“You want it that way, Amy, in your big house all alone, accepting the dregs when a woman like you should be handed everything, you got it.”
Before I could reply, he hung up on me.
I took the phone from my ear and stared at it, asking, “Did that just happen?”
The phone and the entirety of my house were unsurprisingly silent.
He convinced you that you were a piece of shit when he is and you went down without a fight.
Mickey’s words pummeled me so hard mentally, my entire body jerked.
Did I?
Did I go down without a fight?
It felt like I’d been fighting for years. Anytime I saw Conrad or Martine, anytime I forced them to see me, I fought.
But I didn’t.
In the game they made me play against my will, each time that happened, I wasn’t fighting.
I was showing them my cards.
So it wasn’t a big shock that they’d bested me.
And maybe he’s convinced your kids you’re a piece of shit too.
My husband had cheated on me. He’d left me. He’d destroyed our family.
I thought we’d been happy. For years, years, I’d run through moments, snippets, hours, weeks, months and the only thing we consistently disagreed about was how he didn’t want me to spoil the children. Outside of that, I’d never found a single second where he’d given me any indication things were going wrong.
Conrad had never sat me down and shared something wasn’t working. He’d never found his time to find his way to say something I was doing upset him, troubled him, annoyed him.
He’d never said or done anything.
Heck, we’d made love, doing it most enjoyably, until the night before he told me he was leaving me!
“Oh God,” I breathed, staring unseeing at my phone. “I’d showed them all my cards and they’d bested me.”
I lifted my head and looked at my reflection in the glass of my wall of windows.
It was wavy but it was me.
Great highlights.
No-longer-Felicia-Hathaway dress that very much suited me.
And I knew I had elegant, stylish, strappy, high-heeled sandals on my feet.
But that was wrapping.
All of that, all of it, was me.
It had always been me.
And I let Conrad—and Martine—convince me differently.
“They bested me,” I whispered, my hand curling tight on my phone. “Those assholes bested me. All of them bested me.”
I glared at my image in the glass.
Time to grow the fuck up.
On that thought, I stomped through my fabulous, multi-million dollar, Prentice Cameron house right to my unfinished den/office/whatever-I-wanted-it-to-be.
I fired up my computer on my used, massive, intricately carved baronial desk and I sat down in the officious, completely awesome, leather button-backed chair behind it.
I waited and when it was ready, I pulled up my email.
I typed my father’s address in.
Dad, I wrote.
I’m aware you and Mom have been calling. I’m emailing you now to explain why I’ve not picked up.
Before I left, I told you I was moving to Maine in order to be closer to my children. My relationship with them the last few years has deteriorated and it’s crucial I do the work I need to do to focus on healing that breach.
And I do believe you’re aware that there’s a great deal of work to do on that. Therefore, I’ve been doing what I intended to do when I moved to Maine, focusing on just that.
I don’t wish to hurt or offend you by suggesting you or Mom are distractions, however, I’m sure we all can agree that Olympia and Auden, as well as myself at this current juncture, are the priorities.
I wish to assure you I’m here. I’m safe. The house is even more wonderful than I thought it would be. I’ve met people and made friends. I’m volunteering. And although the road has been very bumpy, I’m settling and have hope I’ll find happiness here…with Auden and Olympia.
You have my sincere apologies I didn’t share that with you sooner. I’m sure you were worried and I’m terribly sorry I made you feel those feelings. But I must share now that there may be lapses between you hearing from me because the work I must do must take all my attention. I’ll try not to let the time go on this long before you get an update from me.
I would enjoy receiving emailed updates from you and Mom as well. I’ll do my best to reply as soon as I can.
My love to you and please extend that to Mom.
-Amelia
I only read it once for typos before sending it.
I held absolutely no hope that it would stop my father from attempting to get in touch with me to lambast me verbally, but I didn’t care. I was beyond caring. I was tired of being bested. I was tired of allowing myself to feel less than I was. I was tired of being what others wanted me to be and not being me.
So I did my daughterly duty.
If Dad couldn’t read that message and decipher what I needed and instead demanded what he needed back from me, he could go jump in a lake.
I shut down my computer, waltzed back to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine, poured a glass in one of my exquisite new glasses and walked to my armchair that was made of leather so supple it was buttery.
I turned on the light.
Having used up large reserves of courage I didn’t know I had, I didn’t curl up in my chair and call Robin like I should.
I called my brother.
It was the right thing to do.
We both bitched about our parents, Conrad, and I told him about the way my kids were behaving and the things Alyssa and Mickey had said about Conrad and Martine.
With all of those things, supportive to the last, my big brother forcefully agreed.
Alas, he was extremely angry at my children, but then again, maybe he (and I) should be.
In the end, it was exactly what I needed.
We hung up and I did it smiling.
All my life, I’d allowed myself to be beaten, even gave away the ammunition to make that so.
Right then, I was curled in my chair in my elegant shoes and pretty dress with my exquisite wineglass and I decided on yet another part that was me.
That shit was going to end.
Completely.
Chapter Nine
Nice Dress
“From the gentleman down the bar…for you,” the bartender said.
I looked from him down to the fresh cosmopolitan he put in front of me then down the bar at an attractive man with blond hair, a little gray at the temples, his smiling blue eyes on me.
“Holy shit,” Alyssa said, sitting on a stool at a nice restaurant with a respectable bar one town over called Breeze Point.
“Lovely,” Josie, sitting on my other side, murmured.
We were out “trolling” as Alyssa put it, or “having girl time with the possibility of something happening” as Josie put it.
I decided to think of it as the latter as well as an opportunity to wear another of my going out outfits.
But at that moment, when the possibility of something happening happened, I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t had a man buy me a drink in so long that I forgot what I’d done when they did.
Since my current drink was running low, I lifted it to my lips, finished it and put my fingers to the stem of the glass of the new, shifting my eyes back to the man.
I smiled.
He smiled back again.