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“You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?” I whisper. I know it’s a risk, but I have to know. She’s known this man for, what, less than three weeks?
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start in on lecturing me about how quickly this is all going.”
“Mom, I’m just saying, you hardly know this man.” I have to whisper, just in case somebody is standing close enough to the kitchen that my voice echoes. “He seems like a very nice man, but do you really know him?”
“Sweetheart, I’ve lost count of how many women I know who waited for years before deciding to settle down with the right person. They were afraid of making a mistake and wanted to be sure they knew their partner. And you know what?”
“What?” I ask even though I know what’s coming.
“Every single one of those marriages ended in divorce. Every. Single. One.”
To be fair, my mother has never had the best taste in friends, either. “Okay, sure. But I mean, we’re already living here and everything. And you two seem happy together. Why not give it a little more time? This way, you won’t have to pay all these crazy fees or whatever. And you can still have exactly the wedding you want.”
“I don’t want to wait. I’ve been waiting for a man like James my entire life. Don’t I deserve a little happiness?” Her voice is sharper now, her meaning direct.
“Of course you do,” I whisper with a sinking heart.
“Stop being so negative,” she implores with a light laugh. “One day, you’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“How it feels when you find the right person. Your soul mate.” She’s so breathy, and I’d swear I was talking to somebody closer to my own age, not a grown woman who should know better. “When you find them, you can’t let anything get in your way. Not the so-called rules, not what society says you should do. Why live by some stranger’s arbitrary rules that don’t apply to you? And that’s what this is. Those rules don’t apply to us. The moment I looked into James’s eyes, I knew I was looking at the man I would spend the rest of my life with.”
“I’m happy for you,” I whisper, if only because it seems like the right thing to say.
“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “One day, it will be your turn. And on that day, when you find your soul mate, you’ll come to me and say you finally understand. I look forward to that day. I really do.”
She doesn’t have me fooled. She wants me to tell her she was right all along. She’s never been very interested in my happiness, only in hers.
We’re as alone as we’re ever going to be in this big house, and she’s in a good mood—feeling all warm and maternal and whatnot. Now is as good a time as any. “There was something I wanted to talk with you about.”
“What is it?” she asks as she scrapes the last of the leftover food into the garbage disposal. I hate to see so much waste, especially when we spent so long scraping together every last cent for the basics. One more way the two of us are different. She experienced deprivation and wants to make up for it, while all it did was make me want to avoid being wasteful.
“I know I never talked about this before, mostly because I didn’t think it made a difference whether or not you knew. But remember yesterday, when we first got here, you mentioned me going to school with the guys?”
“Of course.”
“Mom, they were never nice to me. Not once, not ever. In fact, they went out of their way to be mean and nasty.”
“I’m sure you misunderstood their intentions.”
“They walked around calling me a stuck-up bitch.”
“Language,” she warns.
“I’m only telling you what they said. They used to push me around, all sorts of things, but I never did a single thing to them. I swear,” I insist when she arches an eyebrow.
“You expect me to believe those nice young men, who, by the way, offered to drive you to a job interview, went out of their way to bully you? Besides, even if they did, that was a long time ago. People do change, you know.”
I knew she’d go out of her way to misunderstand what I was trying to say, but I had to try. “Mom, I’m just saying they hate me. You don’t hear the things they’ve said already behind your back—”
Suddenly, she slams her hands against the counter, and I jump in surprise. “You listen to me,” she whispers, drawing close until she’s looming over me while I cower against the refrigerator. “I will not let you destroy this for me, understood? I don’t want to hear your complaints. I don’t want to hear your sob stories where you make a victim out of yourself.”
“I wasn’t trying—”
“You’ve already ruined my life once,” she hisses. “I will be damned if I let you do it again.”
She thrusts an arm toward the doorway. “Now get out of my sight and stay that way.”
