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“You know, my mother was a real pain in the tuchus,” Audrey said, clucking her tongue.
Everyone froze and turned to look at her as though her hair were on fire.
“Your mother was a pain in the tuchus?” Mel asked just to clarify.
Audrey shook her silver haired head. “Like you don’t know.” She paused and then shrugged. “Well, maybe you do know.”
Ivy and Mel both raised their hands and nodded. “We know,” they said in unison.
It was Ivy who asked the question everyone was thinking. “You’re such a wonderful mother and person, Audrey. We figured your mother was a saint too.”
“Pfft,” Audrey said, brushing her hand at Ivy. “All I am is a decent human being, at least that’s my hope. My mother certainly was not a saint. She had me later in life and she was quite set in her ways. She refused to care for me, so I was raised by an aunt who wasn’t much older than I was. My aunt disappeared one day when I was about eight or nine and then I cared for my mother until she died when I was fifteen. As soon as she died, I went to a teaching college and got my degree. I was teaching by the time I was eighteen.” She waved her hand in the air. “Gosh, I shouldn’t have told you all that. I just wanted you to know that everyone sitting here understands what it’s like to have a difficult mother.”
“I know,” I said, grasping her arm and squeezing it. “I’m sure that’s why you’re such a wonderful mother to your girls. Living in Michelle’s house now has never made it more apparent how much Brenda didn’t want me. Michelle would have died for Lance. My mother would have been happy I was dead.”
Audrey gasped. “Don’t say that! You’re just upset with her right now.”
I lowered my fork and dropped it to the plate with a sigh on my lips. “No, I’m just being honest, Audrey. Brenda never wanted me. Bruce isn’t even my father.”
Ivy and Mel’s eyes went wide and they glanced at each other. “What? You share a last name.”
“Because Brenda put his name on the birth certificate. They both knew he wasn’t my father, but to save the embarrassment, they lied. They told me when I turned twelve that Bruce wasn’t my father because he’s sterile. Bruce and Brenda enjoyed some extracurricular activities.” I cleared my throat and rolled my eyes. “They liked swinging, and I don’t mean on a swing set, if you catch my drift.” I hung my head and shook it. “Why am I telling you this? First, I tell Lance, and now you guys. It’s as though living in Michelle’s house is turning me into somebody else.”
“Or maybe it’s showing you your real self,” Audrey suggested.
“The self that doesn’t care about the drama the people who raised me love to create?”
Ivy tipped her head in agreement. “Maybe.”
“The self that has no desire to say goodbye to the man who hated me from the day I came out of the womb?”
“I know that feeling,” Mel said, nodding in agreement.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Audrey squeezed my arm. “Maybe, living in Michelle’s house has nothing to do with Michelle and everything to do with her son. Sometimes, when we’re hearing the same positive messages about ourselves from people we trust, it changes who we are on the inside.”
“You mean because Lance doesn’t call me a stupid money suck? That he actually wants me there and doesn’t just put up with me because he has to?”
“I don’t imagine something like that would ever cross Lance’s mind, dear,” Audrey said in her calming way.
“No, I suppose not,” I agreed, rubbing my temple. “I’m done airing my dirty laundry here. I apologize. This is a holiday and not the time or the place for it.”
“If sitting around the table with friends isn’t the time or the place for comfort and reassurance, then I certainly don’t know when the right time is,” Audrey said in a pointed tone.
Ivy pointed at her and then me. “I concur. Personally, I love seeing the way you’ve changed since you moved in with Lance.”
My hands were waving before she finished the last word. “No, it’s not like I moved in moved in with Lance.”
Audrey lowered my hands to the table. “We know, dear. That’s not what Ivy meant. She meant since you found stable housing and share it with someone who cares about you the way you deserve to be cared for, right, Ivy?”
Ivy was nodding her head, but she was biting her lip which told me she was trying not to smile. “I was simply saying that living in a positive environment is making positive changes in your life. We can all see it. Lance cares about you so much, Indie. I wish you could see it the way we do. When Brenda showed up at the diner and started trouble because we refused to tell her where you’re living, it was Lance who escorted her out of the building and told her she was no longer welcome at The Nightingale. Which, I might add, I was completely fine with after her dramatics. He’s got your back. Lean into him a little bit and let him be there for you.”
“I’m supposed to be the one who’s there for him,” I hissed, my gaze glancing toward the counter, but Lance was no longer there. “I can’t add more problems to his life.”
“That’s not what you’re doing,” Mel assured me. “Relationships don’t work that way. Sometimes it will be him who needs someone to lean into and sometimes it will be you. Neither is wrong.”
“We aren’t in a relationship,” I said through gritted teeth. The last thing I needed was for Lance to overhear them saying that kind of nonsense. “We’re just friends.”
Audrey rolled her eyes nearly all the way to the back of her head. “You two have been dancing around each other since the fifth grade. Did it ever occur to you to start dancing together?”
