Rory still looks wary as she slides the envelope from beneath her arm and hands it to her mother. She lingers a moment, watching Camilla disappear into the house, then joins me at the table. “I had no idea you were going to be here. Did she trick you too?”
“She called Daniel, and he called me. She felt bad about lunch and invited me to join you today. She was very determined. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“I’m so sorry. She’s always been a force of nature. How have you been?”
“Well enough.”
“You know, I tried to call you. Then I came over and knocked on your door. When you didn’t answer, I left you a note.”
“And then you sent Daniel snooping around my kitchen window.”
“I was worried. You were so upset when you left that day. I wanted to apologize, but you wouldn’t answer your phone. I’m so sorry about what she said and how she was.”
“Why are you apologizing for your mother’s actions? They were hers, not yours. And she had her reasons for behaving as she did.”
Rory’s eyes widen. She’s surprised, and perhaps a little hurt that I have taken her mother’s side even a little. “You’re defending her now?”
“She was afraid, chérie. People lash out when they’re afraid.”
“Afraid of you?”
“How a person behaves toward us is never about us, Rory. It’s about them. Your mother acted as she did because she felt threatened. You’re hers, and she wanted me to know it. Because she’s afraid of losing you—and of being alone.”
Rory scowls at the open french doors. “Then she should stop doing things to drive me away. She acts like I don’t deserve a life of my own, like everything I am and do is about her. My art, the gallery, even who I choose to be friends with.”
I feel her anger in my bones, the tug-of-war between mother and daughter. It’s a clash as old as time itself, for there have always been mothers who knew best. Just as there have always been daughters who knew better. It’s a contradiction that is part of every woman’s journey—the need to shape in one’s own image versus the aversion to being shaped at all.
I smile sadly. “It’s a hard thing for a mother to relinquish her bébé. You’ve been a part of her life for a very long time, her whole world, and now all of a sudden, you’re grown up with a life of your own. She’s lonely.”
“How on earth can she be lonely? There isn’t a blank space on her calendar. She’s always flitting off to some luncheon or card game or going to the theater. She has an actual entourage. Especially since my father died, not that he was ever much of a companion.”
“One doesn’t have to be alone to be lonely, chérie. They’re not the same thing. We all cope with loss in our own way, inventing ways to fill up the emptiness. That’s why her calendar is full. And why she’s been so possessive. She wants to be part of your life, but she doesn’t know how.”
Rory folds her arms and lets out a sigh. She looks so young and petulant, sitting there with her arms crossed. It chafes to hear me defend her mother. But the rift between these two must be mended before it hardens into something cold and permanent. Perhaps that’s why fate has thrown me into their lives. To broker peace.
“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone. This is how it is for her. There’s a void in her life where you used to be, and she doesn’t know how to fill it.”
Rory sinks into the chair beside me, silent. She’s determined to cling to her anger.
“She knows she’s made mistakes, Rory. That’s why she asked me to come today, to make amends. Not just with me but with you. And I think you should let her.”
“You don’t know her.”
“No. But she thinks the three of us should be friends, and I think so too. We’ve been brought together somehow. I don’t know how or why, but you can’t deny it. Perhaps we’re meant to help each other in some way, to fill each other’s empty places.”
She looks at me so strangely, as if I’ve said something earth-shattering and she’s about to correct me. For the tiniest moment, I’m afraid of what she’ll say, afraid our newly formed circle is about to be broken, and suddenly I don’t want it to be.
And then I hear the tinkle of Camilla’s bracelet as she approaches with a tray full of food. “Isn’t this just lovely,” she says, beaming. “The three of us, together at last.”