Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
I pushed back.
Okay, Mom, you know I love spending time with you. But she’s been gang-raped. So maybe next time shoot me a text or give me a call to make sure I’m free or can take time off work.
And that was when I got, Oh my God, Diana. Trigger warning next time.
I stared at the text, something bubbling inside me like acid.
It was then I remembered I didn’t tell her about my own assault.
It wasn’t because I was worried her response would be like Dad’s, but because I knew she couldn’t handle it.
I’d protected her, my own mother, from my assault.
“Not sure, no matter how hard you frown at your phone, you can make it blow up in your hand,” Big Petey remarked.
I looked to him.
“You okay, girl?” he asked quietly.
“My mom can sometimes be difficult,” I told him.
He watched me closely. “Yeah. That can happen.”
“She made plans to come this weekend but didn’t ask.”
His scraggly gray beard twitched with irritation.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And she wasn’t a fan of me putting her off.”
“Welp, she’s got a grown girl on her hands, so she doesn’t really have a choice, does she?”
No. She didn’t.
I turned back to my phone.
We’ll plan something later, I promised.
I was about to set that unpleasantness aside and chat with Big Petey about Suzette when my phone vibrated in my hand.
Another text from Mom.
Whatever. Rick’s going to be furious we have to pay for a flight change, but I suppose we’ll have to deal with it.
She would, I had no doubt, have spent tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, shoes, purses, and if she went hog wild, that ante would be upped substantially if she hit a jewelry counter.
So a flight change was the least of her expenses.
But a chill crept over my skin at understanding this happened too. Me being to blame for something Mom didn’t get when she wanted it.
She’d given up custody. Didn’t even fight for me. I saw her on some weekends. We’d have dinner together. Dad gave her alimony until she married Brendon (husband two of three). And that alimony wasn’t stingy.
Fortunately for Dad, Brendon came on the scene quickly, and as Mom told it, even though she was heartbroken at Dad’s infidelity, Brendon, “Swept me off my feet.”
With the custody deal, and even after it, during the short time she was with Brendon (and when I grew older, I realized Brendon didn’t last long because he was a rebound), I thought at the time she just couldn’t deal because she was so brokenhearted at the betrayal then loss of Dad.
I thought this, because she told me that was the way it was. She harped on quite a lot about how Dad “ruined me and our family,” and how difficult it was to be replaced and have to start “from scratch,” and then when things ended with Brendon it was because “your father’s treachery ruined me for all men.”
As noted, Brendon came quick, well within a year of them divorcing (I didn’t like him either, and he didn’t like me—I’d been eight). Rick came quickly after, and she didn’t blink when he moved them up to Idaho.
It was like she wasn’t leaving a daughter behind.
That hurt too. Then, and now I was allowing myself to remember it.
Over the years, I just put the emotional effort in to forgetting it happened.
“Now you wanna tell me why I feel the need to go out and buy more donuts for you?” Big Petey asked.
I turned again to him. “I’m just noticing stuff about Mom that irks me and wondering why I didn’t really notice it before.”
Big Petey had a ready answer. “We got blinders on with our parents. We need them to be perfect, or at least as good as we can make them in our heads. They made us, for one. So they’re a part of us.”
He seemed to drift after he said that, doing it so bad, I got concerned. He wasn’t young, but he seemed sharp.
“Well, goddamn,” he whispered like he was talking to himself.
“What?” I asked.
He visibly shook it off and refocused on me.
“Nothin’, darlin’. Something just occurred to me. Anyway, getting back to it. We also need to know we can count on them for answers and support. But no one is perfect, Di, and every kid figures it out sometime that their parent is just a person, figuring it out like all the rest of us.”
“Seems like I’m a late bloomer,” I mumbled.
“You said she made plans to come this weekend. That mean she don’t live close?”
I shook my head. “Idaho.”
“How long’s she lived there?”
I thought about it and said, “She moved when I was ten.”
“You see her a lot?”
“When I was at school, summers. Some holidays. When I graduated high school, not as much.”
“Not close enough for you to get a lock on it sooner, sweetheart,” he shared. “That kinda time, it’s all good. Vacations and celebrations. Day to day life is a different thing.”