That was Mom. Blunt to a fault. My hands rested on the counter because I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe she was right, maybe she wasn’t. It hadn’t been my first thought. Mark popped into my head, but I didn’t know why. Mark was pushing me to make a move on Lizbeth too.
“I don’t know.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Your father and I are different people, JJ. Our fate isn’t entwined with yours.”
“I know that.”
“But do you really?”
No. Not really.
Which might have been why I asked the next question. The question that had been burning on my tongue for the last five months. My ribs expanded as I took a deep breath. I tried to force all my frustration out with it so it didn’t leak into my voice. With everything going on at work, Mom didn’t need more stress.
“You told Mark about the problems you and Dad were facing when your marriage was crumbling,” I said. “He knew that divorce was a very strong possibility.”
Her hand fell away from my shoulder. She drew back a little bit. “Yes.”
I straightened to see her better. “There were big problems between the two of you when you separated. You confided in Mark and in Megan at different points. I had my suspicions that things had turned a corner, of course, but I had no idea just how much of a corner. Later I found out that they knew and I didn’t. I was . . . boxed out. Why?”
It felt like something white-hot inside me had just been plucked. Now it vibrated, hissed, filled my chest with its ricochet.
“That’s . . . that’s not what we meant, JJ.”
“I know.”
“We love you.”
“I know that too.”
This was the first time I’d ever asked her. The first time I’d aired the words that had rubbed under my skin like salt for months. Her complexion had gone a little pale.
“Are you angry with us?” she whispered.
I took a moment to think the question through. “I’m hurt.”
“JJ, I promise that wasn’t the intent,” she rushed to say. “At least, not mine. I can’t speak for your father anymore.”
An edge of bitterness cut through those last words. Also nothing new, but it still made me flinch.
Was this what relationships came to? It had certainly been true of Stacey and me. With a shake of my head to clear those thoughts, I asked, “How did you meet Dad?”
“How did I meet him?”
“Yeah.”
Disoriented by the quick change of subject, she took a few seconds to respond. Her frown deepened. “Through a friend in high school. She introduced us at a football game after-party. He was quiet and calm and not like most of the other guys I’d dated. I liked that about him. At the time,” she tacked on.
The same quiet and calm that eventually drove them apart, no doubt. Even I remembered that Dad had peeled farther and farther away from home life. A dozen memories swamped me. Their fights when I was in high school. Mom screaming. Dad ignoring her. The silence after.
Maybe Mark and I had been running away from home all those years.
“Was it romantic?” I asked.
“Romantic?”
“When you met.”
“Incredibly. At the beginning, anyway. He stood up to some bullies for me. Cared for me. Bought me things. There was nothing we didn’t do together. At the time, I was young and impressionable and thought that romance meant he was everything. And he was.”
I studied her. The last year had aged her, leaving new lines near her eyes and on her forehead. Though she was noticeably brighter now that she wasn’t living in the oppressive shadow of Dad’s silence, she seemed like a different person. Lost. Wandering. Uncertain, though happy.
Was this the first time in my life I’d actually felt like Mom and I understood each other?
She’d always been closer to Mark. They had the same restless energy. The same burning desire to achieve, to be the center of attention. Only she had calmed over the years.
I took a page from Dad, the quiet brooder. Held my thoughts in until I couldn’t. A flash of confusion—maybe regret—whispered through me. This felt like an ambush, only I was the one doing it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not angry with you, Mom. I’m confused. Trying to sort things out.”
Tears filled her eyes. “You shouldn’t be sorry. It’s time Dad and I face the legacy of the choices we made. I didn’t relish the divorce, but I should have done it years ago instead of putting all of you through this. Maybe it would have been easier. Although,” she added in a soft voice, “I don’t think this kind of thing is ever easy.”
“You’re doing great, Mom.”
I reached over, pulled her into a warm hug, and rubbed her back as she cried.
JJ: Sorry if this wakes you up, but I wanted to let you know that I actually read some of those books that you saw in the kitchen tonight and am working through the rest.
Lizbeth: I’m not sure how to read that.
JJ: Factual.
Lizbeth: This is horrible over text because I can’t see your body language.
JJ: You’re always welcome inside.
Lizbeth: It’s 11:00 at night! Too cold. Just tell it to me straight. Did you love the romance books or hate them?
JJ: I didn’t hate them.
Lizbeth: Do you secretly love them but you don’t know how to tell me without breaking your tough-guy exterior?
JJ: Not that. My tough-guy exterior is built on actual strength.
Lizbeth: Then what?
JJ: It was pretty much all unrealistic.
Lizbeth: And?
JJ: And I get the appeal. It’s the same thing that drives people to binge Netflix or whatever. Or sends me climbing rocks. But that still doesn’t make romantic love real.
Lizbeth: Romantic love is more than that. It isn’t just an escape.
JJ: Then what is it?
Lizbeth: It’s . . . hope.
JJ: That a Viking warrior is going to sweep you off your feet and to your own castle full of really fun dresses?
Lizbeth: Well, sort of. Yes. Obviously that probably won’t happen in this day and age, right?
