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She paused like she was bracing for something. For impact. “I was married, before your father.”
I blinked. That was a surprise. A shock, to be more accurate. My mom and I shared everything. She knew when I lost my virginity, obviously not the whole Heath story, but she knew that it happened. I told her about bad boyfriends. Bad friends. She did the same. I thought we shared mostly everything, and I felt guilty for beginning to hide things from her the older I got, the uglier the truth got.
But having a marriage before my father was a pretty darn big thing to hide.
I understood it, though. I might not have three years ago. But I did now.
Because sometimes, some truths were too big to share.
“Holy crap, Mom,” I said.
She nodded. “There’s more.” She looked strange, her face pinched and wary. Dad always said I got my ‘open face’ from Mom. We could never hide how we felt.
“Some people wear their heart on their sleeves, you wear it on your beautiful face.”
She almost looked…scared? Guilty?
“My first husband, he was not a good man,” she said. “If you knew him, were friends with him, worked with him, you would disagree with that. Because he was polite. Handsome. Charismatic. For all intents and purposes, he was the ideal husband and father. On the surface. But when he closed the door and loosened his tie, put down his briefcase, he was no longer burdened by the surface. And I didn’t realize this until I married him.” She took a long breath. “Until I got pregnant.”
The words hit me with enough force to take my breath away.
Mom saw this, but she kept going. Because there was obviously more.
“And it started to slip, his mask, after your sister was born,” she said. “And I should’ve seen that, should’ve done more. But I couldn’t. For a number of reasons. Mostly because I had been so blindly in love I gave him control over everything. He counted on this and made it so I couldn’t leave with anything. By this point, I had you as well. And it didn’t get bad until you were talking. It was bad, don’t get me wrong. Bad in a way no man should scream at his wife the way he did with me. Treated me the way he did. But I was in love and I made excuses and I thought that loving someone was forgiving them for their ugliness. Until his ugliness was all there was and he felt entitled to my forgiveness. And then he started to get violent.”
My stomach dropped. Literally dropped.
I had to put my hand on it to make sure all of my organs are still in place, that’s how violent of a reaction I was having to the mere thought of someone hurting my mother.
My father hurting my mother.
My biological father.
“And he was sorry, and he loved me,” she whispered. “And he had brainwashed me into thinking that it was my duty as a wife to forgive him. I won’t make excuses because I don’t need to.” She squeezed my hand again and more tears trailed down her cheeks. “You know what love for the wrong man can do to the right woman. It’s a soft heart that gets manipulated by hard souls. I was making plans to leave. Saving. It was taking time because I had no one to lean on. He had made sure of that. To slowly isolate me from my support system, from people that might’ve seen the signs, tried to help me had I not shut them out at his gentle probing.”
My stomach lurched again.
Because Craig had done that.
He had tried to do that. With subtle comments about my family, about them stifling me. Not understanding me.
It might’ve worked not on a weaker woman, but on weaker bonds. As it was, no one was ever breaking the connection I had to my family. Though he did fray it. More because when I loved someone, I wanted to give them my all. Life and breathe them. But Lucy was used to this, as I’d been doing it on and off over the years.
And she understood it.
And never judged me,
I wondered what it would’ve been like for me if I hadn’t lost my baby, if Craig had managed to separate me from my family.
“It was you,” she murmured, jerking me out of that dangerous game of ‘would’ve beens.’
“What?”
“You were so tiny,” she whispered, eyes watering. “You had figured out a way to escape your bedroom at night, because you liked to explore. And you were bad at sleeping even then. You never cried once you figured out how to get yourself out of bed. You didn’t need attention in the night. You were just curious.”
She smiled through her tears.
I gripped her hand so hard my knuckles were white.
