“Did the two of you ever try and talk to a therapist or anything?”
I shook my head and covered my face with my hands, letting out an alien loud-pitched noise that bore some resemblance to a cry. “I foolishly started confiding in a work colleague who I thought had my best interest at heart. Little did I know, the only thing he was interested in was getting me in bed...and naïve me fell for it.”
My mother let out a deep sigh and placed her hand on my shoulder, willing me to go on with my confession.
“Evan had already moved out when it happened, but I felt so horrible over it. Afterward, I felt dirty and used. I know now that he played on my emotions, and I allowed it to happen. I didn’t want to keep it from Evan. We never had any secrets between us, or so I thought. The night he got...” I paused and collected my breaths. “The night he got into the accident, he came here pleading with me to try and work things out between us. Instead of just appeasing him at that moment and talking it over in the morning when he wasn’t inebriated, I chose to confess to him what I had done.” I searched my mother’s eyes for sympathy and strength. Upon seeing both, I carried on. “I had to live with that guilt for the past nine months. If I had just waited to tell him or if I hadn’t told him at all, he’d still be alive. Now that I had this bombshell dropped on me, I can’t help but think, maybe I should have been like him and not said a word.”
“Jillian, you didn’t cause that accident. He was drunk. You know that. You have to stop beating yourself up over it.”
“But don’t you see? If I had chosen a different time to tell him, it could’ve all been avoided. And the biggest unanswered question that I’ve had all these months was, had he not gotten in that accident, if he was still alive, would he have found it in his heart to forgive me for what I’ve done? Funny how Karma has a way of turning things around. Now it’s me who can’t seem to forgive him or Kate for what they’ve done.”
“I think you have a lot to go over. Not just in your mind, but in your heart. That innocent child is a part of a man you loved very much. You’re the only one who can make sure he knows a little bit about the good man his father was. Despite what has happened, you know in your heart he was a good person.”
I nodded and blinked away the tears.
“And as far as forgiveness goes. Evan’s not here to let you know if he’d forgive you for what you’ve done, but you are. Can you look deep inside your heart and forgive him for what he did?”
I closed my eyes, thinking long and hard about the rut I had been stuck in until Kate and Theo entered my life. Kate and Theo. Two people who would’ve never existed to me if it weren’t for Evan’s actions. “Yeah. I think I can.”
“Then, I think you know what you need to do to prove to him that you do.”
I nodded and she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Now, go take a shower. I’m gonna straighten up in here a little while you’re getting ready, and then we’re going out to lunch.”
Never in a million years did I think a conversation with my mother would help me see things so much clearer. Why had I avoided confiding in her for so long? My whole life, I always thought she was too busy to have the normal mother-daughter closeness I had yearned for so much. Maybe the entire time it was really me who had been shutting her out of my world when she so desperately wanted to come in. I started to get up and then sat back down beside her. “Mom, I’m really sorry for keeping you at a distance for so long. I just always thought...”
“You always thought what?” she asked.
I shrugged. “That you had a new family, and I was a painful reminder of your old life with my father.”
Now it was my mother’s turn to show her emotions. “Jillian, how on earth could you ever think that? I love your brothers with all my heart, but you...you will always be my little girl. You’re the reason I believed that love existed. From the first day I held you in my arms, it was unconditional.”
“I just always had it stuck in my head that the perfect family consisted of a husband and a wife, and children that were biologically theirs. That was always my problem. I was never able to deviate and believe that there could be happiness beyond the norm. Until Theo showed me there’s beauty in everything in ways I never imagined.” I hugged her tightly and we both exchanged a fresh bout of tears.
“Theo sounds like a very smart man,” my mother managed to get out once our cries subsided. “Now enough with all the crying, go get yourself together. I’m starving.” My mother dabbed her eyes and pulled it together. I nodded and stood up, making my may to the living room door when my mother called my name. I turned on my heels to face her. “Don’t be afraid to tell him how you’re feeling. Don’t allow yourself to have any more what-ifs in your life.”
“I’m scared that if I do, it will change things between us.”
“And it might...and this is the last what-if that will come from my spiel...what if it changes things for the better?”
I smiled with that thought as I headed into the shower with a fresh sense of hope imbedded in my heart.
CHAPTER 22
SLOWLY BUT SURELY, the fog I had
