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“Maybe because Clarissa doesn’t chew me out every time I eat a carb.”
“In other words, she enables your behavior. Let’s see how far that gets you.”
I snorted. I’d been in Mom’s house for less than twenty minutes and I was already getting pissed.
“What happened?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. “With you and Bradley?”
Mom smiled slightly, as if more amused than anything else.
“It turns out Mr. holier-than-thou had a taste for younger women. I came home to him, believe it or not, in bed with some woman less than half his age. Some LA model he’d bought here.” She swept her hand toward the house. “But Bradley was at least prudent enough to know his squeaky-clean reputation would be tanked in this town if all that were to get out. He bought me this house and signed over enough of his investments to make sure I’d be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life.”
“And you’re the one who wants to tell me how to have a happy relationship, huh?”
Mom smiled again. “Happiness has nothing to do with it. You need prudence. That means securing your future, making sure you never want for anything. After how well you did in high school, I had hopes that you’d accomplish this through a good career. Those hopes were dashed when you decided to major in art or whatever.”
My blood pressure was rising. “I majored in graphic design because it was my passion, and I was good at it. And I have a good job.”
“What, making online advertisements? Good luck cracking high five figures in that line of work.”
“Believe it or not, Mom, some people have ambitions other than earning a ton of money. Or, in your case, getting it in a divorce settlement.”
Mom flashed another fake grin, clearly not bothered by my words.
“That’s fine. You want to live your little starving artist lifestyle, then go for it. But you need a husband who’s making some money to bankroll that kind of thing. All you had to do was stick with Adam for long enough to make it legal. You divorce down the road, then fine. But you couldn’t even stick it out for that long. Tell me, what was so bad about him that you couldn’t marry him?”
Mom didn’t know how Adam acted when I’d confronted him. She didn’t know the anger I’d seen in his eyes, that pure rage that I’d never seen before. I’d lied to Clarissa, told her that he’d handled it casually, but that had only come later.
First, there had been anger – anger that had made me scared.
“Maybe give him another chance,” Mom said, shrugging as if merely tossing the idea out there.
The idea that I would give a man like Adam another chance was the last straw. I burst out of my seat and stuck my finger in her face.
“You left Brad because he cheated on you, right? And you think I deserve to be treated the same way?” The cheating was only part of it, but I wasn’t about to get into the rest. I was too mad for that.
Mom shrugged again. “Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the sake of your future.”
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore.
I turned and stormed out of the kitchen, ignoring Mom’s protests. As soon as I was back behind the wheel of Clarissa’s car, tears streamed down my face.
Just like that, the wounds that had only begun to heal were ripped wide open.
