Page 91 of Of Literature and Lattes
Janet nodded. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“What?” She asked the question softly, wanting an answer more than an argument.
“A little Shakespeare for you... You always say numbers tell a story, but it’s not a whole story, sweetheart. We’re more complex than that. You may not have been a celiac three years ago when you handed in your own lab tests. And in the end, here, maybe you did find what you were looking for all along. You can’t see the whole picture or even how scenes, strivings, events, moments, desires... They all overlay one another. As for others, I don’t know. My heart breaks that anyone was hurt by this, but you can’t know their whole stories either. To take that on, to take that blame, is a hubris beyond anything imagined.”
Alyssa felt her lips part and pressed them together. “How did I ever think I understood you? I have no idea what you mean there.”
“The point is, you do what you can, and the rest, you must now let it go.”
“How? I can’t make it better. To do what I can is tiny, insignificant. It’s too big. And even how I got there... You were right. I blamed you and I ran. Then, even after I left and how I left, you supported me. You got practically the whole town to sign up with XGC. I liked that, by the way. I never called and thanked you, but I knew it was you who did that for me. It was promoted all around the company. I was so proud—and look what happened. All those people. Some here in Winsome. I’m responsible for their pain.”
Janet crossed back to the swing and sat on the end. Her weight sent it into a slight sway. “That’s too much. You must see that.”
Alyssa shifted her gaze from her mom. “I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t know how to stop fighting and pushing and kicking. It’s all I do, but it’s not me. It feels horrible and it’s exhausting. I just want to be myself again. My real self again.”
The words sat between them. Alyssa didn’t even know what they meant so much as what they might feel like if they became true. She also knew where she’d read them.Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.
“And who is that?” Her mom leaned over and lifted a strand of hair from across her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
“Someone who doesn’t feel anxious and angry all the time. Someone who doesn’t mess up everything she touches. Someone who doesn’t pick fights when she doesn’t even want to. Someone who can do good things... Someone who feels joy. Someone who can stay.”
Janet laughed. “Oh, sweetheart, you aren’t that first person and you can be and are the second. You’ve been through a lot, and you don’t mess up all the time, and we’ve both picked plenty of unnecessary fights, but that can change too. And youdo‘good things,’ as you call them. And...” Her mom stalled so long Alyssa shifted to see her better. “Give yourself a little grace. That’s where you need to start. Recognize you didn’t single-handedly create the problems at XGC—that’s your hurt pride talking, and I get that—but you need to let it go. Trust the FBI to see it through.” Janet shifted closer to her daughter. “Come home and stay. Because despite all the bad, it feels right for you too. There’s been good these past weeks.”
She offered the words with an upward lilt, as if unsure of their reception.
Alyssa soaked them in.
“It was never the perfect plan because I wanted it; it was the perfect plan because you wanted it. And despite any misgivings, you sure stepped into it. Ask Lexi, Jeremy, or Eve... Ask me...” Janet tipped back against the swing’s wood slats. “And of course you’ll still mess up. I certainly learned that tonight. We all do.”
Alyssa sputtered out a laugh. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It should.” Janet reached an arm around her and pulled her close. “Recognizing that is the most freeing thing in the world.”
Alyssa snuggled closer to her mom and felt it.
The fight was over.
Chapter 41
The next morning, Alyssa found her mom making coffee in the kitchen and her grandmother sitting stern and silent at the island.
“What’s going on?” She looked between them.
“Grandma came to check on you, and she thinks your father and I are rushing this wedding.”
“I didn’t say that,” Grandma barked.
Janet pressed her lips shut and filled the coffee maker’s glass carafe with water.
Alyssa manufactured a laugh to cut the tension. “It’s not like they weren’t married for almost thirty years, Grandma. I doubt they’ll have many surprises.”
If she expected that to smooth ruffled feathers or warm the kitchen’s interior frost, she was wrong. Her grandmother stared at her, and her mom worked the coffee maker with such focus one might think it brand-new rather than ten years old.
“Why don’t you share your thoughts?” Grandma lifted her chin to Alyssa.
Janet’s eyes flashed to her, and a torrent of conversations, some years old and some days old, rushed at Alyssa. Calls to Grandma to complain about her mom, heedless as to whether the charges were true; feeding the discord between her mom and grandmother because it kept the focus off her; her comment only weeks ago at her dinner with Grandma that Mom had manipulated Dad again—she always gets her way.
But that was before, Alyssa thought, before she listened. Before she understood. It didn’t matter. She had said those very words.
