Page 10 of Life’s Too Short

I could picture her throwing up her hands. “He made a mistake. And no matter how you feel about that, Richard is my husband now and he wants to get to know you—”

“I have absolutely no desire to allow him to do any such thing. He’s not good enough for you. You should have never married him after what he did.”

She paused for a long beat.

“Maybe one day you’ll need forgiveness, Adrian. And someone will give it to you.”

We fell into a silence.

She was crying. I could hear her sniffling on the other end of the line. I pulled into my space in the parking garage under my building and put the car in park.

I’d been close to my mom before this. Before him. I took care of her—I’d always taken care of her. I’d done it since I was fifteen years old and my piece-of-shit dad walked out on us. Normally I was over there every Sunday for dinner with her and Grandma. I paid for repairs on the house, drove Grandma to the doctor.

Then Mom had her whirlwind romance.

That was already bad enough, but then he moved them to fucking Nebraska.

The situation was getting progressively worse and since it didn’t look like Richard was bailing or Mom was gearing up to leave him, apparently I had to be the one to be flexible. Either that or I could kiss my family goodbye. These were the choices.

And they were impossible.

She blew her nose.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Can we just talk about something else?”

“Adrian, I know this has been hard. Maybe you should see someone—”

“No. Me spending two hundred dollars an hour on a therapist isn’t going to make me feel any different about this.”

She sniffed. “Well then. I guess we don’t have anything left to discuss. You call me when you’ve decided what’s important to you.”

She hung up on me.

I sat in the car, pinching the bridge of my nose for a solid minute before I dragged myself out.

When I got back to my building, I collected my mail in the lobby and took the stairs up. I was one staircase from my floor when I heard the screaming.

A woman.

I paused on the landing, trying to determine if it was coming from up or down.

Up.

My floor.

I took the steps two at a time and pushed out into the hallway.

A bored-looking young man in a peacoat and scarf stood scrolling through his phone next to a short blond woman in a gray hoodie. A second man was wedged halfway into Vanessa’s apartment.

“Let go!” Vanessa screamed, from inside. “I’m calling the cops!”

“Hey!” I shouted.

Everyone froze. I walked purposefully toward them, and the man let go of the knob and took a step back. He was older. Probably fifties. White, salt-and-pepper hair, bushy eyebrows, argyle sweater under a blazer.

The woman was high. Pupils the size of marbles.

Vanessa peered out into the hallway from the crack in the door. Her lip was bleeding.