected to do is to be unfair to myself.
For peace in the family.
But how can I have peace if I am being unfair to myself? And aren’t I part of the family?
“I don’t think that would work,” I say, shaking my head.
Mom looks genuinely surprised. “Why not?”
I stare at her. “Because that wouldn’t bring me peace. Just the opposite. So how can there be peace in the family if apologizing for my thoughts causes me distress?”
Mom’s shoulders slump. “Hattie.” She turns my name into an enormous sigh. An enormous, exhausted sigh.
And, all at once, my limbs feel like sandbags again.
Margaret’s wearing a ridiculous grin. But I don’t understand how she can look so happy when Mom looks so miserable and I feel like death.
In fact, I have to lie down. Right now.
“I have to lie down,” I say, using the remnants of my strength to push out of my chair. “I’m going to wait in the car.”
“Fine,” Mom says, in a way that signals it’s totally not fine.
But I’m about twelve seconds from collapse, and since lying down on the floor at Bon Temps Grill is not an option, I’m picking the car.
If people watch me leave, I hardly notice. It’s all I can do not to stagger, I’m so tired.
