Room-maid(71)

“I know you’re not hard of hearing, Mom. I’m not going to call him. This may be a surprise to you, but this isn’t the twelfth century. Your daughters are not your chattel and you don’t get to arrange our marriages.”

Somehow her back straightened even further. “I demand to know why you won’t call him.”

“Um, because he sucks and is a crappy human being?”

“I fail to see your point.”

This was it. Time to throw away my get-out-of-jail-free card. She was never going to forgive me for this, and I was okay with it. It wasn’t like I had anything left to lose. “I’m done with Brad. I’m not marrying him.”

“You say that now—”

“No. Not now, not ever. He and I are through and should have been done a long time ago. If I hadn’t been so caught up in trying to always please you and Daddy—”

Now it was her turn to cut me off. “When have you ever tried to please me? You’ve always done exactly whatever you wanted with no thought to how it affected me. Have you stopped, even once, to think about what you breaking up with Bradford would do to me?”

She was never going to get it, because she couldn’t think or care about anyone besides herself. “This isn’t about you, Mom. If you want to be connected to the Branson family so badly, you marry him. I’m not going to do it.”

That made her gasp. “After all I’ve done for you, all I’ve given you, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer ingratitude! Give me one reason why you won’t marry him.”

“Just one? Wow. That’ll be hard. I have so many.” I leaned back in my chair, considering. “There’s the fact that I don’t love him, that he makes me really unhappy. But I think if I can only pick one, I’m going to go with he can’t stop sleeping with other women.”

“Do you think you’re the only one who has to deal with that?” she snapped. “Sacrifices have to be made to have the life you want.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You should. I raised you to be smarter than this.”

She was right. I was smarter than this. Smarter than all this. “I’m not going to put on a brave face in public while my husband humiliates me time and time again.”

She snarled, her entire face twisting. “And you think you’re too good for that? That you’re better than me?”

Something had changed inside my mom. She was usually so much more controlled, so smooth in her condescension and disdain. I found myself feeling unexpectedly sorry for her. I didn’t pretend to understand my parents’ relationship, and after that outburst I certainly didn’t want to know more. Part of me wanted to tell her that it wasn’t my fault her life was terrible. To tell her all the ways she’d failed me as a mother and how I was trying to live a decent life in spite of the way I’d been raised.

I wanted to tell her that none of this was normal. That this was not how parents treated their children. I’d seen my kids at school with their parents. Watched my friends with their families. Blind obedience didn’t equate to love.

But I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. She wouldn’t hear anything I had to say unless it was what she wanted to hear.

“It’s not about being better than you. It’s about making the choices that are right for my life. And one of those will include marrying a man I love, that I respect and I trust. If you want to be a part of my life, if you can support my decisions, then we can talk. Otherwise, I think we’re done here.” This conversation was definitely over.

I stood up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. “I haven’t dismissed you.”

“Despite what you seem to think, I’m not your servant.”

She stood up, too, anger racking her entire frame. “Do you think you can just walk out on me? On me?”

I nodded and the level of quiet, self-assured calm I was feeling seemed to only infuriate her more. “The next time you call or send someone to fetch me, I’m not going to come.”

“Oh, yes you will!”

“What are you going to do?” I asked her, genuinely curious. “Disown me again? That’s the problem when you go nuclear. You can only play that card once. You have nothing else to hold over my head.”

I went out into the hallway and she followed me to the door, huffing and puffing with frustration. “You are going to regret this! I promise you, you will regret it!”

That did make me stop and look over my shoulder at her. “No, Mom. I don’t think I will.”

As I walked toward the kitchen for what I assumed was the very last time, I thought that I probably should have felt sad.

Instead I felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.



When I got home, Tyler was in the living room with Pigeon. “How did it go?” he asked, the concern in his voice making my heart feel wonky.

“Fine. I mean, I guess not really,” I said as I hung up my coat. “I told my mother I was done with Brad and wasn’t going to marry him and she went volcanic.”

“That bad?”

“There will be enough magma to bury a city.” I went into the kitchen and got myself a glass of water. “I can’t be who they want and so they don’t want anything to do with me.” The words stung a little, but not as much as I’d once thought they would.