“We’ve always done everything together.” Her mother gripped her hands. “Why did you feel you had to run away? Why didn’t you trust your family to be there for you? Why didn’t you trust me with what you were feeling?” Before Rosa could answer, her mother said, “I never pushed you into anything you didn’t want to do, did I? I always tried to be so careful not to be one of those awful momagers. I thought you were enjoying it all. Weren’t you?”
“You know I was. At first, anyway.” But Rosa pulled her hands away, needing some distance again so she could say, “It’s just that sometimes it was hard having our family life and business all bound up together. Especially when I felt like I couldn’t talk to you about anything outside of the show. I kept waiting for the cameras to go off, but they never did. Not after the show got so big, and we were always either filming or doing photo shoots and interviews. Not even the day we found out about the pictures of me. The cameras were rolling even then.” She took a deep breath before saying, “I miss you, Mom. Miss you just being my mom instead of my co-star or manager or whatever we became.”
“But I’ve been right here, honey. Right here as your mother, no matter what else is going on.”
“No, you haven’t.” Rosa hated to hurt her mom, but she wasn’t going to run from speaking the truth this time. Not when she’d finally learned that running didn’t make things any easier or better. For the first time in a long time, she was going to deal with her problems—and her fears—head on. “I needed my mom when the pictures hit. But I got a PR spin doctor instead. It’s like you completely forgot why we signed on for the show in the first place—to save our family, not to tear us apart.”
“How can you say that?” Rosa had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from taking it back as her mother’s face crumpled again. “I was devastated. Absolutely devastated by what that awful man did to you.”
“You told me it was nothing people hadn’t seen a million times before.”
“I swear, Rosa, I said that to try to help.”
“How on earth could you possibly think saying that would help me?” Rosa’s question was loud enough—and so forceful—that it reverberated off the vaulted ceilings in the huge living room.
Her mother didn’t start crying again, just blindly reached for a couch behind her and collapsed on it. That was when Rosa finally realized how different her mother looked. Where Isobel Bouchard usually never left the house without perfect makeup, hair, and clothes—even before they’d signed on for the TV show, she’d always believed in taking special care with her appearance—tonight she seemed to have forgotten that any of those things mattered at all.
Rosa also realized that at some point, Drake and his father must have left the room. Oscar had stayed behind, still right there at her side.
“Ever since the day you were born, my biggest fear has been that someone would hurt you.” Her mother’s words were so soft that Rosa had to move closer to catch them. “When your dad died, that fear magnified a thousand times because you only had me to keep you safe. So when we found out about the pictures...” Her mother wiped away the tears that had started falling again. “I knew I had failed. Failed in the worst way a mother can fail her daughter.” Her face was ravaged with guilt as she said, “The last thing I wanted was for you to feel like those photos diminished you in any way. All I could think was that you needed to know that you are so much stronger, so much better, than anyone who would ever try to harm you like that. And that you don’t have one single thing to be ashamed of, honey.”
Rosa dropped to her knees on the rug in front of her mom. “Why didn’t you just say that to me?”
“Because the whole thing is my fault. You have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of, but I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do. If we hadn’t signed on to do the show, if we hadn’t become famous, then you would be just another normal young woman.”
But Rosa had done enough research by now to know that the same kinds of violations happened to normal women every day.
Only, before she could say as much, Isobel said, “I can see now that I left you no choice but to disappear the way you did. Will you let me apologize?” Rosa was overwhelmed by the raw emotion in her mother’s voice. “Will you give me a chance to make things right between us again? Even if I don’t deserve it?”
“Mom.” She took her mother’s hands in hers and found them so cold that she instinctively began to rub them. “The last thing I want is to lose you. To lose our family.”