Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
When my mother walked to stand beside me, I moved to create more of a buffer between us.
Still, I smelled her perfume, her hairspray, my stomach turning.
I held on to the railing with one hand, my glass with the other, staring out at the lake once more, determined not to speak, not to make the first move. My mother was the master at manipulation and gaslighting. When I’d been younger, I’d been more susceptible. But now I was somewhat wiser and had given up my desperate need for her love and approval.
She cleared her throat yet didn’t speak.
I waited.
“I would’ve killed him,” Mom stated finally. “The man who…”
“Molested Ansel?” I spoke for her when it became clear she was too weak to say the words. The truth was far too ugly for her lipsticked mouth to utter.
My mother nodded, clutching her crystal glass.
“I wanted to kill him, when I found out,” she whispered. “Seeing him screaming, bleeding was good. But it wasn’t enough. I was so close to shooting him in the head. Ending his life. But I knew that I couldn’t get away with murder. Couldn’t leave you both. After…”
Her voice broke, and I wished I could say it did nothing to me, but unlike my mother, I wasn’t versed at turning my emotions off when my family was in pain.
And she was in pain. It was the first time I’d heard emotion, vulnerability in her voice. I didn’t like it.
“I loved him.” She looked out at the skyline. “I know you don’t think that’s true. But I love both of you.”
The only reason I didn’t roll my eyes was because I was too tired. Bone tired.
“As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I made a promise to myself,” she continued. “That I wouldn’t let you grow up like I did. I’d find a way to give you opportunities.”
I sipped my drink because the alternative was to hurl it at her head. Was she really trying to twist our entire shitty childhood and her neglect into her working hard to give us more?
Give me a fucking break.
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” she sniffled.
She was watching me, I could see that in my periphery. I would not give her eye contact. I couldn’t.
“It’s hard to believe that you loved us and wanted the best for us when my first memory is hunger, my second is constantly being cold, and the third is what crying in an empty house sounds like,” I remarked dryly.
“I was a child, Nora.” My mother’s voice was tight with shame. “I’m not going to pretend anything I did was right, but I was uneducated with no role models of my own, and my only advantage was my looks. And being able to talk men into anything.”
“Shame you couldn’t talk my brother out of killing himself with a drug addiction,” I said to the lake.
My mother sighed dramatically. I was used to those sighs. They came when she’d decided I was being too needy, too dramatic, too much for her. Which was pretty much always, in her books.
“I know you hate me.”
I didn’t correct her.
“Ansel knew, he understood that I made mistakes but that I loved you underneath it all.”
His name was a blade, through every inch of me. “He was a fucking marvel,” I hissed. “He loved you because love was all he had inside him. He wasn’t capable of hating you, resenting you, blaming you like you deserved.”
“I know,” my mother replied in a small voice. “I know, and nothing will ever bring my boy back.”
There was pain in her tone. Agony. A kind that she couldn’t mask. A kind that was real.
The worst thing was not finding out your mother was a complete monster.
It was finding out that she wasn’t a complete monster.
That she was human. That the world had hurt her. And that instead of growing, changing, learning, she’d hurt us. Not because she was evil. Oh, that would’ve been so much cleaner. If she was just wrong. If I could write her off entirely.
But now I couldn’t. I felt empathy for this woman. The woman who had let us go hungry, cold. The woman who had picked me apart like a vulture, finding the loose, fragile parts and tearing them from me.
“It’s too late,” I exhaled a heavy breath. “For amends. For any kind of relationship between us.” I turned to regard the apartment, the windows illuminating all of the people inside. The furniture, the art, all expensive, all impressive… to certain kinds of people, at least.
Rowan was there, cutting a dark shape amongst all of the country club assholes. He was standing close to the sliding doors leading out here. His eyes were on me and my mother, gaze hard and posture rigid. He was ready, poised to run out here, protect me from anything he could.