Page 50 of Strange Seduction
“I don’t know. What’s with you telling Carmen about Mom?”
There was a pause, just long enough to let me know she was expecting this conversation but wasn’t expecting my reaction.
“She asked, and I told her. Though you should’ve been the one to tell her.”
My jaw clenched. “Exactly. I decide on what I think Carmen should know about Mom because I am the one in the relationship with her.”
“If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not gonna get it.”
“Of course not. You and Mom have a talent for overstepping boundaries in my relationship. I’m not even surprised anymore.”
Alyssa sighed. “You’re not the only one who cares about her, you know. You can’t hide things from her, Theo. When she finds out, she’ll lose her trust in you.”
I stared at the ceiling as I spoke, voice flat. “I’ll handle Carmen. But any unnecessary stress, especially when it comes to Mom, is something she doesn’t need to concern herself with. So, please. Do me a favor, donottell Carmen about anything that’s going on with Mom and us. Specifically, Mom and I. I don’t care if she asks. I don’t want her worrying about that.”
Alyssa didn’t argue. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
There was a long pause before she said again, “Mom’s spiraling, Theo.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “I know.”
My mother had…aproblem,and the problem was herself.
Or more specifically, who she was.
‘Melissa Graham’ was adopted from Korea by rich white people when she was seven months old. Melissa Graham, however, was not her birth name, and she doesn’t even know which part of Korea she was from. Her adoptive parents didn’t bother teaching her anything about her culture. Not the language. Not the history. Not even the food. They treated her like something exotic to dress up and show off in their golf clubs and yacht circles.
When she met my Dad, he had already taken over Corner Stones.
He was rich and handsome and her parents reluctantly approved, though I was sure his proximity to wealth made up for other factors they deemed‘unworthy’.
It didn’t matter anyway.
She had traded being a decoration in one house for another. It was the same as it had always been her whole life. Dressing up to be paraded around for my father’s rich friends, for his socialite persona.
From souvenir kid to trophy wife.
And now?I think she’s going through a full-blown, alcoholic, midlife identity crisis because she had no one to place her on the pedestal she had grown used to.
I almost felt bad for her.
She had no idea who she was anymore, and instead of doing the work to figure that out, she was taking it out on everyone around her. Me and my siblings, mostly.
But especially me.
It used to be Kassandra for a long time. She was the firstborn, after all. The ‘accident’ that turned her into a wife too soon and a mother before she ever figured out how to be a person. It was Kassandra who turned down the family business and ‘drove my Dad to cheat on her.’—her words, not mine.
But now that Kassandra has made herself unavailable to be my mother’s punching bag, the honor fell to me.The Nepo son.The company head who refused to shower his mother with gifts because his girlfriend was more important.
How dare he not bend to her every demand? Can’t he see what she went through?
And in her head, she’s still a victim of circumstance. She married Dad too young. She got pregnant too fast. None of it was her fault. None of it ever is. And now we all owe her some kind of cosmic debt for the life she sacrificed.
Oh, you can’t drop everything to fly her to Milan because she got invited to Fashion Week last minute? Do you know what she gave up to bring you into this world?
You can’t send her a hundred thousand dollars to buy a new car when her old one just needs new tires? You’re the most ungrateful son in the goddamn universe.
