“He’s not your ex-husband yet,” she said with an obvious amount of patience in her tone. “Maybe they were trying to get you back together? Maybe they don’t hate him as much as you thought they did.”
“They were part of the problem! They made things so difficult for us! We constantly fought about them. I had to drag Nick over there. He would put up such attitude every Sunday that I always felt like the bad guy. And then my mom! God, my mom can be such a brat. She would make me feel like the worst kind of human for marrying him. Now… now they want to play nice? It’s not fair!”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. I got the feeling she didn’t know what to say.
“I’m just frustrated,” I sighed. “It’s not like I can say all of this to my mom. She’ll take it like I’m blaming her for my divorce and I’m not. There were so many more issues besides that one. But they were a problem. A weekly problem. Sometimes more.”
“If Nick hated it so much, and it sounds like you hated it too, then why did you guys keep going over there every single Sunday? That seems excessive.”
I felt like a boulder dropped in my stomach and upset everything inside me, as if I was a puddle and the boulder threw up everything that made me in a fast, draining wave until I was nothing but emptiness and gritty earth. “Because that’s what my parents expected us to do.” But my explanation sounded so weak now.
“But, Kate, why didn’t you guys just go once a month? Or every other week?”
I sat in stunned silence. Why didn’t we? Why hadn’t we set up better boundaries for our extended family? I didn’t want to deal with my mom anymore than Nick did. So why had I tortured us week after week? Why had I let Nick be talked to like that every single Sunday? Why had I purposefully driven a wedge between us over my family?
Because that’s what people do, my mind answered immediately. You spend time with your family because they’re your family.
But my reply didn’t hold the weight it once used to.
I didn’t believe it quite so strongly.
It wasn’t like Nick hadn’t suggested this very thing on more than one occasion, but I had blamed him for being unwilling to try. I had blamed him like it was his fault. I had accused him of causing drama with my parents and being selfish with his time. It was our obligation, I told him. This is what family does.
But wasn’t he my family? Shouldn’t his needs and desires and wants come before my parents? He had never suggested cutting them out of our lives completely. He just wanted to spend less time with them.
It wasn’t until Kara had pointed out the obvious that I finally saw things as they should have been.
Hell, at this moment in time, I didn’t have plans to return for lunch ever again. And although I knew that would change eventually, I didn’t have to force myself to go back every single Sunday. I could create my own boundaries. I could give myself a few Sundays off a month and actually feel rested when it was time to go to school on Monday.
Crazy.
Kara watched me for a long time before finally saying, “I’m surprised Nick showed up if he hates your parents so much.”
“I am too,” I breathed. “He needed to pick up some amps that my dad had been storing for him and then my mom invited him to lunch. Maybe he felt bad or guilty or something.”
“Maybe.” Her gentle gaze met mine over her desk. “Maybe he wanted to use your parents as an excuse to see you again.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “I thought you didn’t like him either?”
She rolled her eyes and let out a short sigh. “I don’t like that he’s still trying to be a rock star. I want him to grow up and get a real job. Of course, I like Nick as a person. He’s impossible not to like. I just hated that you were always so miserable, that you guys were always fighting. It had nothing to do with him. And I never suggested divorce. Honestly, I didn’t know you guys had even considered it.”
“He’s really good, you know. I mean at the band stuff.”
“Kate, I never said he wasn’t. I just… you know what I mean.”