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Finally, her head pops up and confusion crosses her face.
“Hey, Mom.”
She nods, puts down the watering can. “Want a cup of coffee?”
My turn to nod. “I’ll meet you inside.” I brush past the bougainvilleas she planted in honor of her own mother, who loved them, and head to the car to fetch the bin. Jeremiah’s bin.
She needs to see the stuff inside.
* * *
Waterworks.That’s the only word that can describe my mother’s reaction to learning that Jeremiah is dead and that he actually intended to come back for her. My life would have been so different if he had. So very different. But this isn’t the time to dwell on that. Nope.
Weird as this may sound, this is my mother’s time. She’s got a lot to deal with. Sure, I’m still angry with her for what she did. I don’t know if there will ever come a time when I won’t carry some anger over it. Not even if decades pass.
Her tears flow and dot the last letter Jeremiah evidently wrote to her. The one that said he was coming home.
“I’ve made such a mess of things,” my mother proclaims, the words separated by hiccups and sobs.
That catches me off-guard. It’s the last thing I expected to hear from her. I need clarification. “What do you mean?”
“You. Your baby. Josh. The boys. Dave.” Dave, my dad. “I don’t think a lifetime would be long enough to atone for all the destruction I’ve wrought. I never should have judged Josh based on Jeremiah’s actions. Or Liam. I shouldn’t have taken away from you that which I got to have. I should have—” She drops her head—perfectly coiffed before eight a.m., I might add—to the table where it rests on all of Jeremiah’s stuff.
I shock myself by putting my arms around her. I don’t have the words to tell her that everything will be okay. I don’t know that it will be. I don’t know what will happen and what sort of fallout there will be.
“What about the boys? Shouldn’t they know?” I don’t mention that my dad should know. That’s a given.
Her head comes up, a little like Punxsutawney Phil, that stupid groundhog looking for a shadow, timid, maybe even afraid of the shadows she cast on our family. More than our family, to be perfectly honest. “Your father made me promise not to ever tell Jeremy or Liam. He doesn’t want to change their relationship.”
“So, he knows?” And he stayed. He loves her that much, he stayed. Well, duh, I knew that. He mentioned being okay with being second best. I guess I would have to respect his wishes and zip my lip about it.
She gulps and nods.
“He loves you, you know.” It’s so weird, I’m saying stuff without thinking. I mean, I typically don’t have a very good filter, but it’s like I’m not even thinking. I’m emoting words.
My mother’s face softens. Probably for the first time ever, at least, when she wasn’t looking at—translation, fawning over—Jeremy. “More than I deserve. I love Dave, too. I simply loved Jeremiah more. I don’t expect you to understand.”
And yet, somehow, I do understand. I get it because of my love for Josh. Josh. Whom, more than ever, I realize is someone I cannot live without. Never really did.
“I owe him an apology,” my mother announces. Her back is straighter, her jawline firm, her expression set.
“Who? Dad?”
“Josh. He bore the brunt of my heartbreak and despair and anger over Jeremiah. For so many years. And I took his child away. I can’t imagine how I’d have felt if someone took one of my children away.”
I somehow wonder if that includes me, since I’m from the man she loves second best.
She’s not done. “I owe you one too.” More of her tears drop on Jeremiah’s letter. “I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”
Can I? I can’t answer that one right now. I can’t absolve her of all her sins. Will I ever? That’s not something I’ll even spare a thought for at this moment.
“Allow yourself to be human, Mother. To be flawed.” Where’d those words of wisdom come from? They sure don’t sound like me, and yet, that was my voice giving them life.
My mother smiles—a bittersweet ghost of a smile—through her tears. “Mom,” she says.
I’m pretty sure my eyes widened at that. She nods encouragingly.
“Mom,” I repeat, though this time, it’s like a foreign language falling from my tongue.
