Page 52 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
Her mother lifted her gaze from her mug to face Jenna squarely. “Yes,” she stated quietly. “That’s what I am saying. I don’t know how many, or how far it went each time. Sometimes not far at all, according to your father, but… I couldn’t live with the uncertainty anymore. With never feeling like I was first?—”
“But healwaysput you first,” Jenna burst out. It was what had hurt so much, as a child. How extraneous she had felt, along with Zach, to her parents’ grand romance, like bit players who were resented when they were onstage. Her parents had never seemed all that interested in anything about her—her accomplishments, her interests, her hopes, her fears. Water off a duck’s back, every time. She could still picture her father’s faint eyebrow raise as he glanced at her across the kitchen table.Oh, you again?
“He made gestures,” her mother corrected. “Grand, sweeping gestures to say sorry, and I accepted them and told myself it was enough. That it was love. But I don’t think it ever was.”
“Mom, Dad loves you,” Jenna objected, feeling it from the depths of her being. “Zach and I never doubted that. It was always you two, and so then we felt… extra.”
Her mother sighed. “I know, and that is, at least partly, my fault. Maybe a lot my fault. It took me a long time to realize it but, Jenna… your father is a narcissist. A wonderful, charming, handsome, lovely narcissist.” She sighed. “He could walk into any room, and everyone would love him… if he wanted them to. If he didn’t care, then you basically ceased to exist in his eyes. And I went from one to the other for far too long… existing on the highs and dreading the lows. When I got cancer, the year you were in San Francisco… I was almostglad.” Her voice trembled. “Because I thought maybe then he would pay attention to me more. Not just sweeping in with the flowers but holding my hand in the dark. And for a little while, it felt like it worked. He was so attentive during my chemo appointments, but then I realized he was more intent on charming the nurses. He loved playing the devoted husband, but it was all just an act. An act everyone bought except me.”
Jenna shook her head slowly. It felt like too much to take in. “And the affairs?” she asked hollowly. Starr’s Fall was a small town. Who had her father had an affair with? She shuddered to think.
“I don’t know,” her mother admitted quietly. “He was discreet, at any rate, and it wasn’t all the time, but… I always knew when he came in with flowers or took me to the Litchfield Inn for dinner… it was an apology of sorts. And I accepted it every time.” For the first time, Jenna heard bitterness spike her mother’s voice as her face crumpled. “I was so in love with him, Jenna,” she said brokenly as she wiped her eyes. “I would have doneanythingfor him. When he had this dream of setting up this store and living off the land, when he decided to move into antiques or collect wine or do whatever it was he wanted to… I acted like it was my dream, too. I became a shadow of myself, bending myself to whatever shape he wanted. And in the process…” She drew a ragged breath. “I alienated and neglected my two children.”
A silence descended upon them then that felt like too heavy a weight to bear. How, Jenna wondered, had she not seen all this? How had she been so blinded, thinking her parents had the greatest romance ever, and then, she realized with a lurch, doing the exact same thing her mother had done, and twisting herself into every possible shape to make a man love her? She’d repeated her mother’s mistakes, Jenna realized hollowly, without even knowing her mother had made them.
“I had no idea,” she finally said in little more than a whisper. “Really.”
“I know.” Her mother wiped her eyes again. “I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t the one who should be sorry,” Jenna replied, her voice rising. “Dad…” She stopped, because she didn’t even know what to think about her dad anymore. She’d always been in awe of him—his effortless charm, the twinkle in his eye, the way he could make you the center of his world for all of three seconds before moving on, but for a moment you reveled in being in the spotlight, even if the darkness afterwards felt awful.
It was, she acknowledged, the same kind of dynamic she’d had with Ryan. How had she notseenall this? Just how blind had she been?
“Your father is who he is,” her mother said heavily. “And he’s not all bad. He agreed to retire because I insisted on it. I needed a new start, somewhere where I wasn’t wondering if every woman was someone he’d been with.” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know if it was paranoia or not, but I’d started to feel like everyone wasstaringat me. In pity.”
“Oh, Mom…” Jenna shook her head, appalled. Had it really been that way? Among her own friends, she didn’tthinkanyone had known about this unsettling and unfortunate dynamic between her parents. If they had, they’d certainly kept it from her. But Barb Lyman? Zoe’s parents? Joshua’s dad? Maybe they’d all known and kept quiet about it. It wouldn’t surprise her. The people of Starr’s Fall liked to gossip, but they also could be very close-mouthed when they chose, especially that generation.
“He promised he’d be different,” her mother continued, “and I think he meant it. We chose Florida because I had this dream of us together on the beach… Well, it was a childish fantasy, and all that happened was your father discovered golf and all the women who play it, and I fell into the same pattern I’d always been in. Nothing changed but our surroundings.”
She lapsed into silence, and for a few moments they both simply sipped their tea. Then Jenna ventured to ask, “So what made you decide to leave?” If she had left. Jenna hoped she had, considering all she’d just learned.
“You,” her mother said, startling her. “When you called at Thanksgiving, and you told me how you’d always felt left out, as a child. I think I’d known that, deep down, but you’d never said it so directly and it felt… it felt like a slap to the face. In a good way,” she explained in a rush. “Because I needed it. How much of my life was I going to waste, chasing after my own husband?” She shook her head. “It took me a few weeks, but I told your father I’d had enough. I don’t think he believed me. He told me to go have a visit, but assumes that I’ll be back.” She sighed. “And maybe he’s right.”
“No, Mom.” Jenna reached over to grasp her mother’s hand. “Don’t. You deserve more than that. Any woman does. I know, because… I had the same kind of thing going on with… with that man I fell in love with. Ryan. In San Francisco.” Her parents had never actually met him, because Ryan hadn’t been interested in getting to know her family—a warning sign if there ever was one. “He was my whole world,” Jenna continued, “my sun, moon, and stars, and I… I wasn’t all that much to him, no matter what I tried to do to make him love me. You know I only moved to New York because he did, even though I didn’t have a job, even though he didn’t ask me to.” She swallowed painfully, remembering the humiliation of Ryan’s response.You don’t have to come to New York with me, Jenna…
How deluded and desperate had shebeen? “And unlike you,” she continued in a stronger voice, “I wasn’t brave enough to end it. He ended it for me.” She let out a jagged laugh. “I’d convinced myself he was going to propose, would you believe it? And he was actually breaking it off. Not only that, but he’d been seeing someone else, and he was getting engaged toher. I hadn’t even suspected he was cheating, more stupid me.”
“Oh, Jenna.” Her mother looked at her with tear-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“I am, too,” Jenna replied on a ragged sigh. “I spent ten years being bitter about it and letting myself get cynical about everything. It made me more bitter about you and Dad and what I’d thought you had, because I’d been looking for the same thing and destroying myself in the process. But…” She shook her head, her mouth firming. “I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Oh, Jenna,” her mother said again. “I don’t want you to, either. I wish… I wish I’d been honest with you sooner, as well as a better mother. Maybe I could have kept you from making the same mistakes…”
“I don’t want regret to be my main emotion,” Jenna told her, recalling what Henrietta Starr had said. “And it shouldn’t be yours, either. This can be a fresh start, Mom, for both of us.”
Her mother’s eyes brightened, and her lips trembled. “I would love that,” she whispered.
“So would I,” Jenna replied, surprising herself. Did she still carry hurt from her childhood? Yes, probably, but it was an old pain, not a fresh, smarting wound. And her mother clearly had her own wounds, which Jenna had never even known about, to her shame.
Impulsively, and also because she wanted to, she rose from her chair and went over to her mother to put her arms around her. Her mother stiffened in surprise before throwing her arms around Jenna in a tight hug, her voice muffled against her shoulder.
“Thank you for giving me a second chance,” she said.
“Thank you for telling me all that,” Jenna replied, squeezing her gently. “It can’t have been easy.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
“No regrets, remember?” Jenna released her mother, smiling down at her, feeling a sudden, surprising surge of protectiveness for a woman she’d so often low-key resented. It was a new, and not unwelcome, feeling. “New beginnings and fresh starts,” she insisted. “For both of us.”
