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“Are you sure?” She looks up at me, obviously worried about something and the question is right there on the tip of my tongue. “I should have told you last night I had to leave early,” she says softly and then brushes her hair back from her face. “I feel like a jerk, now that you made breakfast.” She offers a sad smile in apology, and I can’t stand her thinking that pancakes are worth getting upset over.
I shrug, it’s fine. “Forget about breakfast,” I tell her softly. “There'll be another chance to have breakfast.” I hope so, anyway. “Let me get you home.”
Renee
The divorce lawyer's office is in the town where my mom used to live. She has a small, swanky looking office on the main street. When I get there, my mom is seated in the waiting area out front with tears in her eyes, looking down at her phone. Her black jeans look a bit loose as does her sweater. I imagine they’re my aunt’s. But her hair is done and so is her makeup. The foundation is doing a piss poor job of covering that bruise around her eye.
The sight of her like this will keep me up at night. It breaks my heart. And the guilt of sleeping in and being late takes over with every step closer I get.
She looks up at me when she hears my shoes clacking against the stone floor and stands up to hug me. It’s a firm hug and she rests her shoulder a moment longer than normal. “Renee,” she says in a small voice against my shoulder.
“Hi, Mom. You okay?” I ask her and she looks me up and down. I’m still in the clothes from last night. No time to change but I think it looks okay. Or at least I thought it did.
“You look beautiful, baby girl,” she says. Baby girl is her nickname for me, and it makes me smile.
“I'm sorry you had to come all the way out here, especially in this traffic,” she says.
“It’s not a long drive,” I lie, because I don't want her to feel any worse than she already does. I got her text when Griffin was downstairs making breakfast. She’s really going to do it. She’s going to leave him for good. She said she took the first appointment available. There was a cancellation, and she was going. She’s really going to do it. “You need someone with you,” I tell her and grab her hand.
I almost didn’t reply when she first messaged. Then guilt got the better of me. When she said she’s here and was scared but ready, I asked her if Aunt Laura was with her. She isn’t.
I don’t want my mom to be alone for this. I also don’t want her to back out because she’s scared. It doesn’t ease the guilt I felt when Griffin came up the stairs with pancakes. Someday I'm going to have a life that doesn't feel like this, I promise myself. “You don't have to worry about me, okay?” I tell my mom.
“I do.” My mom takes my hand and pulls me into the seat next to her. The sofa in the lawyer's office looks nice, but it's too hard to be truly comfortable. It's nothing like Griffin's bed. I woke up so warm and comfortable and satisfied this morning that I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but then I heard sounds in the kitchen and realized he was making breakfast, and I didn't want to be a mess…then the texts came. It took everything not to get emotional while alone in his bedroom. I’m proud I at least kept it together until I got to my car.
My mom squeezes my hand. “I do worry about you.”
I don’t know what to say to that, but I offer up, “Mom, it's okay.”
She shakes her head, new tears shine in her eyes. “I thought I was doing the right thing by you, Renee. I hope you know that you were always on my mind and I’m so sorry I couldn’t see right or think right or—” Her words become breathless and rushed and I cut her off.
“I know you did.” I could see that in my mom's face every time she went back to him. It took me a long time to see everything for what it was. I almost tell her, but the words don’t come. “I just love you,” I tell her, settling on that and squeezing her hand tight.
“I love you baby girl,” my mother says and wipes under her eyes. “One of these days I’ll stop crying and be there for you like I should.”
She still had hope that it would all work out, and that this time he'd change for the better, and my throat closes up with how guilty I feel about that. Maybe she wouldn't have tried to look for the positives if it wasn't for me. Maybe, if she'd been by herself without me to think of, she'd have looked for a better life for herself. All the what if’s pile up in the back of my head and I do everything I can to shut them all down. “Seriously, Mom, don't think about that right now. I'm okay.”
“I loved him.” She presses her lips into a thin line and looks out the window of the lawyer's office. There's a fancy coffee machine with a stack of coffee pods arranged in a pyramid next to it. Somehow the arrangement seems almost like a promise, like the lawyer can fight her way into the kind of life where you have enough money for a coffee machine that costs eight hundred dollars and an endless stack of pods in the shape of a pyramid. And you never get a black eye from a man who's supposed to love you. “I really loved him.”
“I get it,” I whisper, then clear my throat and say it again, loud enough for her to hear me this time. “I get it. But that's not what love is.” I loved him too. I remember loving him and feeling like he loved me back. Those moments hurt the most. It’s like a death. That’s what my therapist said. It’s mourning. And every time she went back to him, I mourned the loss of that love all over again.
My mom parts her lips, and I don’t know what she’s going to say but it seems important. But before she can, a woman who looks about my age in a pencil skirt and a simple but chic blazer comes out into the waiting area.
“Ms. Blair?” she says, crossing the room toward us and offering us both her hand. We both stand up.
“Yes, and this is my daughter, Renee.” My mother’s left hand lands on my shoulder and she stands a little taller.
We both shake the woman's hand. “I'm Janet, Ms. Cane's assistant,” she says. “Let me take you back to her office. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Water? Coffee?”
“I'd love a coffee please,” I say. I need the caffeine immediately.
“A tea would be wonderful,” my mom answers and adds, “thank you.” The assistant nods and steps out of the door as the lawyer comes forward to meet us. A tall woman made even taller with heels. She wears a slimming gray pantsuit and has dark, curly hair, a polite and professional smile, and bright eyes.
“Lindsey,” she greets my mother, shaking her hand with both of hers, one on top and one on bottom. Her warmth is obvious, and I already like her.
“Ms. Cane,” my mother greets her back.
“You can call me Donna,” she says softly, and I see her gaze move to my mother’s black eye, but her expression doesn’t falter.
