Page 69 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

When she ended up at her mother’s new home, furnished by Rocco, her palms felt slick and sweaty.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What about?” her mom asked.

“Everything. I just want to know... Was everything in my childhood a lie? Did you not love dad? Did you not love me? What did you want instead? Were you so unhappy that you were just dying to get out?”

Her mom’s face softened. “Come in, Noelle.”

Noelle did. The house itself was an explosion of color. Rocco would hate it, and that kind of amused her.

“Do you want a margarita?”

“No,” Noelle said, feeling somewhat taken aback by the question.

“Well, I might have one. I’m surprised you’re finally asking these questions.”

“Well. I don’t think I wanted the answers to them before.”

“I think that’s kind of the moral of the story, honey. It’s really easy to not ask questions when you’re afraid of what the answers might be.”

Noelle frowned. “Do you mean you?”

Her mother got out margarita mix, tequila and ice, and poured it all into the blender. She pushed the button, and it twirled around while Noelle stood there, trying to find her equilibrium.

“That was my whole marriage to your father. Being afraid of asking questions. Afraid of what the answers would be. But no, I wasn’t unhappy the whole time. And of course I loved him. I love you.”

“Then why did you have an affair?”

“Because things are complicated sometimes. And I’m not perfect. Because instead of talking to your father when I felt like he was distant from me, I thought it was easier to pour my heart out to a man who didn’t actually know me. A man who wouldn’t bring my own frailties into the conversation. What a neat trick that is. If you bring up the problems that you’re having to your husband he might tell you things you don’t want to hear. I didn’t want that. No, I wanted easy. So I took easy. Except, in the end of course it wasn’t. Because I hurt your dad, and I didn’t actually want to do that. Whether you believe me or not. But it’s easy to get caught in your own made-up stories. Way too easy. Our life wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t nothing. It was everything to me. And within that there were failures. On both our parts. It was imperfect, and it was hard, but it was good. You were always the best part of it. So sunny and warm and you loved everything about Holiday House. I would never have asked you to leave it.”

“But you did. You wanted to sell it.”

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You were an adult, and I thought maybe it would even do you some good to have some other experiences.”

“Well. Now I have had them. And honestly, they just kind of hurt.”

“Being an adult hurts sometimes,” her mom said. “There was no way to spare you from that forever. I... Maybe it was selfish of me. I wanted to leave some of the harder parts of that life behind. And get something out of it. I’ve been living a different life, and it makes me feel new. I can finally escape the ways in which I disappointed your dad. The ways I disappointed myself. It isn’t that it was all bad. And in the last few years, it was really good. But it’s my mistakes that haunt me now that he’s gone.”

“Oh,” Noelle said.

She didn’t know what to do with all this information. It didn’t solve anything, not really. It didn’t magically fix what had happened between her and Rocco. But it definitely showed her childhood through a prism of fractured glass, rather than an illusory windowpane. It wasn’t half so simple as perfect or not perfect. A life her mother loved, or a life she hated. It was just human frailty. It was a difficult thing to accept. But her father was gone, and she could never really have that revelation with him. That whole realization that he was just a person like she was. Trying his best, or not on a given day.

She could still have that with her mother.

“I keep wanting things to be simple,” Noelle said. “Right or wrong, happy and unhappy. Perfect.”

“But it isn’t.”

“Rocco sent me away. Because I asked him the hard question. I told him the hard thing.”

Her mom closed the distance between them and put her hand on Noelle’s shoulder. “Noelle, you will always be glad you did that. Because eventually, secrets come to collect. And the unspoken things come out in ways that are far more painful than if you had just talked about them.”

“But I don’t have him anymore.”

“I’m sorry, honey. You’re welcome to live a single life with me here.”

“I think I’m going to go back home. Try to get back to who I was.”

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