Page 57 of Until I Find You

Her brow furrows. “You really think all of those things you said? You really think I don’t love you?”

“I didn’t say that.” Not in explicit terms. “But I think I have reason to question what my place is in your heart. You wouldn’t have seen me on my trip if not for Camilla.”

My mother looks away, eyes pinching shut. “I know, that was not…that was not kind.”

“It’s not about kindness. It’s about–” My breath hitches in my chest. “I’m your son, Mama.”

“You are.”

“I am yourfirstborn.”

She opens her eyes. A tear rolls down her cheek and tugs at my heart strings.

I want to tell her she’s not allowed to cry. Because the second she cries, it won’t feel fair. I will be cruel to hold her feet to the fire. “You are, Jack.”

“Then why am I othered? Why don’t you love me like them?”

“I do.”

“You don’t,” I bite back. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

She hesitates just long enough for me to see the truth. It’s different. The way she feels about me and the way she feels about them. And she knows it. “You wanted to leave, Jack. You begged to live with your father. I let you do that. I let you go because that’s what you wanted.”

“Because nobody gave a shit that I was here!” I cry out, spreading my arms wide. “Nobody fucking cared about me!”

My mother grabs at her chest. “I did. Of course, I did.”

“Well, you had a weird way of showing it, then.” That weird way being not at all.

Her jaw tics. “See? This is why I told you not to come.”

“Why?”

“Because all we do is fight because your reality and my reality are so different.” Her lips bunch up. “He poisoned you against me.”

My temper flares. “Dad didn’t do anything to poison me against you. You did that fine all on your own.”

Her brown eyes whip to mine.

We reflect one another in so many ways, our eyes included. And when we stare each other down like this, I am struck with immense grief. That the woman who made me doesn’t understand me and has never cared to.

She tilts her chin up. “I wasn’t good enough for you. Fine. But he couldn’t keep it together to give you the life you deserved. A life with a mother and a father and a happy home. And youranto him.” Her voice is ragged, her hand splayed out as she gestures away from her. “He left you, and you wantedhim.”

“So, you’re saying because I chose Dad that means you can excuse yourself from loving me? That even though I was a child–”

“I am not perfect, Jack. I know I’m flawed, but you have to believe me that my heart did not exist until you,” she says through tears sliding down her face.

I say nothing. Staring at her.

“You are not hard to love. Never ever have you been hard to love, but I have believed for a long time you thought you were better off without me,” she says. “And I am deeply sorry that I thought that. I am so sorry I–”

From the other room, the lock of the front door clicks open, and Camilla cries out, “I’ve got the goods.”

My mother swipes her tears off her face, jumping to her feet and forcing on that effervescent smile.

Camilla walks in through the door with a hefty bag of pastries, her eyes flicking from me to my mother and back to me again.

I give a small shake of my head, signaling for her not to ask. Not to worry.

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