You need to try, I tell myself. For his sake. It’s his birthday, he’s in a good mood, his family is in town, don’t ruin this. Suffer silently with the truth.
I decide to suffer.
I go into the kitchen and start making him breakfast, but then he gets out of bed and moseys on over to me, slipping his hand around my waist and kissing the back of my neck while I fry the eggs.
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” I tell him, raising my spatula like a weapon.
“I need coffee,” he murmurs, placing a kiss beneath my hair. “And dare I say, I missed you?”
I should be focusing on his sweet, sweet words, but instead I keep thinking about his mother outside in the snow. I’m starting to feel bad, even though I shouldn’t, wondering if I’ll ever tell him the truth.
Then I realize I don’t have to.
There’s a knock at our door.
Four
Lachlan
Someone knocks on our door just as I’m grabbing the coffee pot.
“Who could that be?” I muse, putting the pot back down. I glance over at Kayla and her face has gone white, her eyes filled with terror. What the fuck?
“No, Lachlan,” she says but I’m already making my way over to the door. For all we know it’s Brigs or someone, though I can’t imagine why Kayla should look so damn afraid.
“Lachlan,” she cries out again, pulling at my arm, her voice cracking with desperation but now all I want to know is who is on the other side of this door.
I open it.
Everything inside me goes into a deep freeze.
It’s my mother.
Standing right there on the other side of the door.
Snowflakes have gathered in her thinning grey hair and on the shoulders of her shabby coat. She looks cold, shivering slightly, her face pale. If it were anyone else in the world, especially because she looks so fucking frail, I’d be ushering her inside.
Even now, knowing it’s her, this woman who ruined my life over and over again and caused pain so deep that the wounds will never have a chance to scar, will always remain raw, I still feel bad. I shouldn’t. I should never feel bad.
But I do.
I bat that feeling away, my heart hardening in my chest.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her.
“You mean your wife didn’t tell you?” she asks, her voice going razor thin over the word wife.
I swallow, glancing at Kayla over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, pressing her hands together. “I just ran into her outside.”
I’m angry at her for not telling me, so I wouldn’t be so fucking blindsided as I am right now, but this isn’t the time for me to turn against her.
I look back at my mother. “So what do you want?” My grip on the door tightens and I hope I have the strength to close it on her face.
“I just came to wish you a happy birthday.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Is that it? Because I got the wish. You can go now.”
“Lachlan, please,” she says in a pleading voice. “It’s cold out and I…I have nowhere to go at the moment. Just let me inside for a bit to warm up and then I’ll be out of your way.”
“No,” I hear Kayla seethe under her breath. “Lachlan, she’s lying.”
I’m torn. I have my wife behind me and I want to believe her, believe my mother is lying because that’s what she does, it’s what she’s always done. But then what kind of a person would I be if I refused her right now? This isn’t a matter of her being my birth mother, this is a matter of just being a human.
I don’t know what to do.
And the more I stare at my mother, the more I’m pulled back in time.
Finally I stand back and open the door wider. “Stay until you get warm. Then you need to go.”
She gives me a grateful smile. “Oh thank you Lachlan, thank you.”
She bustles in past me and Kayla doesn’t even take a step back. Usually I admire her tenacity, but right now it might make things more complicated. I know that Kayla loathes my mother with the fire of a thousand bloody suns.
“Why don’t you take the dogs out for a walk,” I tell Kayla. I want to tell her that by the time she comes back, my mother will be gone, hopefully for good.
She shakes her head, shooting daggers at my mother. “No. I just took them for a walk. They’re fine.”
“You didn’t take them very far,” my mother says. “And just in your house robe. Perhaps if you dress up properly.”
I wince internally because Kayla will not like that.
I glance at her. Yup. She’s about to burst into flames.
I give her a pleading look. I know she wants to stay, to help, to protect me. But she can’t fight all my battles for me. I have to do this on my own.
Eventually she gives in, though she’s mad as hell. She pulls on her coat, leashes up the dogs and then leaves, slamming the door.
“Your wife could use some manners,” my mother says.
“What the fuck gives you the fucking right to talk about my wife,” I whip around and yell at her, shoving my finger in front of her. “You keep her out of your mouth. She is not your business.”
My mother slides her hands into her coat, raising her chin. “She makes me her business when I try to see you and she prevents me. You know what she told me Lachlan when she found me out there in the snow? She said get lost. What kind of a person would say that?”
“Someone who has had enough of your shit,” I sneer, my heart starting to race, my skin growing hot and
