Page 29 of Crossfire

“Have you tried to explain the situation to them?” she pressed.

“Of course,” I said. “But they run a business, Mom. It’s very simple. If we want Grams to remain there, they will happily let her stay for a fee. We either pay the fee or she needs to leave.”

Mom looked at the coffee table again, at the physical proof of how hard I’d been trying to fix this.

“I’m sorry,” Mom eventually said. “I wish I could help financially.”

Mom touched the empty spot on her ring finger, but the divorce wasn’t the cause of her financial strain. Half of nothing was, evidently, negative nothing.

She took a seat next to me and placed a gentle hand on my knee. “Tell me how I can help.”

I placed my hand on hers, softening my tone. “Please, just stop telling me to do something I can’t. I can’t give up on her. If you want to do some research to see if there are any other funding alternatives that I have not considered, that’s great, but please stop battling with me on this.”

Mom’s eyebrows knitted together, and she squeezed my hand lightly, as if afraid I might break at any moment.

“I’m angry at him,” she admitted in a tone filled with shame. “I know I shouldn’t be, but…” She shook her head. “If this was too much for him to bear, how could he leave this for you? He had to know when he…” She trailed off before sighing. “That he would be leaving you in a terrible position.”

I turned away so she couldn’t see my tears.

“I know what I did was stupid.” I twisted my free hand on my lap, still clutching hers with my other. “But you don’t need to worry about me, Mom.”

I seriously could not deal with this anymore. Scrubbing my face with my hands, I said, “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? Can we please talk about something else?” Or better yet, leave, so I could have that bubble bath.

Mom studied me for several long seconds. I could see her worry for me, and I felt bad for having put her through this today. She’d lost Dad, too, even if he wasn’t her husband at the time. And now, I was all she had, except for her boyfriend.

“How’s Steve?” I asked.

If this didn’t speak to how desperate I was to change the subject, I don’t know what did; I never brought Steve up. He was the guy she started datingwhilestill married to Dad, and now that they’d been together for a couple of years, it felt like any day, she’d show up with a ring on her finger.

I shuddered at the thought.

She looked down at the ground, letting several seconds pass before speaking so softly, my ears strained to hear her. “Steve and I are not together anymore.”

My head snapped back. “Since when?”

Her lips thinned to a grim line. “Since I found out he’s married.”

The words hit me like a sucker punch. Married? Steve, the man who’d swept into my mom’s life like a tornado, leaving devastation in his wake, was married?

Memories of that awful time crashed through me, as vivid and painful as the day they’d happened.

Mom’s face was etched with apprehension. “I want you to hear this directly from me,” she said, her voice unfamiliar and brittle. She took a deep breath, then blurted out the words that shattered our world. “I’m leaving your father.”

I stared at her, uncomprehending. The words were English, but they made no sense. My gaze darted between her and Dad, mouth open, waiting for the punch line that never came.

Dad’s attempt at a reassuring smile only twisted the knife deeper. The fact that Dad tried to give me a reassuring smile only broke my heart for him even more.

“Why?” I finally managed to croak.

To this, Mom and Dad exchanged a silent grimace. In her features, I saw fear of being labeled a villain, yet resolve that she’d thought long and hard about this and trusted she was doing the right thing.

Dad’s features, on the other hand, shot her anI can’t believe you’re doing this to usleer.

It was Mom who turned back to me, her smile gentle but her words razor-sharp, cutting through my soul—Dad’s soul—all the same. “I’ve met someone.”

I wish I could say I’d been a better daughter, that I hadn’t held a grudge. But that would be a lie. The months that followed were a minefield of arguments, and distance grew between us. One that, at the time, I had no interest in ever closing, no matter how much my father urged me to.

It really wasn’t until his death that she and I got back on solid ground, but if I were also being honest about that, the ground had never been the same again. I hated that I looked at her differently for her choices. After all, who was I to judge? I was of no moral high horse, I assure you. I was a flawed, broken human making mistakes every day of my life.

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