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“Allie, it’s late.”
Her mother was whisper-talking. Allie hoped it was out of the habit of sleeping next to someone, and not because her mother actually was sleeping next to someone.
“I’ve called eleventy billion times during business hours, and this is the first time you’ve answered.”
Her mom was silent for so long, Allie couldn’t stand it. “Come on, Mom. Please don’t hang up.”
“I can’t really talk right now. I don’t know why you’re so worried. Dad has all my information.”
“Are you coming to your anniversary party?” Her heart was pounding in her throat, and it made whispering hurt. She held the phone so tightly against her face, it was starting to get too hot.
“I need to stay here until Saturday morning. There’s an event going on this week I’m obligated to attend.”
“The party’s on Sunday. Are you flying back Saturday afternoon?”
“Allie, I’m not sure why you came to New York. May called me and was quite upset you hadn’t told her and weren’t working on the party, and said something about moving it. I—”
“Stop.” Allie felt a burn and a lump on top of the pounding in her throat. Angry. That was anger. “You’ve talked to May.”
Her mother went quiet again.
“You know why I’m here. You know I know who you’re with. You know that I just want to talk to you, in person, make sure you’re okay, find out what’s going on. Guess what?” Allie didn’t wait for her mother to respond, but kept going, the immense anger pushing everything up and out in Winston’s dark bathroom, the perfect unfamiliar backdrop to take it all in. “I know that you’re staying around for whatever stupid art thing Justin is planning. You’ve been lying to May, lying to me, I have no fucking clue what you’ve been telling Dad. May’s upset I didn’t tell her exactly what’s going on, yet. Big fucking deal. How do you think she’s going to feel when I tell her everything?”
Allie started pacing the length of the bathroom, unable to keep still. The cold penny tiles felt good on her feet.
“You of all people, Allie, should be able to respect a woman when she needs a little space.”
Allie ignored everything except woman. “You’re my mother.”
“When you started acting strangely before your wedding, I didn’t say a thing. I just helped and signed checks. When you got right up to the very day and didn’t say anything to anyone until the last possible moment, when there were flowers in the venue and guests in town, I simply cleaned it all up and gave you your space.”
Signed checks, cleaned up, and said nothing? What about all the comments and remarks she had been forced to put up with in every single conversation in the last year? What about all the pancake breakfasts and Packer parties her mom had invited Matt to, without consulting her, that she’d had to smile her way through? How was that space?
“What are you telling me I’m supposed to do, then—go home and wait around to see if you come back? Is that what Dad’s doing? That’s what your space is for, so you can decide if you’re ever coming home without having your big decision fucked with by your children?”
Her mom sighed. “I knew you’d be like this.”
Allie’s anger at that made it actually impossible to speak for a minute. And something more than anger, because what was she supposed to be, exactly, for this woman? What was she supposed to do to fix this situation when whatever she did was wrong? When she did what she was supposed to, she got fear and lies, silence and lack of consideration, a role she didn’t want to play anymore.
So she’d done something different, flown to New York, badgered her mom, and now was being told that she was doing exactly what she always did.
Impulsive, flighty, outrageous, unpredictable, untrustworthy, unwanted. It was her job to be all of that, or to try really hard not to be all of that while everyone knew that deep down, beneath her trying, was her true nature. Known to the whole family. Predictable.
There was nothing she could do that would be right. Actually nothing.
“You have no idea,” she told her mother. “You have no real idea how I feel, or what I’ve been doing, or who I am. You don’t want to know. You never did.”
Her mom was silent, and Allie held the phone in her lap, but she couldn’t bring herself to hang it up.
She didn’t want to hang up. She wanted her mother. Winston was absolutely right—it wasn’t so much that she wanted to rescue her family from bad decisions as secrets so much as that she wanted her family to be her family, hers, for her, and to know in her heart that they were hers, and always would be.
She brought the phone back to her ear.
She could hear her mother breathing.
It didn’t sound like regular breathing. It was upset breathing. Her mom was upset, too. But hadn’t hung up, either.
Her mom had talked to May. Had given her information, whatever information she’d been willing to share, to Dad.
