“Pepper Ann,” my mother’s voice turns stern, “if you don’t tell me right now where you are, I swear on all that’s holy! You know how sick I am! I can’t be worrying about where you are too!”
My mother never pulls the sick card. In fact, most of the time she’s avoiding the subject completely. I once found her lying on the floor, her leg broken from a fall, and when I rushed into the room, she told me she didn’t call for help because she didn’t want to interrupt my study time.
So yeah, the fact that she’s threatening me right now and using her illness means she’s serious. “You remember that paint job I was going to take?” I say, smoothing paint into the corner of the wall.
She clears her throat. “You mean the one with the big, hot, bad boy I told you wasn’t for marriage?”
“Yeah,” I squeak. “That one.”
“So you’re with him?”
“What?” I flatten another line of paint, as I try to shape what I’m going to say next. I can’t tell her I’m really with him, right?
I think I already have.
“Mom,” I pause, a drop of paint dripping on the plastic, “listen. Iwantto be here, okay? I need some space to figure some things out.”
“Peanut,” my mother steadies her voice, though I can feel her stress through the line, “what about Nathan?”
“I broke up with Nathan.”
“What?” she gasps. “When?”
“I called him a few hours ago. I… I didn’t want to go through with the wedding. Something wasn’t right. He’s not my person. You have to trust me on this one.”
“So, you ran off with the tattooed guy? Pepper Ann… you’re,” her voice drops off and she huffs, “not thinking straight. Nathan is wealthy. Wealthy men can be…strange,but he cares about you. You said it yourself. Plus, you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life. So will your children. Don’t you want that? Come on, honey.”
I never told my mom Nathan had been abusive because I knew it would stress her out. With her multiple sclerosis, often times big stressful issues cause her physical pain as well as emotional. “He isn’t the right guy for me, Mom.”
“And the bad boy is?” she says, her voice lowering as though the room is filled with people, though I doubt it is. My parents never have guests these days. They used to all the time, but Mom’s diagnosis changed a lot of things. “Peanut, think about this for a second. I saw how happy you were with Nathan. People get scared before weddings is all. Go back and call him. He’ll understand.”
Given the fact that Nathan always puts on a show of compassion and kindness when he’s around others, it’s not a surprise to me that my mother thinks he walks on water. I mean, the man gave thousands of dollars to an animal shelter in my name last year for my birthday. Publicly, he’s a saint. Privately, that same night, he called me a bitch and told me I was selfish for wanting to spend time with him.
“I’m going to sleep on it, Mom,” I say, assuming this will appease her.
“Sleep on it where? In that bad boy’s house?”
I giggle a little when she calls him abad boyagain…to myself, of course.
“Yes, Mom. I’m sleeping here.”
I can almost hear her shaking her head. “Pepper Ann, maybe you should talk to your father. I don’t think I’m getting through to you.”
“Mom,” I smile as I draw in a deep breath and set the paint brush on top of the can, “there’s nothing to talk to Dad about. I’m fine. Areyoufine? How are you feeling?”
“Worried,” she snaps. “Veryworried.”
“I get it,” I say softly, truly hating that I’m causing her any pain, “but does this call help a little? Do you feel any relief?”
“I do, but… I don’t know this man you’re with. People are saying they saw some big guy carrying you out of the venue. That he put you in a truck. That this man you’re with is aggressive.”
I wonder for a second if anyone got pictures of Rhett’s truck, or a license plate number. There aren’t security cameras at the inn. I know because the bakery installed a few cameras years ago to see who was breaking into the shop every night, and the whole town had a conniption and demanded they not be surveyed. Turned out, the break-ins were due to racoons, and the bakery removed their cameras and reduced the price of bear claws as an apology to the very private mountain folk.
That doesn’t mean though that someone didn’t get a picture with their cell phone. I mean, people are looking for reasons to go viral these days. A video of a man kidnapping a woman in a small mountain town would definitely catapult someone’s social media career.
Why does it make me nervous that I might be found? I should want to be found.
I’m a mess!
