| |
I’m back in my mom’s home. The snow’s let up a little, but I’m careful to slip my shoes off before stepping into the entryway where I might leave some sort of incriminating mud print.
I’m going to have to confront Mom eventually. Tell her that I don’t even own a house anymore like she thinks. Tell her about the bank foreclosure, everything. Then again, she probably knows. I swear that woman could have marketed herself as a Chinese Miss Marple for all the snooping and investigative work she does.
Not to mention her maternal instinct, which is so uncanny. That woman is either a bona fide mind reader or some sort of computer hacking genius who can spy on you through your smartphone and keep track of every conversation.
Maybe both.
She’s never been excited about me and Justin. Then again, when has that woman ever been excited for anything good that’s come into my life?
The night I told her Chris and I were engaged, she said very dubiously that she hoped we would turn out happier than his parents, because who’s ever met a more bitter couple?
I told her Chris didn’t want me to keep my own child, and she said, “Why would he when he knows you’re only itching to put her in daycare so you can go back to work like some worldly career woman?”
I told her I was separating from my husband, and she mumbled about how difficult it is to always have the right answers but be cursed with children who never listen.
“And what would your father think?” she had to add. But I already know the answer to that. Daddy would understand. I wouldn’t even have to tell him about Chris’s anger problems or the rape that led to the conception of this child. All he’d need to know is that I love my baby, and nothing could change that.
Nothing at all.
Except for Chris’s absolute genius at apologies.
Except for my own indecisive wavering.
Except for the fact that I still loved my husband, hard as that may be for some people to understand.
It’s a decision I’ll always regret. A decision I can never live down.
With only a month left in the pregnancy, I went back to my husband. Like a dog returns to its vomit.