Soaring (Magdalene #2)(131)

I closed my eyes and leaned a shoulder against the wall at hearing my brother’s pain.

“During your counselling, she gave you nothing?” I asked.

“Once the dread sock situation was outed, she’s hardly said anything in our sessions. Once a week she sits there barely moving with her arms crossed on her chest and her eyes to her knees. Her expression doesn’t even change. I lay it out. I even throw out the ugly just to see if I can get her to react to something. Nothing, MeeMee. It’s so bad even our counselor suggested a trial separation, and I think she did in an effort to put me out of my misery. The f*ck of that is it’s humiliating. In fact, the whole f*cking thing is humiliating.”

I hated that.

I hated that for my glorious big brother Lawrie.

He was not short like me. He was tall and straight and lean and commanding, like my dad.

But he had great, thick, dark hair that now had silver in it that was attractive (which was like mine, without the dye job and highlights, obviously).

And we shared our hazel eyes.

He got my father’s cut, angular, masculine bone structure that started forming and defining when he was fifteen. So since then, to when he met Mariel, he’d had to beat them off with a stick.

He loved his sons.

He was the youngest attorney in the history of his firm to make partner.

He made a ton of money and just had a ton of money.

He was smart. He had a great sense of humor.

And I remembered. I remembered the way he used to be with her. How she’d walk into the room and everything about him would change. The way he told her she was beautiful, and it wasn’t a throwaway compliment she could settle into, but he did it, each time I heard it, like he meant it and he wanted it to mean something to her.

I also remembered the way he stood at the altar at the church and watched her walk to him with this look of happy, expectant certainty like he just knew their lives would be beauty from that day until they left the earth.

This was why I hated her.

Because she became my mother when he did not become our father, and then she became worse than my mother and doing it, proved him wrong.

“You’re welcome, with the boys, without them, with her, or without,” I assured him. “You’re welcome anytime, Lawrie.”

“Thanks, MeeMee.”

“And I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

“I lived for years stupidly hoping she’d snap out of it or just snap. Let fly what was causing her to be the way she was being. And maybe I should give it longer. But I’m not twenty-five. It isn’t that I didn’t try to talk to her. Take her away for the weekend. Adjust things I was doing in case I hit on the right one. She gives no indication it’s anything but over. The boys are old enough to get it and the f*ck of that is, I think for them it’ll be a relief. They love their mother but she isn’t what I want for them because she gives them less than Mom gave you and me. And that’s my biggest f*ck up, MeeMee. I should have gotten them away from that a long time ago.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I told him.

“And hope is as blind as love,” he told me.

God, but the two men I loved most in this world had taken a licking by the women they gave their hearts to.

I straightened from the wall at that thought because I’d admitted to myself I was falling in love with Mickey.

I’d never admitted I was there.

Since in that moment my brother needed my attention, I shook this off and said, “Come for Thanksgiving and let me, Auden and Pip take care of you.”

“I’ll be there, MeeMee, and I’ll let you know what Mariel and I decide about the boys.”

Whereas I couldn’t wait to have my kids with me for a holiday, she’d probably shrug and say, “Whatever you think is best, Lawrence.”

Lawrie took us off that subject by asking, “Since you brought up Auden and Pip, things still going good with that?”

They were. It had been three days since Mickey and my fight. It was now Monday, his kids were back and as for my kids, the TV visits were continuing. Not to mention Pippa and Polly had a sleepover on Saturday night at my place (Pippa having a sleepover I was happy about, her bringing Polly, who, when she wasn’t being negative she was being mean, not so much).

And that evening, both of my kids were coming over and Auden had said they were spending the night.

We were definitely back. Things were Mom and Kids. It was a different brand of Mom and Kids that meant they had two homes and a divided family, but it was working for us.

I still had concerns there was something not right about it, but they didn’t seem to be cagey about anything. It was just like they wanted to spend time with their mom.

So I was taking it.

I shared all that with Lawrie and ended it, asking, “By the way, have you heard from Mom and Dad?”

“Mom called this weekend. She wanted to know when Mariel was taking her next spa weekend so she could come up. Since every other weekend is a spa weekend for Mariel and we’ve hit that rotation, she’s coming up on Friday. Why?”

Mom and I agreed on very few things. Our mutual dislike of Mariel was one of them. And a shocking twist to this, we both disliked her for the same reason.

Not that Mariel wasn’t the appropriately styled, turned out and behaved wife to a prominent attorney who also was a Bourne-Hathaway (because she was).