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I wince. “You aren’t?”
“Honey,” she sighs. She turns to face me then, pressing her palm to my cheek. “No child should ever suffer the sins of their parents. What your father did…That should have never been your burden to bear. I’m sorry that it was. I’m so sorry you’ve carried this for so long. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.” Her thumb brushes back and forth across my cheek, not unlike she’s done a million times in my youth, and relief bleeds into the guilt to form a confusing cocktail of emotions that makes it hard to breathe. “I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me, because I understand it, I think, but I’m angry that it cost us years of the closeness we used to have. I’ve missed you so much, son. I’ve lost your father, and it feels like I lost you, too, somewhere along the way.”
I reach to cover her hand with mine. “You haven’t lost me. I’ve just been so afraid. I didn’t want to disappoint you. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I’ve hated every single second of lying to you, Mom. I thought I was protecting you. I thought—”
“Shh,” she says again, my rising voice and quick breaths obvious to her. “It’s okay. We all have a piece of blame in this.”
“Mom, no. You don’t—”
“Sweetheart.” She chuckles. “I know who your father is. Sure, I didn’t know this, but I’ve known for years what kind of man he’s become. What that legacy of his turned him into.” She looks away again, sighing. “He hasn’t been the man I fell in love with for quite some time.” She shrugs listlessly. “I’ve been holding on to something that’s been gone a long, long time. Maybe if I’d let go sooner, you never would have found yourself in this position to begin with.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Shush, I said.” She cocks a brow, eyeing me from the side. “This is what we’re not going to do.” Her voice is stern, and I sit up a little straighter instinctively. “We are not going to carry any more blame or guilt or whatever else you’re feeling over this. Not anymore. You’ve no doubt had years of it, and I think that’s quite enough suffering for one tragedy, don’t you?”
“But I—”
“And also, we’re not going to let this thing fester anymore. We’re cleaning out all the infection. You’re going to come see me, often, and you’re going to accept my obnoxious calls checking in on you, and you’re going to answer all my texts that have no real point to them. Yes?”
A watery laugh escapes me as her hand curls in mine. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“And you’re going to bring Delilah over for dinner,” she says firmly. “I haven’t had a proper conversation with her since you were teenagers, and I want to know what the woman you’re seeing has been up to. You are seeing her, aren’t you?”
“I…Yeah.” Thoughts of Lila have a real smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Yeah, I am.”
“Good.” She nods, a tension in her eyes and a set to her jaw as she adds, “And I would like to meet Abigail.”
I blink in shock, my mouth falling open as words fail me. When my brain comes back online, I manage a, “What?”
“I’ve been reading her story,” Mom says softly. “That poor girl. She’s been so alone in all this. I can’t imagine. She’s just as much a victim as the rest of us in this.”
My chest swells with overwhelming love for my mother, so much that it almost completely swallows the guilt inside me. Almost. “She’s…She’s definitely had a hard time.”
“Well, that’s something we can all relate to, don’t you think?”
“It is.”
Mom smiles then, squeezing my hand. “I love you, Ian. You know that, right? I’ve loved you since the day I found out about you, and I’ve never stopped. I’m sorry that so much got in the way of that, but the beautiful thing about life is that no one moment can destroy us, not really, because there will always be another chance to make things right. I think this might be ours.”
I wrap my arms around her then, careful not to jostle the glass she’s still holding. I hear her set it on the coffee table before her smaller arms curl around my waist, the familiar scent of her perfume tickling my nostrils and reminding me of better times. Times that I hope we can get back.
“I love you, too, Mom,” I murmur against her hair. “So much.”
“I know, baby.” She pats my back. “I know.”
I hold her tight for a moment, content to breathe her in, before another thought strikes me, making me jerk backward. “The team. What about the team?”
“The team?” She cocks her head. “What about it?”
“He said…” It hurts to think about, and unsurprisingly, hurts even more to say out loud. “He said if you got divorced the team would go to him. That my grandfather wanted it to stay with someone more knowledgeable.”
She blinks at me for a moment, and then she takes me completely by surprise by throwing her head back and laughing. “Is that what he told you?”
“I…Yes?”
“Oh, honey,” she chuckles, looking genuinely amused for the first time since I walked through the door. “I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, because I’m sure that’s just one more burden you’ve had to carry but…that’s not true at all.”
“It isn’t?”
