“Good?” she asks.
I raise an eyebrow and take another sip. “Never judge a protein shake by its color, I guess.”
“The P.E. teacher’s golden rule,” she says, before giving me another hesitant smile. “I’m sorry the job market’s so grim. I’ve been hearing about it everywhere.”
“I’m sure something will turn up,” I say, with 0 percent confidence.
Her hands wrap around her glass, and she glances up at me. I still can’t splice this nervous version of her with the confident, outspoken woman she is with my stepsisters and stepdad, but I resist trying to fill the silence. After a second, she says, “Have you thought about reopening your business again instead? The one with the dresses?”
It’s the last question I expect from her, not least of all because her opinion on my chosen education and career path over the years has been definitive: “Too expensive, too impractical.”
“Um, I hadn’t really considered it.”
Liar, liar, rock-bottom sweatpants on fire.
“Well, youshouldconsider it,” my mom says, some of theconfidence coming back into her voice. “I may have never understood it, but you’ve always had a creative spark, and talent like yours shouldn’t go to waste.” She snorts. “Can you imagine if Tom Brady had quit football just because he got drafted as a second-string? He never would’ve discovered he was the GOAT!” She looks at me with a level of sincerity I’ve only ever seen from her when she’s wearing a giant foam finger. “For all we know, you could be the GOAT of dresses, Gracie.”
I stare at her, gobsmacked. My shock is the only reason I have the nerve to say, “Mom, the last time my bridal design business came up, you and Josie cracked up when Brianna called it my ‘real job allergy.’?”
Her features pinch together. “Did I?”
“Yes. You also laughed at graduation when Josie congratulated me on my degree in ‘Glitter and Glue.’?”
She runs a hand through her still-damp hair, making it stick up in spikes. “Can’t say I’m very proud of how things have been between us,” she says, looking down into her smoothie. “I’m sorry for laughing.”
I swallow down some smoothie, hoping it’ll cool me off. “Thank you.”
She shakes her head, then laughs emptily. “You know, sometimes I used to think there was an accidental baby switch when you were born. That somehow, I’d gotten the child of some brilliant, famous artist I had no business raising.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “Your ability to create beauty out of scraps and thread and anything else you touched should have been a joy for me to watch, but instead…” She presses her lips together hard. “It just made me feel out of my depth. Like I’d never be able to give you what you needed.”
She raises her brows and exhales. “And then, of course, Joel, Bri, and Josie came into my life, and I could understand them. They were just like me. They made it a little too easy to tell myself that you weren’t interested in us anyway. That you were happier being left alone to do your own thing.” She looks down at her hands as years of neglect get pulled to the surface like a splinter. “I’m sorry, Gracie. I was wrong.”
For long moments, I don’t know how to respond. My first instinct is to brush it off and tell her it’s okay, but it’snotokay. It was never okay. I spent my whole life internalizing her dismissiveness, believing it was the result of my own deficiencies. If I’d never met Sofia, her family, or Jude, I might never have seen any shortcomings besides my own.
But because I did meet them, I know it’s well within my rights not to accept her apology. I could tell her it’s too late for any kind of reconciliation. And maybe it is. But there’s something to be said for a genuine apology, no matter how late-coming or insufficient it is. An apology can be a bridge to a new place. Or, at the very least, a rickety rope swing.
“I think I really needed to hear that,” I say eventually.
My mom’s eyes are glistening when she says, “And I think I really needed to have my ass handed to me. The other weekend when you and your boyfriend came over and told me you weren’t going to finish planning the party, you could have knocked me over with a feather. It woke me up.Shookme up, really, and you better believe I’ve had a talk with your sisters about the way they treat you.” She ducks her head, brows swooping downward. “The waywe’vetreated you.”
There’s so much I could say. So much to respond to, but I can’t seem to move beyond two syllables.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” The words slip past my numb lips.
My mom raises one jet-black eyebrow. “You sure about that, muffin? He seemed very… protective of you.”
The nickname, which I haven’t heard since before I could tie my own shoes, makes me look up at her. And maybe it’s the way she’s giving me her complete attention for once, or her apology, or that long-lost endearment, but all my resistance to truly registering what I’ve lost finally crumbles. Agatha. My job. My home. My faith in Happily Ever After. But somehow worse than any of that,Jude. The involuntary sound that breaks loose from me is half sob, half moan.
I drop my face into my hands, and a few seconds later, a pair of strong arms I haven’t felt in years wrap around me. I sink into mymother more completely than I have since before her divorce, breathing in her Irish Spring–and-chalk scent. From the way her chest and shoulders start shaking against mine, I can tell she’s wondering the same thing as me: How did we let ourselves get here? At what point did our fear of being honest with each other become a callus too thick to feel past?
“Tell me what happened,” she says into my hair. “Tell me everything, and then I’ll sic Brianna and Josie on him.”
A watery laugh emerges from me, but it’s short-lived. I wipe my eyes as I pull away from her. After the last two months of foolish desperation to keep Larkwood, I could close my eyes and point at any number of dumpster fires to start this story with. But at the center of my misery, there’s a pulsing red dot. An ache that goes deeper than anything else.
In a choked whisper, I tell her the truth. “I still love him, Mom.”
She reaches out and takes my hand. “And does he love you, too?”
I try blinking back the freefall of tears down my face. A few days ago, the answer would have come to me in a surge of joy and disbelief:yes. But now, nothing is certain.
