by Marci Bolden
“What’s on your mind?” Judith asked.
“Too much, I suppose.”
“Well, that’s vague. Perhaps if you could narrow it down, we could find a way for you to let it go enough that we can sleep.”
Carol thought that was her mom’s attempt at being light. The slight curve on the woman’s lips was almost a smile. The oddity of the moment almost silenced Carol, but the memories that had been nagging overruled and the words tumbled out of her. “Did Dad ever get over the fact that I married a Black man?”
Judith jolted slightly, clearly surprised by the directness of the question. “Oh, Carol.” She used that same dismissive tone whenever her daughter presented her with a truth she didn’t want to see.
“I’m serious, Mom. He never accepted my marriage. He never liked Tobias, and I have no idea why. Tobias was a wonderful man.”
“Tobias was a very good man. We never denied that. Your father was…”
“An asshole?” she said without thinking.
Judith scowled at her. “Don’t speak about him like that. No matter what you think about him, he was your father and did his best to give you a good life.”
Carol pressed her lips into a frown too. “I’ve had too much to drink. My filter isn’t in place.”
Judith looked at the wineglass in Carol’s hand but didn’t comment. She didn’t have to. They’d selected a nice Cabernet Sauvignon to go with their rib eyes. Ellen and Judith each had a glass with their meal. Carol had just poured the rest into her glass. Though her day had gotten tremendously better, Mary’s reminder that they were creeping up on a year without Tobias had echoed around her brain all day. Catching up to her when she least expected it.
Reminders that Katie had died tended to do the same. Carol would be perfectly fine, and then she’d feel as if a fist had squeezed her heart, Katie’s sweet voice would fill her ears, and grief would overcome her without warning. Tobias’s loss was like that sometimes. She’d hear his voice from the other room and her heart would drop to her stomach. Then she’d realize she couldn’t have heard him, and her tears would start.
“I was going to say that your father was old-fashioned,” Judith said, pulling Carol from her thoughts. “He had strong ideas of how things should be, and you always went against the grain. He thought you did it to spite him.”
“Dad thought I married Tobias to spite him?”
“No. But I think…”
“What?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
Judith focused on the TV and shook her head. “I think you were too strong, even as a child, to conform to your father’s demands. What he saw as defiance was you trying to be your own person. You were never a bad child, Carol. You were just…strong-willed.”
Carol snorted. “Never a bad child? Are you kidding me, Mom? I couldn’t have been a better child. Nothing was ever good enough for him.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. Everything I did set the bar higher, further out of my reach. He was never satisfied.”
Her father’s scowl had been a permanent fixture in their home. A constant reminder to do the right thing or face his wrath. When he’d died, part of Carol was relieved. Not that he was gone but that the weight of his constant disappointment in her could start to fade. However, she’d soon learned that Dennis Stewart’s discontent was engrained in her DNA. She hadn’t escaped it even after he’d left this world. The fear of displeasing him hung over her, even now.
“He was proud of your accomplishments,” Judith said. “Each one proved to him that you could do more, be better. If you’d tried harder.”
“That’s the point,” she stated, focusing on the woman next to her. “I don’t think either of you realized how hard you pushed me to reach unrealistic standards. When I eventually broke free, you acted like I lit your world on fire because I refused to continue playing your game. John—”
“I’ve heard enough about John, young lady.” Judith exhaled that preemptive-argument sigh, the one filled with so much frustration she barely seemed able to contain it. “You had so many talents. You succeeded at everything you tried. Everything came easy to you. Your father saw that too, and he wanted better for you. He wanted you to want better for yourself.”
Carol shook her head. She didn’t need to be better. She had been happy. She’d found a good life. In fact, she’d found more happiness than a lot of people, despite the traumas she’d been through. Her parents had still tried to make her feel bad about herself and the choices she’d made.
“I envied your strength, you know,” Judith said after a few moments. “The reason you two could never get along was because you’re so stubborn, just like him. I’ve never seen two people more determined to fight each other than you and your father.”
Carol lifted her glass in a halfhearted toast. “Don’t cut yourself short, Mom. You’d disagree with me if I said the sky was blue.”
Judith reached across the length of the sofa and took the glass from Carol’s hand. “I think you’ve had enough of that. Your tongue is getting away from you.” As she put the glass on the end table next to her, she said, “We’ve had a good day. Let’s not ruin it.”
That was a statement Carol couldn’t disagree with. They’d spent the day together without too much bickering. They’d eaten dinner and even had a few laughs. This day had been a rarity, and she didn’t want it to end in a fight. “We did have a good day. I hope we have more days like today.”
“Me too,” Judith said.
Without a wineglass to distract her, Carol looked down at her wedding bands. “Dad didn’t want to be at my wedding,” she blurted out without thinking. “I remember that. I remember how much he didn’t want to be there.”
“He was never comfortable in those types of settings. All the people and the fuss. That wasn’t about you.”
“My marriage wasn’t acknowledged in his obituary,” Carol pressed. “Tobias wasn’t even mentioned. Why did you leave him out?”
Judith tilted her head. “You think your husband was deliberately omitted from your father’s obituary?”
“Wasn’t he?”
Another heavy exhalation drifted from the other end of the couch. “I asked a friend from church to take care of the obituary while Ellen helped me plan the funeral. She didn’t know anything about you besides your name. By the time I got back to her with more information, she’d already sent the obituary off to the paper. She did me a favor because I was beside myself with grief. No one deliberately left Tobias out, Carol. You were so far removed from our lives for so long, our friends didn’t even know you. Even before you moved away, we rarely saw you.”
“Dad didn’t want to see me, Mom. He made that clear.”
Judith stared at her for several seconds. “I know we were hard on you growing up. We could have been kinder, but you were loved. Even when we didn’t approve of what you were doing. You and Katie had dinner with us at least once a week until you started working nights. We would have had you over more, but your weekends were always about John.”
“Well, he was my husband.”
Judith clutched her hands in her lap. “You can try to deny it all you want, but he changed you, and not for the better. You had a bright future ahead of you, and he dimmed it.”
“Oh, Mom. The only thing John did was make me realize there was more to life than trying to be something I wasn’t. It’s taken me fifty freaking years to start to peel away the layers of my life and realize that…”
“What?”
Carol shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Spit it out,” Judith stated. “It’s taken you fifty years to realize what?”
Did she dare say it? Put voice to the sad understanding she’d recently started to make? “That you didn’t know how to be…a mom.”
Judith stiffened and pressed her lips together.
“I’m not saying that to be mean. I know you tried, but you took your cues from Dad, and he was…cold. He was r
igid and kept himself at arm’s length my entire life. I never really knew him. You know that? He’s gone, and I never knew him.”
Turning enough to look right at her daughter, Judith said, “Your father wasn’t cold. He kept his emotions in check because that’s what he was taught. Men were supposed to provide for their families and be pillars of strength.” She hit her fist on her knee for emphasis. “He grew up in a time when men weren’t supposed to show feelings, Carol. Do you know I was with that man through so much, so many ups and downs, and the one time I saw him cry was the night Katie died? His heart was so broken, he wept. He wept. He loved that little girl so much.”
“We all loved her,” Carol said softly.
“He was devastated when you took her urn and disappeared. I don’t think he ever recovered from that. You were gone for days before even calling us. We didn’t know what had happened to you. We were worried sick. You were in no state of mind to be on your own, and you vanished without a trace. Mark and Frannie were beside themselves with worry. They deserved better than that, Carol. We all did.”
Carol lowered her face. She hadn’t considered anyone else when she left. She’d been in so much pain, so scared of what the future held without her daughter, that she’d had to get away. From everything. Especially John. But also because she didn’t have the strength for what she knew was coming—her parents would have put the blame on her. They may not have vocalized it, but they would have made certain she knew they held her responsible for Katie’s death. She couldn’t handle that.
When John resurfaced months ago, he made her face how selfish she’d been to slip away in the night with Katie’s remains. Even after he’d pointed out how wrong she’d been, she’d never felt ashamed of her decision. She’d always felt justified in leaving John like she had. But, even then, she hadn’t considered the ripple effect to the rest of their family.
“All we knew,” Judith continued, “was that you’d taken Katie’s urn and left. You didn’t even give us a chance to see her. You didn’t give us a place to visit her. How do you think that made us feel? Katie was our grandchild. No matter what you and John had been through or what you were going through, she was our grandchild. And we didn’t get to mourn her. You took that away from us.”
Tears welled in Carol’s eyes and fell before she could blink them away. “You’re right. I didn’t think about what that would do to anyone else. I needed to get away, so I left. I’m sorry, Mom. I was in a really bad place.”
“I know that. And your father knew that, but he…”
“He what?”
“To be honest, he never found a way to come to terms with what you’d done,” Judith said softly. “I don’t think he handled it well.”
After wiping her cheeks, Carol dragged her hand over her pajama bottoms. “So it wasn’t Tobias he couldn’t stand the sight of, it was me?”
“That’s a harsh way to put it,” Judith said.
“But accurate?” When Judith didn’t agree or disagree, a lump formed in Carol’s throat. “I snapped when Katie’s urn arrived. John opened the box and unwrapped this little silver container. All I could think was that my daughter was in there. My daughter that he took away from me, and I broke. If I had stayed in the house with him one more minute, I would have… My God, Mom, I think I would have literally killed John. I think I would have slit his throat and watched him bleed to death and not done a thing to help him.”
“Well, if anyone ever deserved to be mercilessly murdered, it was that bastard.”
Looking at her mom, Carol didn’t voice her shock at hearing the anger in the words. For the first time, she was starting to understand why Judith couldn’t fathom her willingness to forgive John. “Maybe some of the anger you’re dumping on John is actually at me. Have you thought of that?”
Judith blinked before meeting Carol’s eyes. “I admit there were times I thought that if you had only listened to me…”
“She would still be alive?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve thought it too.” Carol gnawed at her lip for a few seconds. “Even if I’d left John, he would have had visitation. I couldn’t have stopped him from seeing her. There is no way to know what would have happened. If she’d still be with us. I’ve played this game a thousand times. I’ve nearly lost my mind playing this game. The only thing I’ve realized is that I’ve always felt guilty and ashamed for the role I played, even if it was passive.”
Judith visibly sagged. “I understand why you did what you did, but we all felt her loss, Carol. You were the only one who got to be with what was left of her, and that wasn’t fair to us.”
The reality of how selfish she’d been hadn’t really sunk in. She felt bad she’d taken Katie’s remains from John. That he’d had to hunt her down in the last weeks of his life to properly say goodbye to his daughter. But Carol hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond John. To his parents. Both of whom died years ago, having never seen Katie’s urn. And her father. She’d never—not once—thought about how her father must have felt. She’d always considered him too shut off, too cold to care.
The cool and aloof Dennis Stewart sobbing over the loss of his granddaughter had never occurred to her. The image in her mind broke her heart.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
Judith scooted closer and put her hand on Carol’s. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just want you to know that despite his flaws, your father wasn’t a hateful man. You two never saw eye-to-eye on anything. You both went in different directions simply to spite the other. From the time you were little, you were like that. But he loved you, Carol. You know that, don’t you?”
She closed her eyes against the sting of fresh tears. “I don’t think I do. I don’t think he loved me very much at all.”
“He was a difficult man to understand, but he did love you. And he was so proud of you. He didn’t show it well, but you meant the world to him. I know you loved him, too, even if you spent most of your life frustrated with him.”
Frustrated was a vast understatement. She spent most of her life infuriated with him. However, yes, sitting there with her mother, having a real heart-to-heart conversation with her, Carol felt love for her father, maybe even the first hints of forgiveness. She wiped her face, but fresh tears fell as she reached for a tissue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried in front of her mother before today, now she couldn’t seem to stop. “This is all coming to the surface now that I’ve lost Tobias, and I’m trying to process it. I don’t know how. I have too much pain, and I don’t know how to find the way out.”
“Oh,” Judith sighed. “Come here.”
Carol leaned over and, much like she’d done earlier in the morning, rested her cheek on her mom’s thighs as she cried. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, trying to regain control as Judith stroked Carol’s hair from her wet cheeks.
“Is this going to be our new normal?” Judith asked.
A mix of a cry and a laugh pushed from Carol’s throat. “If so, we’re going to need more wine.”
“And tissues. Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
“No, Mom. Please. Don’t…don’t push me away.”
Judith froze for a moment. “I’m not pushing you away. You need to get some sleep.”
Carol didn’t sit up. “I don’t want to go back there.”
“Go back where?”
“Where I was when John found me. Alone and hard and angry. I’d rather be like this than like…”
Judith frowned. “Than like me?”
“I was going to say like Dad.”
“I wish you could find it in your heart to go easier on him, Carol. Maybe someday you’ll see how hard he worked to give you what you had.”
“I know he did. But I didn’t want all those things, Mom. I wanted him to be proud of me.”
“He was.” She brushed Carol’s hair. “He may have had faults, but he was proud of you and he loved you.”
Carol
sniffled. “I hope so.”
Judith grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and tucked it around Carol. “Close your eyes. Try to stop overanalyzing everything.”
“Oh, that’s never gonna happen,” Carol said even as she let her eyes drift shut.
Six
Carol knew better than to drink too much. She hated how too much wine made her head throb the morning after. She had a low tolerance for alcohol on a good day, but three glasses of wine mixed with the high amount of emotions she’d been feeling lately had left her with a harsh hangover. Her entire body felt the vibrations of each heartbeat.
Ellen set a cup of coffee on the table in front of her and leaned down to kiss her head. “Another restless night?”
“Drank too much.”
“I assumed you were the culprit behind the empty wine bottle on the end table.”
She offered her aunt a weak smile. “I’ll clean it up.”
“Already did,” Ellen said. “What brought on this round of gluttony?”
“My brain is my worst enemy. But the upside is Mom and I had another good chat.”
“That’s wonderful, Carol. I’m happy for you.” Ellen sat across from her and lifted her brows. “What was this one about?”
“Dad. Tobias. Katie. Katie’s urn, to be more specific.” Now that she was clearer minded than the night before, shame settled into her soul. “How I took Katie without letting anyone grieve.”
Ellen nodded. Clearly, she’d heard about this particular resentment long before Carol had. “That was hard on your parents.”
Damn it. The day was too young to start stirring up Carol’s emotions. She mentally stepped back from the guilt and depression trying to take hold. “I see that now. I was too caught up in my own pain to think of anyone else. I had to save myself before I went insane.”
Reaching across the table, Ellen rested her hand on Carol’s. “No one ever blamed you for doing what you had to do during that time, sweetheart, but others were impacted by your choice to leave in ways you probably didn’t realize. We all hurt for Katie’s loss. Not nearly as deeply as you, but we hurt too. We were scared for you and what you were going through. Nobody knew how to be there for you.”
