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“Hi, honey, can you goto your room so I can talk with your mother?” My mother says to Jacob, who is playing on the floor with his Legos.
“Okay, Grandma.”
She smiles patiently while he separates every single one, putting them in the box one by one. I smile, too. I’ve told him before that it’s okay to drop them in the box stuck together. He insists on doing it his way.
He leaves, and she turns to me, standing against the kitchen sink where I was washing the dinner dishes. “You know I haven’t been the biggest supporter of your reunion with Landon.”
I so do not need this. “Why are you bringing this up? I ended things with him weeks ago.”
“It ended so well that I saw him stumbling in and out of your place late last night.”
I look at my feet, cheeks burning. “You don’t need to worry about that, there’s no reunion. It’s best for everyone it ended before it went too far, and people got hurt.”
“I hate to break it to you, but people are already hurt. Your children, Landon, and you.” She comes closer, resting her hand next to me on the side of the sink.
“Like I said, it’s over, don’t worry.”
“I do worry, because that man loves you, Lacey; he always has.”
Exasperated, I fold my arms across my stomach. What the hell does she want me to do? This is what she should want. All of a sudden she’s changed her mind? I can’t! “Where is this coming from? You said you never wanted us together from the beginning, and now you’re in here doing what?” I lower my voice, listening, to make sure Jacob isn’t eavesdropping. “You’re going to sing his praises to me?”
“Lacey, listen to me. Calm down, hear me out.” She puts a hand on my arm. “When you were young, I didn’t want to see how much he loved you. All I saw was an older guy with tattoos, a train wreck of a friend doing anything but what I would call dating my other daughter, who was equally a train wreck. I was biased. I thought he was going to lead you off the path. I wanted the clean-cut guy for you who came from the good family. The perfect guy. I was so wrong.”
I don’t know, but I don’t want to hear this. I turn my face away, shaking my head to get away from this. She doesn’t let me. She takes my chin in her hands, turning my face to hers, forcing me to listen.
“The night Landon left you, he was outside your door, listening to you cry for him, for the world, and everything you had no control over. I sat next to him on the floor, and he cried for you. The cry when a man loves a woman so completely, he knows he has to let her go. I held his hand and told him to go. I told him that I had you, that we had you. That Shay and I would be the fortress of love you needed to cloak you.”
That does me in. Big, fat tears spill down. Tears of the past. Tears for now. She grabs me in her arms and rubs my back, and I hold on to her. “I know he loves me, Mama. What if I let him back in, and he leaves us again?” I sniff into her shoulder, feeling exhausted. “It was hard the first time, but this time Jacob’s here. He’d be devastated. It would be giving him the one thing he wanted,” I hiccup. “Snatching it away, to watch him fall and crumble? I don’t want to give him that hope and love, only for it to disappear. I know what it’s like.”
“Don’t let fear control you, Lacey. Don’t let it steal love away from you. Think about it…if you did, you wouldn’t have Jacob. Give him a chance if he comes to you. Give him a chance.”
