Page 94 of Loving You

“I did care,” she went on. “So much. But I wasn’t able to show it, and I’m going to do better. I want you to want to share your life with me, not hide most of the details because you don’t think it matters to me. And while I’m grateful to Jenna for already treating you like part of her family, I want to earn my place in your heart as the kind of mother you deserve.”

“I appreciate that, but you really don’t need to apologize. I didn’t quite understand what the problem was, but I did know you spent a lot of years hurting because of my father, so even when I was… well, whenever I had shitty feelings for you—sorry—I told myself I had no idea what you’ve experienced, and being upset with you for how you acted after the way you were treated would be hugely hypocritical of me.”

“Why hypocritical?” she asked.

I blew out a jagged breath. “Mom, I had a bit of an identity crisis after I came back to Granite Springs. I kinda faked my way through life, pretending I was something I wasn’t because I didn’t like the person I’d become when I was with him.”

She leaned back in her chair, considering me. I wondered if she was flipping through memories of me, comparing things I said and did to some pre-Cliff version of myself.

“It took some work to figure out the happy medium that was the real me,” I went on, wanting to make it clear I wasn’t still struggling with that. “So, if I blamed you for your actions after going through something that probablyreallysucked in a different way, that’d make me a hypocrite.”

“That’s no excuse,” Mom disagreed, coming around the desk and sitting in the chair next to mine. “I shouldn’t have kept you girls at arm’s length. I should have been there for you to help you heal from Cliff much sooner.”

“I’m not sure what you could have done.”

“Neither am I. But if I didn’t know how, I should have figured it out, not told myself you didn’t need me because you were an adult and had your sisters. I had this misguided idea that if I treated you girls like adults and put myself in a bubble, none of you would see how much I was still hurting.”

She had no idea how much I knew aboutthatparticular feeling, but as I sensed there was more she wanted to say, I stayed quiet.

“Anyway, I might not have been the love of your father’s life, but he was the love of mine.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Don’t be. Jenna has suffered her own heartbreak—obviously in a much different way than I have—but we’ve spoken about it at length, and she’s helped me see that as awful as the relationship was in the end, getting through it meant focusing on the good. Again, her story is much different than mine, but the one way it’s similar is that the pain is no match for the joy when you focus on the children and not the end of the marriage.”

She’d winced when she said the last part for obvious reasons, and I felt my face mirror hers.

Obviously, Jenna hadn’t chosen for her marriage to end. And really, it hadn’t. She was and would always be Mrs. Jenna Walker, even if her beloved husband wasn’t physically here with her.

But I understood my mom’s point—that they both grieved in different ways, and they both had children they could love instead of sinking into that sadness.

Not only that, but a world around them worth embracing.

I squeezed her hand. “I think, in our own ways, we were both working on the same thing.”

“How so?”

“Well, we both needed to learn that people sometimes suck, and sometimes life hurts. But feeling so trapped in it that you forget who you are and miss out on other amazing things in life doesn’t help.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “I suppose that’s true.”

“And,” I went on with a cheeky grin, “it’s kinda funny how a couple of Walkers managed to help us Carrigans figure that out, huh?”

A wry smile tilted her lips as she shook her head at me. “I suppose the Walker family isn’t as bad as I once thought.”

“Did you, though? Did you think there was something bad about Jenna? You didn’t want to discuss it with Eric and me sitting there at the coffee shop, but it sounded a little like you thought she was somehow at fault.”

Mom sighed. “I told myself she must have encouraged him, and I hated her for it. There she was, a happy life, lots of children, and a husband who adored her. I couldn’t understand why she wanted another woman’s husband, too.”

“Oh.” I frowned. My mom’s words and my understanding of Jenna Walker were completely at odds, and I wasn’t sure how it was possible for my mom to have thought that of Jenna in the first place.

Mom didn’t let me worry over it for long, though, because she placed her hand on my knee and gave it a squeeze. “She set me straight that day in the cafe. It was hard to hear, but after speaking with her, I finally believe she didn’t encourage him. I believe she loved her husband with her whole heart, and not a single inch of it belonged to your father. And I apologized for thinking ill of her.”

“That’s good. But I’m sorry you went so long thinking like that. No wonder the damn feud survived as long as it did.”

She closed her eyes, inhaling through her nose. “Yes, well, enough about that. The bottom line is with those fences mended, we have much to look forward to in bringing our families together for your wedding to Eric. And April, I’m so happy you’ve found a man who helped you find yourself again.”

“Thanks, Mom. And I’m glad it resulted in you getting a friend out of the deal. I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told Eric a million times. There’s more to life than work.”

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