The Love Series Complete Box Set

by Melissa Collins

  “We can go get one this weekend if you want though, sweetie. It’ll be fun. We’ll watch It’s a Wonderful Life and decorate just like we do every year.” Joe’s offer brings a smile to Katie’s face and I can tell that it has always been his mission in life to make his daughter happy.

  “Deal. Okay you two. I’m going to go grab a few things from the truck and head up to my room. I’ll let you guys chat for a bit.” She walks past her father and leans down to kiss him on the cheek. When she’s behind him, she looks at me and holds her hand up by her face and mouths the words, “talk to him” while opening and closing her hand mimicking the motion of a duck beak. I can’t help but laugh at her antics. She’s pretty damn funny.

  When she’s out of the room, I look at Joe. I’m pretty sure he can see the nervousness in my eyes. It’s not that he’s making me nervous. I actually feel comfortable with him. The thought of facing my past is what’s wrecking me. I run my sweaty palms over my thighs as if doing so will help me come up with some way to break this long, awkward silence.

  Completely unable to come up with anything intelligible, I silently hope that he’ll say something before I do.

  Wordlessly, he stands from his chair and walks into the kitchen. Returning to the living room, he hands me a Budweiser and he twists the cap off of his own. After taking a long pull from the bottle, I say, “Thanks, I needed that.” His lips pull up into a lopsided smile and he nods in agreement.

  “So, I imagine that Katie chewed your ear off on the ride over.” He takes another drink of his beer smiling at the thought of his daughter and her animated ways.

  “Yeah, she did. It was good, though, I think.” A small chuckle helps to ease the tension building between us. “She filled me in on a lot. I . . . I didn’t realize that things were so bad. I wish I would have known. I could have helped.” Two weeks ago, I never would have imagined those words coming out of my mouth. I think back over all of the times that I ignored Katie’s calls. If I would have picked up the first one, would I have been able to help? It’s a complete reversal of how I originally felt over all of this, but I’m being completely sincere in expressing my desire to help. I want to make amends. I want to be a part of this family. I want to be a better person and this is my chance to do all of those things.

  “Things definitely have not been easy, but we’re getting by. I’ve been able to pick up some overtime and my boss was nice enough to give me today as a comp day because he knew Katie was coming home.” I can tell that the conversation is making him uneasy. We’re essentially picking apart the reasons why he is struggling to support his family. That’s enough to piss off any man.

  “Joe, I don’t want to step on any toes here, but I can help. I want to help. You don’t have to answer and we don’t have to talk about it again if you say so, but I still have most of the money from Shane’s lawsuit. I know that Mom must have told you about it. I want you to have some of it, to pay for mom’s bills, to get you on your feet again, to give you some room to breathe.”

  That money has always been tainted for me anyway. It’ll be better if someone else uses it instead of me.

  He takes another sip of his beer, this one longer, as if he’s trying to swallow back his pride along with the alcohol.

  “Thanks, Reid. I’ll think about it.” I hear his voice wobble with unsteady emotion. I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been on him. The man has already lost his first wife in a way that no one should ever have to deal with. Now, he’s watching the woman he loves deteriorate and waste away right before his eyes.

  The guilt of everything weighs heavily on me and my words are laced with pure emotion. “Joe, I’m serious. I want to help, and I know it might be difficult for you to accept it, but please let me. Mom wants to patch up our relationship and . . . well I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but so do I. This is going to help me put things behind me. You can think about it if you want, but please know that I am going to be here for her and for you and Katie. If paying off her bills will make things lighter around here, then please let me do it.” I hope he can tell that I’m being sincere, that I’m not trying to wave my money in his face.

  I can see him struggling with his decision. I can only imagine being in his position, but I want this. Actually, I need to do this. I’ve made the decision to be the bigger person here, to be the person my parents never were.

  When he says, “Okay, Reid. I’ll take you up on your offer,” I want to pump my fist into the air as if I just hit a homerun. Instead, I just extend my beer in his direction. We clink our bottles together and silently toast our secret deal.

  Before either of us can say another word, Katie races down the stairs to let us know that mom is up. I can hear mom’s footsteps in what I assume is the hallway above me and my nerves return. Both Joe and I stand as tension immediately invades the room.

  Joe looks nervous as well. He hasn’t told Mom that I’m here and I can see the panic flit across his face. Katie stands next to him and holds his hand. “Dad, why don’t you go up there and talk to her for a minute. Let her know that Reid is here. It won’t do her any good to be shocked like that. She’s having a good day, so let’s not ruin that for her.” Katie’s voice is calm and even, yet warm and gentle. She’s obviously good under pressure.

  Joe leaves us to go talk to Mom, and Katie comes to stand by my side. “It’ll be okay, Reid.” Her soothing words do nothing to slow my racing heart. I wish Maddy was here. She’d be able to defuse my tension. In this moment, I realize just how much of my strength comes from Maddy, from us being a united front against the world.

  Katie and I stand, waiting for our parents to descend the stairs for what seems like forever. We hear the loud crash of breaking glass and we both recoil at the noise. I break away from Katie and race up the stairs two at a time. Katie follows behind me, her face etched in concern.

  The bathroom door is cracked open and I see Mom crouched down on the floor, her chest heaving in sobs, as she tries to pick up the shards of glass. Joe races into the bathroom from the adjoining bedroom, but Mom is so distracted by her own tears that she doesn’t immediately notice either Joe or me. Joe and I make eye contact over the slumped heap that is my mom on the floor. He nods as he takes a step back, indicating that I should be the one to talk to her.

  The bedroom door closes softly; the faint click of the latch is barely audible over the sounds of Mom’s cries. She’s kneeling, but when she catches sight of me squatting down in front of her, her legs give out under her and she falls down onto her behind. Her fingers and knees are covered in blood from the broken glass of water that she was obviously trying to drink. The sight of her blood mingling with the water makes me falter. I’m inundated with images of Shane’s death, but for the first time ever, I am able to push them back. I need to push them back if I’m ever going to have any hope of moving forward.

  Grabbing the towel from its holder, I wrap it around her fingers as gently as I can. Holding both of her frail hands in one of mine, I tip her chin up with the other hand so that I can look at her. She’s thin, too thin and her cheeks are hollow, her eyes flat. My heart constricts because she looks nothing like the mom I remember. Her thin hair is pulled back under a kerchief and her body is frail and weak. She really is dying.

  “Hi, Mom.” My voice is shaky and unsteady.

  She takes a deep, shuddery breath and looks directly into my eyes. Hers are shining with tears, but there’s amazement there too. I don’t think she ever thought she would see me again. I honestly never thought I’d see her again either.

  “Hi, baby.” Her lips curl up into a wondrous smile.

  She always called me baby because, well, because I was the baby. Actually, she used to call me baby boy, but over the years of my early childhood, she shortened it to just plain old baby. I didn’t mind it up until I was in middle school. Once she called me baby in front of my friends and they mocked me for weeks. She promised at that point she would never call me baby again. She kept her word wh
en we were in public, but at home, I was always baby. I hated that name; it made my blood boil when my friends used it against me and, for a long time, I harbored a secret hatred for my mom because she gave me the nickname.

  But here, crouched on the floor, tending to her bloody fingers, desperately attempting to put the past behind me, I soften to the nickname. My heart swells with love and sadness at the familiarity that I was certain would be gone.

  I stand and hold out my hands for her to grasp. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” She takes hold, and I’m surprised at how little effort it takes to heft her nearly weightless body up. I wrap my arm around her shoulder and walk her toward the ledge of the tub. I press the towel to her wounds and then pull it back to inspect them. “It looks like most of the bleeding has stopped. Hold this.” I give her back the towel and press it to her cuts. I open the medicine cabinet and find some first aid supplies to tend to her wounds.

  After she’s all bandaged up and the blood is all cleaned from the floor, I sit down next to her and she just looks at me in a state of shock. We sit stiffly next to each other and even though the tub ledge is by far the most uncomfortable thing we could be sitting on, neither of us moves an inch. I can tell that we’re both afraid to say anything. Neither of us knows how to break the silence. We know that once someone starts speaking, our scars will be ripped open and bared before us. So, rather than facing the sins of our past, we sit in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet before the storm.

  When my ass starts to go numb, I decide to speak first. “Are you okay? It doesn’t look like you need stitches or anything.” I take her hands in mine to inspect them again. I know nothing has changed, but I need to keep myself occupied.

  She looks down at her fingers as if she’s actually inspecting them, but I can tell she’s lost in a different thought.

  “I’ll be just fine. I’ve dealt with worse.” I know that she’s not trying to gain pity or sympathy for what she’s been through. She’s just trying to dismiss my concerns; she feels unworthy of them. I’ve seen that same look of unworthiness on my own face and now it’s reflected back to me in hers.

  She shifts uncomfortably next to me and asks, “Can we go downstairs. My bony ass can’t take this tub any longer?” And just like that, the woman I always knew my mom to be, funny, quick-witted, and down-to-Earth, is back. Until this moment, I even want to entertain the idea that maybe I’ve missed her.

  When we exit the bathroom, Joe is waiting in the hallway. He stands beside Mom and wraps his arm around her waist to support her. Careful not to touch her bandaged hands too roughly, he inspects her fingers and asks, “What happened, Becca?” I’ve never heard anyone call her anything but Rebecca and hearing his loving endearment makes my mouth long to utter the sweetest word it knows—Maddy.

  Mom places her other hand on top of his, and looks up into his warm brown eyes. “I’m fine, Joe. When you went into the bedroom, I was getting a glass of water, trying to calm myself before I went down to see Reid and it slipped out my hands. I was shaking so much that I did more damage than good when I tried to clean it up.”

  He just nods his head and kisses her tenderly on the cheek. It’s funny how I never remember my own father treating her so sweetly.

  As Joe helps her walk down the stairs, I fall in step behind them. I see how weak she is as she braces herself for the pain that accompanies each step.

  When we return to the living room, Mom gets herself comfortable on the love seat and Joe offers to get us something to drink from the kitchen. Mom pats the spot on the couch next to her and I move towards her.

  Joe returns with two glasses of water and places them on the small coffee table in front of us. Katie follows him out from the kitchen. “Dad and I are going to run a few errands, maybe finally get a tree up in this place. We’ll be back in a bit. You two should catch up.” She walks over to Mom and kisses her on the top of her head and Mom reaches out for her hand.

  “Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you for bringing him back to me. You guys have fun.” Mom smiles as Katie turns away from us. Joe winks and blows Mom a kiss from the other side of the room as they walk towards the door.

  Mom slides one leg under the other and shifts, almost painfully, to face me. There are a million things I want to say to her, but I can see the gears turning in her head. I can see her trying to figure out what to say to me, so I give her the moment.

  “Reid, baby, I . . . I owe you so many apologies.” She glances over at the mantle and a tear slides down her cheek. “I wish I could go back in time and change so much. No matter what I say right now, nothing is going to change the fact that I wasn’t there for you or your brother when you needed me most. I can never make up for the fact that I was a shitty mother when you boys needed me the most.”

  I want to interrupt her and tell her that she wasn’t a bad mom, but the truth is, in those months following Shane’s suicide, and the years when she didn’t speak to me once, she was. She was a horrible mother, but now is not the time to cast blame. I bite my tongue and swallow my hateful words.

  She steadies herself and clears her throat. “Letting Shane think I didn’t love him is the single biggest regret of my life. I love you boys with every fiber of my being. After Shane died, I never, ever should have let you walk away. I was weak and a coward and, at that time,” she takes a deep shuddering breath to try and steady her emotions, “it was easier for me to just hurt in private than to deal with it all.” She reaches to grab a tissue out of the box that’s sitting on the coffee table. I see her visibly brace herself for whatever she’s about to say. Squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine, she faces me once again and looks me straight in the eye.

  “Please believe me when I say that I take full responsibility for what I did . . . for what I didn’t do, but there are a lot of factors that contributed to that. Your father was not a kind man.” That revelation doesn’t shock me at all. Dad was never really there while we were growing up and even when he was there, it was to tell us that we were doing something wrong—not throwing the ball the right way, not running fast enough, not being manly enough. I’ve always thought that I acted like an ass all these years because of the effect that his words and actions had in my life.

  She’s trying to gather her strength and I can tell that she’s been struggling with whatever she has to tell me for a while now. “It started long before you boys were born. He started belittling me and verbally abusing me almost immediately after we started dating. I have no clue why I stayed. I never developed enough of a backbone to stand up to him, so it didn’t take him long to break me down completely. By the time we got married, he had me convinced that I was useless and stupid. For so many years, I wondered why he was even with me. If he hated me so much, why did he keep me around? I tried to make him happy. I really did. I tried to be everything he wanted me to be and, in the process, I lost who I was. The only time I ever felt like I was really me, was when I was with you and Shane.”

  A small smile curves her thin lips as she loses herself in happy memories. “You boys brought out the best in me. God, I loved you both so much. I still love you both more than the sky. Even though I know I have no right to deserve your love, I never stopped loving you for one single minute.”

  I sit, shocked and speechless. I always knew my dad was an asshole. He put work before his family, never took an interest in anything that Shane or I did, but I never remember him mistreating Mom. “But I don’t get it, Mom. I mean, I never saw him treat you like that ever. How could it have gone on for seventeen years and I never noticed?”

  “You were a little boy. The world was dirt and worms and baseball for you and Shane. By the time you boys were old enough to even be able to realize anything, I was so broken that I just followed along with whatever your father said and wanted. And, as an added bonus,” she adds sarcastically, “he was rarely home by the time you boys were a little older. He was always away on business and I loved those days. It was just me and my boys
, and that’s when I really felt like myself. That’s the mom I hope you remember.” Her voice is getting weaker and she seems to be getting more and more tired. I’m sure this is exhausting her.

  I know she’s right. That is the mom I remember, but now, with this new information about Dad, I can also see the mom she was trying to keep hidden. The broken and wilted woman.

  It’s the question I’ve been dreading, but I have to ask it. “If you claim to love us as much as you do, then why did you let Dad kick Shane out? Why didn’t you save him? Why did you let me fade away into the background after he died? Why did you let me go?” My voice has risen in volume and as much as I want to, I just can’t reel in my anger.

  She reaches out to hold my hand as she takes a deep breath to steady herself. “Baby, I do love you. No matter what happened, or what happens from here on out, I will love you forever.” When I look into her eyes, I can see that she’s telling the truth. The rest of her body is riddled with death, but her eyes are filled with the shining brightness of love that only a mother can have for her children.

  “After we found out Shane was gay, which, by the way, was not a shock to me at all.” Smiling fondly, she adds, “You boys always thought you were so good at keeping secrets, but there are some things that moms can just tell. Well, that night, after you had fallen asleep, I went up to your room to talk to Shane. I told him that I would leave with him. I told him everything about your father and about how I wanted to get away too. I promised him that we would all start over—just the three of us.” Tears start to trickle down her cheeks as she remembers losing everything.

  My throat constricts and my hands start trembling. I’ve been waiting for five years for her to say these things to me, to realize that she was willing to fight for us.

  “I told Shane that I would meet him at home after school, before your father got home from work. I didn’t want to go to work myself, but I had to let them know I was leaving. I didn’t want anyone to be in a panic about me going missing. Shane agreed and he almost seemed hopeful about the whole thing. I know I did. I mean, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was going to be happy, to be free. And then . . .” Her voices fades into chest wracking sobs as she recalls what actually happened the next day.