A Cosmic Kind of Love(28)

Mom frowned, her green eyes hardening. “What does that mean?”

I huffed inwardly. “Nothing.”

Mom harrumphed and set about making our lunch. I studied her as she moved around the kitchen, wondering not for the first time how it was possible for a mother and daughter to be so unalike. My mom was a good few inches taller than me, curvier, had amazing auburn hair and even more amazing tip-tilted green eyes. She was a quintessential Irish American beauty. I took after the women on the Goodman side of the family. Short, blond, blue-eyed, and cute.

When I was younger, I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t look like Mom.

But being beautiful hadn’t made her any happier.

In fact, I think it kind of screwed with her perspective.

Last year, Mom turned forty-nine and treated the entire process like a loss. She went through the five stages of grieving. Well, truly, she’d circled through the first four in a hurricane of recklessness that had destroyed her life and then she’d skipped acceptance and returned to a mix of stage one and stage two: denial and anger. Though the grieving was no longer about her age. She’d celebrated her fiftieth birthday four months ago without wallowing in depression. No, her grief was about my dad.

I’d failed to help her, to stop her from tearing her life apart.

Now I was stuck in the middle of an emotional war.

As if on cue, Mom slid a sandwich across the counter and said, “It sounds like you’re getting cozy with your father’s whore.”

I blanched.

Something in me snapped.

I couldn’t listen to my mom call Miranda a whore anymore. “Mom, you can’t call her that. For a start, she’s not. For another thing, let’s not push the feminist movement back twenty years by perpetuating a toxic narrative that only encourages sexual inequality and has far-reaching ramifications on how women are treated by men across the board.”

Mom sighed heavily as she sat on a stool next to me. “Why do you turn everything political?”

“I’m just saying . . . Please don’t use words like that, no matter how you feel about Miranda. It’s not nice, and you’re classier than that.” I felt proud of myself for speaking up, but my inner pat on the back stalled at the sight of mom’s chin wobbling.

“You like her, don’t you? Is she going to steal you from me too?”

Just like that, I felt slapped in the face with remorse. “No, Mom, no, of course not.” I slipped my arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. I didn’t remind her that Miranda hadn’t stolen Dad, because what was the point? It didn’t make it any less painful for her. “I’m trying to make this work for us all.”

“And what about me?” Tears glistened in those pretty but icy eyes. “What about your mother? Don’t you care your father hurt me? Don’t you care he shacked up with her and her offspring in a house he never deigned to provide for us?”

“You know he can’t afford that house.”

“Exactly. He’s willing to bankrupt himself for her happiness and he couldn’t even wait for—” She sucked in a harsh breath and pulled out of my hold. “That’s not the point. I’m your mother. I carried you for nine excruciating months, and I deserve more loyalty than you’ve been showing me lately.” Mom stood abruptly. “I’m not hungry.”

“Mom,” I pleaded.

“It’s fine.” She gave me a flat smile. “You don’t want to take sides. I get it. It’s hurtful, but I get it. I just wish, for once, you’d stop straddling the middle of an argument and choose a side. The right side. Your father left me, bought a house he can’t afford, and then put a woman half my age in his bed.”

Not half her age. Nor did he leave Mom. Anger stifled inside my throat at her rewriting of history.

“That you won’t stand by me hurts. But you’ve always had a weakness of character. You get that from your father.” She straightened her dress as if she hadn’t plunged her nasty words into me like a knife. “I’m going to change. Jenna and I have a double date for dinner tonight. You can see yourself out.”

As she stalked out of the room, I wanted to shout after her, to yell at her she was so blinded by her own mistakes she couldn’t see the truth for the trees!

But if she wanted to push me away, then fine. I was done.

I marched into the sitting room, grabbed my purse, and then moved toward the front door, adrenaline pumping, my skin hot. Then my stupid hand stalled on the door handle. The urge to fix this was real.

Out of nowhere, Christopher’s face floated across my vision, words from one of his videos in my ears. He spoke of moving on from relationship problems that couldn’t be fixed, how sometimes you just had to make peace with it.

I turned to look over my shoulder at the stairs that led to the second floor. I could climb those and beg my mother for forgiveness for a crime I hadn’t committed, or just for today I could make peace with the fact that for now we were broken and couldn’t be fixed.

“Just for today,” I whispered, tears burning in my eyes.

Then I walked out.

I fought with myself the entire way, but I stayed strong. I gave myself grace for once.

Twenty minutes later, as I waited in Newark Penn Station for a train back to the city, I heard my cell chime in my purse. My stomach did a little kick when I saw it was a text from Mom.