“You don’t. I don’t.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I can’t worry about that because it’s counterproductive to fighting addiction. I know that now. I can only try and I am trying.” She shifted forward on her seat, expression filled with remorse. “If you can’t forgive me, I understand.”
I shook my head, my gut roiling at the idea of losing my mom for good now that she was in front of me. “I love you. You’re not your addiction, Mom. I love you. And despite everything I will always forgive you.”
When she broke into hard, shuddering sobs, I wondered how much more I could take. Holding her as she clung to me, I couldn’t remember a time more emotionally wrought than this past week.
I felt like I’d cried a lifetime’s worth of tears.
* * *
• • •
A while later, we moved to the porch swing. It was a typically humid day, but we had the iced tea in our hands as a coolant.
“Has it rained much?” I asked. It usually rained a fair bit in Carmel during the summers. Hence the humidity.
“Actually, we’re having a pretty hot, dry summer. Climate change, I guess.” She shot me a semi-amused look. “Are we really going to talk about the weather? Am I allowed to broach the subject of your engagement? Is it my place?”
“Honestly, I’m all talked out. I could sleep for days. But you’re my mom. It’s always your place,” I assured her.
She smiled gratefully and I noticed how well she really did look. Alcoholism had taken a toll on Mom’s skin. She had more wrinkles than some women her age, but the yellow tinge to her skin tone was gone. She looked healthy and glowing. My pretty, shiny-eyed mom from when she first met Phil was back. Hope, despite all my best attempts to stifle it, flickered to life inside me.
I guess I always would hope for the best when it came to the people I loved.
Roane’s face flashed before my eyes, and those doubts Greer had breathed life into caused a stomach cramp.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I read all the emails you sent Phil, and he’d tell me about your phone conversations too when you were over there.”
“I don’t mind.” I’d assumed as much.
“Your young man . . . Roane . . . he sounds like a good man.”
“He lied to me,” I replied automatically. “And anyway, I didn’t go there to fall in love with some guy.” God, did I sound bitter. “I went over there, telling myself from the start not to get involved with him, because I was there to find myself, to find out what I wanted from life. Not to find a man. I didn’t listen! I didn’t listen to myself and look where it got me. I lost the bookstore and a life that should have been my home. Because of him. Because I gave up my independence for him.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you’ve got it all wrong.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Love isn’t about giving up your independence, and I doubt very much that you of all people gave it up for a man.”
I made a face but she was right. With the exception of not learning to drive there, I’d refused Roane’s help buying the store, wanting to do that for myself. I ran the store by myself with no help from anyone else. “Okay, maybe I didn’t. Entirely. But I still didn’t listen to my good sense.”
Mom studied me thoughtfully. “Do you think that it’s somehow weak to think of a person as ‘home’?”
“No one should rely on someone for that. A home should be something outside of a person. They’re too unreliable. You lose them, you lose your home.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but that’s life.”
“Mom—”
“No. That is what it is to be human. We find people we love and they become our home. Jobs, houses, they can all change, but it’s only when we lose someone that we lose that feeling of being anchored to a place. Not a place that’s tangible but a place in here.” She touched her chest where her heart was. “Your father gave me a home when I had none, and losing him, losing that anchor, devastated me. And yes, it made me weak, because ever since, I’ve bobbed around in this nameless sea, dragged under by the waves whenever life gets hard. All because I lost my home when I lost him.
“But what I let myself forget”—she clutched at my hand—“is that you were my home as much as he was. It took me multiple rehab stays and far too much time to realize that.” Her grip tightened to bruising. “Don’t make my mistake, Evie. I see the grief in your eyes. I know that grief. But guess what, my sweet girl, your home is still out there. He’s still out there.”
“How . . .” I choked out. “How do I know he’s my home?”
“You wouldn’t be so shipwrecked right now if he wasn’t.”
“Mom . . . he’s in England,” I reminded her.
Her smile was sad. “I know. This decision isn’t about me or Phil or Greer . . . it’s about you. It’s finally about you, Evie. And all I care about is your happiness. What’s an ocean between family?”
“I think . . .” My stomach churned as I answered. “I think I acted impulsively. Stupidly impulsively and I . . . I was just so hurt and blindsided. But they were right. I didn’t give myself enough time to think it through. I just wanted to run away. And I hurt him. I’ve hurt him too.”
“Do you forgive him?”
The lies still stung and his actions had shaken my trust in him; there was no magic wand for that, other than time. But the thought of never seeing Roane again was unbearable. “I love him,” I admitted. “Being this far away from him scares the shit out of me. When I found out what he’d kept from me, all I kept thinking about was that little whisper in the back of my head that had been telling me since I met him that he was too good to be true. I let that whisper become something big and dark. But being away from him . . . I feel like an idiot for leaving over those lies. Those stupid little lies. I remember he told me once that he was so happy with me, he was afraid. Now I get it. It was hard for him to tell me the truth because he thought I’d walk away. It’s difficult to stay mad at someone because they love you so much, it made them act like a moron. So, yes, I forgive him.”
“Then he’ll forgive you too.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then he’s a fool. And I’ll be here.”
I hugged my mom tight as we swayed gently on the porch swing, but as the minutes passed, the pieces of my heart that belonged to her began to heal, giving way to those that belonged to Roane. They pulled my mind into the fray of their restoration, until I was already back in England before my body was.