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She just bows her head and nods in a silent, but clear confession, and shock completely stunts my rage.
But when she says, “I’m sorry,” My guard goes up.
My eyes dart around this room. “Is this some sort of set up? Why are you apologizing?”
She props a hand on her hip and spears me with a glare of consternation. “Can’t I just be sorry?”
“You never have been before,” I point out, my eyebrows raised, daring her to contradict me.
She looks at the ceiling and shakes her head. “Father save me, you are such a pain in the ass, Regan.” She stalks to my grandfather’s desk and pulls a cigar out of the humidor. I know she keeps them freshly stocked for when she hosts meetings and parties here. She picks up a silver -handled trimmer and expertly clips the end.
“Here,” she says and hands me one.
I stare at her. “You smoke?”
She rolls her eyes and presses the cigar into my hand. She takes a curling pull of hers, before she sits down. She tilts her head, as her dark eyes assess me. I have to stop myself from straightening my clothes and my hair and sit down. She hands me the cutter and lighter. As if I’d know what to do with them.
I drop the foul-smelling cigar on the small table beside my chair.
“You can be angry and break things. You deserve to. It was a terrible thing we did to you.”
“Are you just saying that because we caught you? You said you never would have told us.”
“I meant it. Why would I want you to know the truth?”
“Wow, so you think it was right to tell us that our father was dead, when you knew he wasn’t?”
“I didn’t know he wasn’t. It wouldn’t have changed anything, and you would have been in danger, too.” She takes a pull from her cigar and turns to gaze around the room.
She’s made quite a recovery since the last time I saw her.
I drove her home from Remi’s house the day all of this came out. She and Gigi had a confrontatio
n that turned physical. She’d been nearly catatonic with grief. And I forgave her in that moment. She may have kept his secrets, but she was my grandfather’s victim, too. After her husband left her for another woman. My anguish felt like a trickle compared to the monsoon of it that roiled in her. Without her asking me to, I forgave her for the lifelong lie.
“Actually, I would have done something different,” she muses. “I wouldn’t have married a man thinking somehow I was going to be the making of him. No one makes anyone but themselves. And people don’t change unless they want to.” My emotions are in turmoil and I want to shake the cool, unruffled expression off my mother’s face.
“I thought you were going to say, I wouldn’t have raised my children in the same house as the man who tried to murder their father. How could you live with him? Knowing that he’d tried to have his own son killed? And how could you watch us grieve for a man who wasn’t dead.”
“Your grandfather was a dangerous, wicked man. But he loved you and your brothers. If I’d tried to take you away from him, he would have killed me. I was worried that if any of you disappointed him, he’d hurt you, too. So, I cracked a whip on your backs to keep you safe.”
“Why didn’t you let me go to Wellesley?” I ask.
She looks startled and then pensive. She opens her mouth and closes it twice before she finally answers me. “That’s where Gigi went to school. It’s where she met your father.” Mom admits with a deep sigh as if admitting it is a weight off.
“Wow. So, that’s why you didn’t let me go?” I rear back – surprised how much empathy is mingled with my incredulity.
My mother’s expression clears, and she lifts her chin as if I’ve offended her. “I would have let you go, Regan. You kids had already paid so much for his sins. And by then, I knew he’d never been mine to lose, in the first place.” She takes another draw from her cigar and blows a smoke ring.
“So then…why?”
“The same reason as everything else. Your grandfather forbade it. He only let Remi go because unlike you, Remi could afford to pay his way.”
She leaves out that it’s because the men in my family all got access to their inheritance when they were eighteen. I had to wait until I was thirty.
“So, he lied about that, too. And made you take the blame…” That hurts more than it should. Especially, when in the grand scheme of things, it’s the least of his crimes against me.
My mother shrugs it off. “Oh yes. You were his pet. He couldn’t bear to be the bad guy in your eyes. And even though he never expressed remorse for what he did to Lucas, he thought he’d gain some redemption in raising the three of you. And I let him because I knew that as long as he loved you and as long as you followed his rules, you’d be safe. But I hated how close you were…when you and I were at such odds.
