She took a steadying breath. “You’re right. I have no right to ask anything of you.” She bit her lip and continued, “Just please know that… Well, sometimes your life doesn’t turn out the way you plan. Sometimes, you make choices and—”
“The motherly advice is really warming my heart, here, Kate. But you know what? We’ve been fine without you. We’ve done just fine. We didn’t need you. So spare me your sanctimonious explanations. At least be honest.” I ran my hand through my hair and tried to find my equilibrium. There was only one thing I needed from this woman in front of me. Only one question I’d always wanted to ask. “Just answer me this. Just… How could you do it? How could you walk out that door? Leave your husband and your kids and never look back? What kind of person can do a thing like that?”
She gave a defeated sigh, then turned broken eyes to me. The pang in my heart was only out of an instinctual sympathy. I didn’t feel badly for her. I didn’t feel anything for her.
“I’m trying to tell you. I was young. One minute, I was a teenager. The next, I was a wife. And a mother. It was just… too much. I never… I never knew how to handle things back then. I was insecure and there were younger men who paid attention to me. Who made me feel young and carefree, too. Like them. And then Rick came along…”
“Okay, eww. Got it.”
“He offered me a way out. I didn’t realize I’d been looking for one. But I never… I never thought it would be forever. After only a couple weeks, I missed you and your brother terribly. I called your father. He told me to meet him at his office so we could talk things out. I never showed, Layla. I never went to meet him.”
The weight of that statement and the forlorn way she delivered it almost made me feel badly for her. Almost.
“Why not?” I asked, more gently than I intended.
“Because Rick made me choose. Made me choose him or your father. I knew I wasn’t happy before, why would I expect to be happy a second time? So, I chose Rick. Mistakenly believed my happiness depended on something outside of myself. But he didn’t make me happy either. We broke it off after only a few months. I went to the house that day. It was fall. I parked my car at the end of the street and watched you two playing in the leaves with your dad. And you looked… joyous. It’s the only way I can describe it. You had on that rainbow hat? You remember, the one with the tassels that hung down to here? And you were smiling, and Bruce was laughing and… I knew you were better off without me.”
“How noble of you,” I said, trying to regain the proper snottiness to my voice. It wouldn’t come.
“I wasn’t well in those days, Layla.”
I tossed her a bone on that one. “I know. It took me a while to figure that out.”
“But I straightened out. Truly. I had lots of therapy.” At that admission, she actually let out with a tiny giggle. The sound was so completely unexpected, so achingly nostalgic, that I hadn’t realized I’d let my guard down.
I took in in her trim physique, obvious even in the scrubs, and found myself hoping I had inherited those genes. I peered at her lips—lips that were tipped ever so slightly into a smile as she giggled. I knew that if she’d smile just a bit wider, I would see the crooked tooth, the one my skull had shifted one afternoon when she was tickling me. She had refused to get it fixed, insisting that it would forever remind her of me. Before I could wonder if that too had been erased, she grinned uncomfortably at me, and I could just make out the slight turn of that incisor. My eyes snapped up to her face, and I took a step back, bumping into the desk.
I was having a conversation with my mother. Almost more dumbfounding than that, I found that I was actually hearing her. Hearing what she had to say. And even if I didn’t agree with her choices, agree with the way she had left us so easily… I allowed myself to let her be human.
She must have sensed this shift in me, because her voice had changed from tense and beseeching to simply… pained. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, trying to hold back the looming tears.
She gave another burst of air toward her forehead and continued. “I was so impressed with everyone at the hospital that I went back to school and got my nursing degree. It was a huge turning point in my life. I continued with my therapy, realized the gravity of my selfish mistakes.” She put a hand to her heart and said, “I was filled with such regret, Layla. If you listen to only one thing I’ve said today, please hear that. Please know that it’s the truth.”