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“She went home and talked with Syd, who came over the next day trying to convince me to get rid of your things. Again, I refused, and they left me alone. Or so I thought. The following weekend I was at my mother’s home, and she brought it up. I told her the same thing I’d told your mom. It didn’t go over well, and she mentioned that Sharon was right. She said she didn’t want to believe it, but I needed psychiatric help and should consider therapy. That escalated into a shouting match.”
“You shouted at your mother?” he asks dubiously.
“Hard to believe, right?” I ask, with a smirk pulling my fingers through my matted curls.
I need to wash my hair. I haven’t been very attentive to my appearance lately, opting to work from home and going to the office once a week. I wear a ponytail, casual slacks, a blouse and flats whenever I go in. Nothing fancy.
“I’ve never seen you roll your eyes at your mother, let alone raise your voice.”
“Yeah, well, it cost me that day. Because the next thing you know, she’d called Dr. Davis over, and my stepfather and his driver held me down while Dr. Davis gave me a shot. When I woke up, I was in Serenity Springs. I was diagnosed with severe depression and deemed as a threat to myself.”
“Syd said she’d been trying to call you.”
I recall the messages that she sent while I was in Alta.
“She messaged me.”
“You refused to call her.”
Tilting my head sideways, I ask angrily, “Do you blame me?”
“No, sweet girl, I don’t. It’s just...she was trying to tell you about me.”
“I know that now but how could I have known that then?”
“You wouldn’t have. I had no idea why you wouldn’t call her back. I should have known there was a deeper issue when she said she didn’t think giving you news about my survival over the phone would be healthy or ideal. I wanted to talk to you, Yaya. To hear your voice, but she refused to let me. I had no way of contacting you on my own.”
Moving from our old home wasn’t the only thing I’d done after being released from the hospital. I also changed my phone number. Sydney got my new number from my traitorous mother.
Thinking of her must be awfully powerful because the house phone rings. Scooting off his stool, Nicky goes to look at the caller ID.
“It’s your mom. She knows by now.”
I roll my eyes, pick up a bacon strip, and toss it into my mouth.
“Surprised she didn’t know before.”
“I asked them not to. I wanted you to be the first to know in your family.”
I glance at the phone as it rings, but I remain quiet.
“You have to talk to her at some point,” he says.
“Yeah? Well, today isn’t that day.”
“Are you going to stay mad at her forever?”
I hop off my stool hotter than a Carolina Reaper. I jump into my husband’s face.
“My mother had the damn audacity to commit me to a mental institution atyourmother and sister’s urging for two fucking months, Nicky! Two fucking months of my life, and then I had to have outpatient therapy for another year after that! My family watches me until this day as though I’m some sort of basket case that they have to tiptoe around for fear I’ll lose my shit and take my life! My mother did that!
“They did all that shit because they thought I was crazy for not accepting that my husband was dead! The man I pledged my life to and felt was my soulmate, the man I’ve been tied to since meeting him, was still alive, and I knew it somewhere in my heart! I refused to accept what the world wanted me to believe, and for that, they acted as though I had committed a crime!
“I was fucking right all along, and they were wrong, damnit! None of them will ever apologize to me because they’re too fucking prideful to ever admit their goddamn wrongs! So don’t judge me for being angry!”
I glimpse his stunned face just before I stomp away and into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
