Page 63 of Lonesome Moon

“How old were you?”

“Eleven, the first time.”

I had to put my hand over my mouth for a second so I wouldn’t say what I was thinking.

“He called it navigation training,” Grant said. “I got good at it eventually. That’s how it worked with him. Whatever he did to you, you got good at.”

“Ivy told me something else. My mother’s kept boxes of newspaper articles and stuff. She clips them from magazines and newspapers, I guess. In case I ever want them.”

I kept my voice very steady. “Grant, that’s heartbreaking.”

“I had no idea she cared about what I was doing or kept track of where I was. It changes things for me.”

“Of course it does,” I said softly, stroking his arm.

“She’s kind of a prisoner in that marriage,” Grant said. “She had no choice but to go along with what he wanted.”

“I’m sure it felt that way to her, which is awful.”

“Yeah, sometimes we’re too far into something to see the truth of it.”

“Do you think you could have a relationship with her, given how things are with your dad?” I asked.

“I don’t know how I could.” Grant paused, splaying his hands over his knees, looking into the fire. “When he tore up the cruise, I tried to shame him, like he did me. I told him he was selfish and that he’d never treated my mother right. I said out loud, ‘She deserved so much better than you.’ He kind of shrunk in size for a minute or two. I’d done to him what he always did to me—made him question his entire self-worth. He’s the type who thought of himself as the perfect husband. He’d given her a house and stability. A son. He was always talking about how lucky she was to get to stay at home and be a wife and mother. Never thinking she might have had other aspirations. Dreams of her own. He never gave her an ounce of tenderness. Never made her feel special. Used to ridicule her cooking in front of friends in that jokey way that’s not funny.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “He’d give her stuff like a new iron for Christmas, and she had to act all grateful, even though it was just another way to keep her chained in that house, serving the king. On the regular, he sent stuff back to the laundry room if he thought they weren’t ironed well enough. And she’d just go in there and try again. I hate him, Luci. I really do.”

“I understand.” I held a lot of hatred for my father, even though I barely remembered him. The truth was, however, he’d bailed on us when we needed him. Left my mother to carry all the burdens on her own. But maybe that had been better than him staying and treating us terribly like Grant’s father.

“I wanted to hurt him like he hurt me,” Grant said. “And I hated myself for it. What I said—it was all in front of my mother. That’s the part I can’t let myself off the hook for. If you’d seen her face. The pain I’d caused her when I was supposed to be giving her a gift. I don’t think I can be around him and be the man I want to be.”

“Nothing you said to him that night was untrue,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. “You called him out for his behavior for the first time, and he couldn’t take it.”

“But I hurt my mom too.”

“Maybe it was something she needed to hear. Maybe she thought no one noticed her at all. You’ve felt like she didn’t love you, but that’s not right.” I said this all gently, not wanting to hurt him further. But it felt like something that needed to be said. “She loved you. She loves you now. She just wasn’t allowed to say it out loud.”

“What are you saying?” Grant asked.

“Quite simply, your mother loves you. We have evidence. She’s been saving scraps about you because that’s all she has, even though it probably breaks her heart every time she has to learn about something in your life in the newspaper.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, seconds ticking away until at least a minute had passed. I let him be, knowing how confusing it must be to have something you thought was undeniable truth be wrong. Not all love in his life had been transactional. His mother was simply powerless.

“Why didn’t she leave him?” Grant asked.

“You could ask her. If I had to guess, I’d say she felt trapped. Like there was no way she could get out and survive. Women who work in their own home have little to show for it should the marriage implode.”

“I could take care of her.”

“You could tell her that, you know.”

“Do you think it would make any difference?” Grant asked.

“You might be surprised.” I got up from my chair and crawled into his lap, kissing his forehead. “Whatever you decide, I’ll be here. I’ll support you as best I can.”

For another three weeks.

That truth smacked me hard across the face. Come the new year, I wouldn’t be there for him. I’d be like his mother, loving him from afar.

But I was here now and I could love him tonight. Maybe, somehow, he would come to understand that there were people in his life who loved him no matter what.