Brian wanted to be anywhere but at his mother’s. No, that was false. He didn’t want to be anywhere. He wanted to be in one very specific place: Spring cabin with Katelyn—or, at the very furthest away, sitting in the main hall at River’s Sigh B & B, so he was close by in case she needed him. He was still having a hard time processing Friday’s events and even though it was Sunday now, it still felt more like a nightmare than reality. How could the cops still not have caught the guy? He couldn’t imagine how Katelyn was coping, but somehow she was. She even seemed like her normal self, just a bit quieter than usual and adamant about not leaving the kids’ sides. Which he totally understood. But Caren had called early in the morning, insisting she needed to see him about something “urgent.” Katelyn had been equally insistent that she would be fine for a few hours. So here he was, drinking tea with his mom—who wasted no time in getting down to what she considered the big emergency.
“I’ve heard a rumor that I’m hoping you’ll ease my mind about,” Caren said. “Tell me you’re not seeing the Kellerman woman.”
The Kellerman woman. It took Brian a second to figure out whom his mother was speaking about in such a disdainful tone. Katelyn. She meant Katelyn. But what was it to Caren if he was “seeing” Katelyn. Why on earth would she have a problem with Katelyn?
“Callum’s boarder, the one who makes her own clothes, has two kids?” Caren prodded.
Confused anger and defensiveness churned through Brian. How could Caren of all people fault a person for being creative? Or was it Katelyn’s motherhood status Caren found offensive?
“Who gave you that idea?”
Caren’s normally passive expression tightened and she ignored his question. “She’s not for you. She has a troubled marriage.”
Brian’s jaw dropped and after he gaped for a moment or two, he hooted with laughter. “Oh dear,” he said in a sarcastic, high-pitched voice, “not a ‘troubled’ marriage.”
“This isn’t a joking matter. It’s serious. She’s an abused wife.”
Apparently the Greenridge grapevine had been at work with lightning speed. He wondered what exactly his mother had heard about Steve’s visit to Got the Notion and about the rest of Katelyn’s life in general—and from whom? Not that it mattered. When it came to gossip, no one was a reputable source. The nature of talking behind someone’s back precluded it.
Brian cracked his knuckles and pushed his tea away, feeling like he’d fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone. “Okay, well, not that it’s any of your business, but Katelyn’s no longer his wife. She’s been legally separated for two years and has started divorce proceedings. And as for her being abused, I’m not sure why you sound like that’s her fault or is something to condemn her for.”
Caren frowned, clearly unmoved.
“And seriously,” Brian continued, “isn’t that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“C’mon, Mom. Be real for once—you know, like you tried to be at that disastrous anniversary dinner when Cade and Noelle were visiting last summer. Channel that woman.”
“Your father has never hit me,” Caren hissed. “He would never hit me!”
“And that’s your measure of a healthy, ‘non-abusive’ relationship? That one person doesn’t hit another person?”
Caren’s already pale face had gone the color of skim milk and the freckles she used to always cover up and now never did stood out in sharp rust-colored blotches. Brian had the surreal thought that in some ways he was older than her now.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“No,” Brian said. “You want me to be single and biddable. Your little bachelor mama’s boy forever.”
“That isn’t fair.” Caren’s cornflower blue eyes filled. It was so rare, so unheard of, for his mother to cry, that Brian’s own throat burned.
“I love you, Mom, and I’m sorry if my words hurt, but I’ll date whoever I want to, and I won’t have you of all people giving me relationship advice.”
“So you are seeing her.”
Brian shook his head. As ever, his mother seemed incapable of getting the point, incapable of getting him.
Caren rose to her feet slowly and, for the first time in Brian’s whole life, she seemed every one of her years. “Maybe it’s someone like me, your mother, the woman who loves you more than any other person in the world does, the person who, yes, has made mistakes and, yes, lives with regrets, who is exactly the person to give you relationship advice.”
“But—” Brian started.
Caren made a slicing motion with her hand, silencing him. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m just, whether you believe it or not, concerned about you.”
She took a deep breath, like she was going to say something more, but didn’t. She squeezed lemon into each of their mugs, freshened their tea, and sank back into her chair.
A deep, familiar sadness—almost rage—coiled and uncoiled in Brian’s guts. You are not your parents, he said sternly in his head. A person can break free of patterns. Look at Katelyn.
“Mom,” he said softly. “Katelyn is a good person, a strong person. You’ll like her.”
“You mean you think she’s better than me, stronger, less complacent.”
“Aw, come on. It’s not a question of anyone being better or stronger—” He broke off suddenly, recalling a conversation he’d had with Katelyn.
“What do you get out of your relationship with Dad anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s the payoff? You’re not weak. You’re not . . . complacent, as you said. You’re passionate, disciplined, artistic—and you’d be able to support yourself quite nicely, or very nicely, depending on your settlement.”
“I still don’t—”
“It’s not complicated. Everyone stays in a relationship for a reason. The reason may not make sense to anyone else, or it may be built on flawed logic, but it exists. Some women stay with abusers because they’re afraid of the consequences of leaving. Some have financial realities to think of. They can’t afford to break free, or, at least, they can’t afford to raise their children without their husband’s help. Some people get an ego rush from feeling superior to their abuser, others have religious convictions, or—”
Caren held up her hand again. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
Brian bit his tongue as long as he could, then blurted, “So, why?”
“Your dad isn’t the complete villain you all seem to think he is,” Caren said slowly. “And I’m not the easiest person to be married to either. I love you boys, I really do—but I’ve always thought I’d have made a good single person, like you.”
Anger and age old frustration thumped at Brian’s temples. “I know you mean well,” he said, “but you have to stop comparing me to you. I’m not you. I’m me. My whole life everyone has acted like I’d never be able to sustain a relationship, like I’m too shallow, too self-absorbed, too . . . I don’t know. It never occurs to any of you that I might want a real relationship, a home, a family.”
Caren’s eyes widened. “That’s what you think of me? And that’s what you think people are saying, what I’m saying, when you’re compared to me?”
Brian shrugged.
“Oh . . . ” Caren’s voice trailed off and her eyes fluttered shut. When she opened them, she had found her composure again. “So then you understand, at least partly, how your father has always felt—like he came second in my life, or, once you boys came along, further down the line than that even. And then, of course, he acted in ways that only created what he feared all along—that I would cease to love him or that I had never loved him.”
Caren had always overshared with Brian. He still resented it like crazy, but now, as an adult, he at least understood it—the loneliness she must feel, the isolation, that would make her turn to her child and talk to him like a peer.
“So what? You’re staying with him now, after making it public that you don’t care for him, to what? Punish him?”
Caren laughed lightly, sorrowfully. “Relationships are complicated. No one understands what makes someone else’s marriage work—not even the people who are married.”
Brian shook his head. “I reject that.” The vehemence and volume of his words shocked them both. Caren actually jumped a little. “Kindness, appreciation, respect . . . laughing together . . . those things go a long way in any relationship.”
“Wow, you really do like this woman.”
“I do, not that it matters. She, like you, thinks it’s not worth pursuing, that she’s too much trouble.”
Caren sipped her tea and looked distant again. “That was the most surprising facet of all this to me. When I broke free of your Dad, when he moved out, I realized that all these years I’d been using my distance and preoccupation with my work as a tether, a way of controlling him. Once I decided to leave him, all I could see were the things I’d miss about him.”
“Like what?”
“He’s brilliantly smart, your dad. And a hard worker.”
“And a womanizer, a bully, and a braggart.”
“If you’d known your grandfather, your dad’s dad, you’d be more understanding.”
Brian scrubbed his face with his hands. “This whole conversation is madness, Mom. Do what you want, but please stop involving me in it. I just . . . I can’t. I love you. I love Dad too, actually—but you guys spent a lifetime being unhappy with each other, and I’m not going to pretend I’m jumping with joy that you’re back together again.”
“You know what you should do?”
Brian set his mug down too heavily. It sloshed and almost spilled. She really was going to ignore everything he’d said, like he hadn’t spoken at all.
“Stop thinking about us, me, your dad, your brothers. Stop thinking about all the court cases you’ve seen and clients you’ve worked with.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not following—”
“I’m not, we’re not, the reason you’ve never pursued a serious relationship. It was fear—justifiable, smart, completely reasonable fear. You’re analytical, you study things, you arrive at conclusions.”
“Um . . . ”
“So use that knowledge and your years of observations to do what your brothers have done: build the marriage you want, centered around love.”
“Wait a minute. First you’re all up in arms because I might be seeing Katelyn. Now you’re practically commanding me to marry her?”
“Not at all.” Caren stood up once more, showing that the conversation and their visit was almost done. “I’m saying you’re a grown man, with a good career and a solid head on your shoulders. It’s time for you to forgive me and your dad for any ways we’ve failed you, any bad examples we’ve set. And it’s past time to stop using us as your excuse for not trying, for not taking risks, for not seeking the relationship you obviously crave. We’re just people trying to live the best we can, and sometimes, yes, I’m sorry, we fail.”
Brian had followed Caren’s lead, standing when she did, but now he plunked back into the chair and fiddled with a teaspoon. Was that what he’d been doing all these years? Not wisely steering clear of long-term relationships because monogamy and “true love” really were bunk, but because he immaturely thought so, based solely on his childhood home life?
How many times had he told young offenders he represented, when faced with their common as potatoes denials of responsibility for their actions, saying it was because of this or that in their past, that it didn’t fly with him? That if you didn’t recognize something had affected you, yes, you were off the hook, but the moment that you did realize you might do X because you’d experienced Y or lived through Z—then you were responsible for acting on that new information and choosing the better path, the higher road.
He sighed, set his teaspoon down, and looked up. Caren had already disappeared into her studio.
On his trek through the quiet memory laden house toward the door, a trio of odd thoughts occurred to Brian. Maybe curing his disillusionment and self-imposed bachelorhood really was up to him, like his mom pointed out. Maybe happiness was just a matter of choosing to live and love differently than his parents. And maybe he’d already started to.
On the heels of everything with Steve, it suddenly seemed urgent that he and Katelyn not waste another day letting that bastard hold them back or keep them from each other. But was that selfish of him?