NEW YORK. WHY does the idea of being that close to Liv make me so happy? I can’t follow her. I gave her up, and being that close will only make it impossible to move on.
And worse. Being that close and knowing she’s moving on will be unbearable.
I can’t go to New York. Wake Forest is perfect, actually. It’s halfway between home and her, not an easy distance to either. I need to let her be. Just like she asked me to weeks ago.
I walk up my driveway, seeing lights glowing from inside my house, and I know I’ll find my mom sitting at the table, waiting for me.
Not so much because she’s worried, which any other parent might be since I left my phone in my room hours ago and she couldn’t get a hold of me, but because it would look bad to go to sleep with an angry, teenage daughter out this late.
I step inside the house, the clock chiming one in the morning as I lock the door behind me.
But as I would normally stomp up the stairs and try to hide in my room to avoid her, I find myself listening for her.
I hear nothing.
I drift from room to room, looking for her, a lot calmer than I was hours ago.
They weren’t always like this. I keep forgetting that. When my brother was alive, we were pretty happy, actually. My parents are disappointing, but when I remember the parents Henry knew, I miss them.
A painting has been ripped off the wall and lays on the marble floor face-down, a vase with roses shattered next to it amidst a puddle of the water that was inside.
I head up the stairs, seeing their wedding pictures broken on the floor of the hallway, as well as the destruction I wreaked before I ran out. I find my mother in her closet, gowns, shoes, and blouses strewn everywhere as she leans back against the dresser in the center of the room, holding a large bottle of Evian between her bent legs.
She meets my eyes, and I’m stricken for a moment.
She looks like me.
Uncertain. Deflated. Too many feelings and no way to put them into words.
Young.
She wears a pair of cream-colored silk boxers with a white cashmere sweater, her hair a mess and black around her eyes from crying.
Not the usual masterpiece she’s been the past few years.
She holds up the nearly empty Evian bottle, and I notice another, drained and laying among the clothes. “I thought champagne would be the answer, but…”
“‘Carbs are never the answer,’” I recite our motto.
I walk over and slide down to sit beside her, my back against the dresser.
“I’m still deciding,” she sighs. “So stand by.” And then she downs the rest of the bottle.
I stare at her, wondering if she ever had any idea this day was possible. When she bought her wedding dress, or when they bought this house, did she know there was no guarantee? That someday she’d end a pregnancy, because she couldn’t stand to raise another child and love something so hard and possibly lose it? That her husband would give up, his heartbreak making him hurt us when hers just made her hurt herself?
She gazes off. “I don’t know how she did it, Clay,” she tells me. “For years, I’ve been trying to crack your grandmother’s secret.”
I listen.
“I mean, I would wake up the day after Thanksgiving when I was little,” she continues, “and the house would be completely decorated for Christmas already. I would go to sleep on New Year’s Day and wake up with it all gone again.” She smiles to herself. “It was like magic, how she got things done, as if she had a wand and never needed to sleep.”
Does my mom know that’s how I see her, too? Somehow, she handles everything.
“Perfect wife, perfect mother,” she murmurs. “Perfect house, on time for every event, always looked impeccable, and that woman can schmooze a room full of Norwegian investors without speaking a single word of Norwegian, or a room full of good ol’ boys who think America’s decline started with a woman’s right to vote.” She pauses. “She could do all that, Clay. I can’t do any of that.” She turns her head toward me. “I mean, how could she do all that? She would never have let me see her like this. Like you’re seeing me now. What was her secret?”
I feel my lips press together for a split second before they open. “Mimi was having an affair with the old sheriff.”
Her eyes narrow on me, and she cocks her head ever so slightly as her chest caves. “What?”
I nod. “For thirty-four years,” I say. “They used to meet out at Two Locks.”
Her mouth falls open a little, and I can see the wheels turning in her head as her eyes go from confusion and disbelief to realization.
“That’s how she did it, Mom.” I keep my tone gentle. “That’s how she put up with Grandpa and a life she didn’t love.”
She sits there, and I watch the news play out behind her eyes as the dots connect. “How do you know this?”
“She has his letters hidden in the mantel in her room.”
Looking back now, that’s what Mimi was telling me at Fondue with Father. How people like us, born with the duty to perpetuate this ‘empire’, have a responsibility to not follow our hearts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have what we want. We just need to keep it a secret.
She knew that, because that was her life. She considers herself noble for denying herself a man she really loved, because let’s be honest: a thirty-four-year affair was love.
She raised her daughter to commit to unhappiness, and they raised me to keep my chin up and my mouth closed, as well.
“Perfect doesn’t exist,” I can only manage a whisper. “It never did.”
My grandmother may or may not have had choices, but my mom does.
And so do I.
In twenty years, I could be sitting here with my daughter, realizing I’d lived a lie for a life that made me miserable, and given up the one person who fed my every breath. I’ll realize how I’d ruined my life with such a massive mistake.
I stare at my mom, tears filling my eyes. “Mom?”
It takes her a moment, still lost in thought, but she looks over at me.
“I have to talk to you,” I tell her. “I don’t want to trouble you right now, but I need to say something. I need to say it now.”
It’s not the right time, but there will never be one. I clasp my hands together, looking down as I try to find the words.
“What is it?” she asks when I don’t say anything.
I open my mouth but close it again, not sure how to word it. I search my brain for the gentlest words—the easiest way—to explain it, but all I see is her losing her mind again and ready to hide in this closet the rest of the week, because she’ll feel like she failed. But I need to talk to someone. I need to say it out loud, and this is so hard, because I need my mom, even if she’s just going to make this about her. I’ll be able to see the disappointment all over her face.
Tears stream down my face. “Clay, my God,” she breathes out, her tone alert. “What is it?”
I open my mouth. Just say it. Just say it and then it’ll be out and over.
I lick my lips, staring at my legs. “I’m in love with Olivia Jaeger,” I say, just above a whisper.
I feel the walls crash in, and I close my eyes, waiting for it. Waiting for the meltdown.
She doesn’t say anything, and I don’t look up. I know she heard me.
“I’m in love with her a lot,” I finish.
More silence.
I wait.
And then, she falls back against the dresser again, exhaling a huge breath. “Oh, thank God,” she gasps, breathing hard. “Oh my God, I thought you were pregnant. Jesus, Clay. You scared me.”
I jerk my eyes over to her, seeing her with a hand to her chest as she tries to catch her breath. Huh?
She heard me, right? This isn’t a joke.
She looks over at me again, concern still in her eyes. “That’s all you were going to say?” she asks. “That’s it? Nothing else?”
What?
“Are you serious?” I burst out, sitting up straight. “You’re not surprised that I’m…”
“Well, honey, we kind of knew.”
My eyes go wide, and now that the fear is gone, I glare. “What?” I screech. “How could you know?” I didn’t know! “And what do you mean ‘we’? You mean Dad knows, too?”
Are they serious?
She smiles softly. “Honey, you had pictures of Selena Gomez and Peyton List on your wall when you were twelve,” she tells me. “Krisjen had Booboo Stewart and Harry Styles. Yeah, we…kind of had an idea.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you were twelve,” she explains. “You’re the only one who knows who you are. We didn’t want to make assumptions. We just wanted to let you come to us when you were ready.”
“But the showers at school,” I say. “You changed the showers at school, because of Liv Jaeger.”
“I voted to change them, because you asked me to.”
“I did not.”
She nods. “Yeah, the end of freshman year,” she tells me. “You complained about Olivia constantly being late to class, because she was waiting for everyone else to finish bathing before her and something about her not showering at all sometimes and just dowsing herself in perfume and deodorant. People were being mean to her, making fun of her… I took that as a hint that you felt bad for her. You kind of just spit out that separate stalls would make your lives so much easier.”
I pause, the vague memory playing out in my head. Right . I do remember that. I hated seeing her waiting around in her towel all alone.
“So you’re just fine with it?” I sputter. “Seriously?”
“I am now,” she replies.
I cock an eyebrow. Now?
“Well, at first,” she says, “part of me kind of hoped it wasn’t true.”
Why?
“I’m sorry to admit that.” She frowns. “But I want us to be honest with each other. It was my initial reaction. ‘Oh my God, did I do something wrong? Is this my fault?’” She shakes her head. “I can’t help where my mind went, but that’s not where it is anymore, Clay. I’m glad I had time to prepare myself, because I would’ve been ashamed to have had that reaction in front of you.”
Does she still feel that way, even a little?
“No one wants their kid’s life to be harder,” she goes on, “and then when we lost Henry, I thought I was losing control of everything. I’m glad I had time to figure myself out.”
“And now?” I ask, waiting for the hard truth. “Do you still think you did something wrong?”
She smiles softly, her eyes pooling. “There’s no feeling in the world like being in love,” she says. “Are you in love?”
It doesn’t take a moment for me to nod. “I think about her all the time,” I tell her, my voice thick with all sorts of feelings. “I want to be with her all the time. Everything feels good when she looks at me and kisses me and breathes on my neck and…”
“Okay, okay…” She laughs under her breath. “You’re still my child.”
I lean my head on her shoulder as she reaches around and touches my cheek.
After a moment, she leans in too. “I would never want you to not feel that,” she finally whispers. “Henry will never feel that.”
Needles prickle in my throat, the constant reminder that this life is our only shot behind the closed door of a little kid’s room down the hall.
“I will always love you.” She kisses my forehead. “No matter what.”
I want to go to my room right now and check my phone, and if she hasn’t called, then I want to, but I’m dreading it too. I’m afraid she’ll hang up on me. Or worse, scream and growl. Hearing her hatred would hurt worse.
“I’m starving.” My mom sighs. “I’ve been hungry for twenty years, and I’m sick of it.”
I laugh. “Popcorn and Milk Duds?”
Years ago, we’d pig out and watch Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aguilera—my favorite film—every few months, but we hadn’t done that in a long time.
“You get the food,” she tells me. “I’ll load the movie.”
