Page 130 of When We Had Forever
“Of course. You know I’m always...” I stop. Back up. “Actually, you know what? Things are kind of complicated right now. The truth is a lot has happened. Stuff you don’t know about. And I’m still trying to figure out what it all means for me.”
She leans her umbrella against the wall. Rainwater trickles onto the tile, but I don’t care about the ensuing puddle. Michael would have, but I don’t.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she says.
I give her a warm smile. “Actually, you know what? Yeah. I do.”
I tell her everything. All the yearning I’ve stoppered up since childhood finally comes spilling free like a river bursting through a dam.
I start with my childhood dreams of other countries, how they filled me with a potent combination of longing and terror, because I always feared what chasing my hopes would mean for her. I admit that I walked away crushed when she and my dad shot down my foreign-exchange idea in college, and that the most sacred, secret chambers of my heart have always pulsed with hopes of becoming a travel writer. I tell her about my ill-fated attempt to move to Greece at twenty-two, why I ended up staying more out of fear than anything else. Which brings us to now, when my former brother-in-law has helped engineer the kind of fantasy job offer I’ll only get one chance at.
“It’s like my whole life has come full circle, Mom. And this time, if I don’t go, I’ll never forgive myself.”
She sits silent, tears streaming down her face. The waterworks started somewhere around the part where I decided to stay with Michael instead of going to Athens, and they haven’t let up.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, her voice breaking. She twists her wedding ring around her finger, over and over.
I don’t quite know what to do, so I clasp her hand over the polished knotty-pine dining table. We’ve finished our market salads and pushed the plates aside, and she dabs at her cheeks with one of the linen napkins that’s survived my purge.
“You must hate me,” she says. “All these years, I’ve held you back.”
“No, no, Mom.” I squeeze her fingers. “That’s not what I’m getting at, not at all. I’m saying I’ve heldmyselfback. I’m the one who never got on that plane. Who never told you what I really wanted. I settled for a life that felt too small for me and insisted on telling myself it was fine. None of that was you. I just fed my fears with yours. Nothing more.”
She sniffs. Her blue eyes are shot through with red, her black hair mussed. She looks so much like me, only flooded with guilt and, beneath that...relief?
As if we’ve needed to do this for a long time.
“I think you should take the job,” she says.
My breath stops. “You...do? Because I’ve been so stressed out that you’ll only worry while I’m gone.”
“I’ll worry myself sick.” She smiles gamely. Her makeup is a mess. “But you’re an adult. Plenty old enough to make your own decisions. That hasn’t been my job for a long time. My job is just to help you be happy. That’s all a mother wants for her children, anyway. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough while you were growing up.”
I sit back, a telltale burn creeping up my throat. I can’t cry, too. Then she’ll start all over again, and we’ll never stop. “Wow. That’s not the reaction I was expecting.”
Her smile turns rueful. “No?”
“No.”
“I just wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me this before. But I know why you didn’t.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. Oddly, the silence feels more like a gift than anything else. My mom clears her throat.
“Have you spoken to this Grayson of yours? Thanked him for getting you the offer?”
I try to cover my reaction, but her eyes track the way my hands dive into my lap. “No. I really don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“There’s...a lot more to the story, Mom. With him. You wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.”
“I bet I would,” she says.
As it turns out, she’s right, though she makes me explain some parts two or three times. I skip all the sexy bits, but aside from that, I confess everything, from how I accidentally fell in love with two different brothers to the way they switched places in Hawaii. I talk about Michael’s gaslighting and Grayson’s emails, how the truth finally came out at the cabin, how confusing and crushing I’ve found the whole thing.
When I finish, she gathers the dishes and goes to the sink, where she hand-washes each one and sets it in the dish rack.
I keep my seat at the table. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
