“What?”
I smiled a little sheepishly. “I’m sorry. But I really didn’t want to get set up with Glenn.”
“I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you have just told me that?”
“Because he was already coming. Next time, could you give me more than twelve-hours notice that you’re inviting my ex-boyfriend to our Christmas vacation?”
“I thought you’d be excited to have an old friend. I knew you wouldn’t want to hang out with us the whole time.”
Well, that was true. “But he wasn’t an old friend. He was an old boyfriend, and I broke up with him. And…it wasn’t a good plan.” I didn’t want to dive into Glenn’s less-favorable qualities, so I didn’t.
Her mouth had been open as if to argue before she closed it and leaned back against the couch. “Well, then, I’m sorry. I thought the two of you were still friends. The way Glenn lit up when we mentioned you’d be there, I wondered…but I didn’t know how you really felt. I just…I knew this Christmas was going to be hard, and I wanted you to have a distraction. Something fun to look forward to.”
I hoped that, one day, Glenn found a girl who would find him an exciting distraction, but I was definitely not that girl.
Her brows furrowed as though she had just thought of something. “You two really aren’t dating? I saw that mistletoe kiss.”
“The anti-mistletoe kiss,” I said. “Apparently, I missed by about thirty feet, so Miles says we have to do it again.”
“What a tragedy,” she murmured.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not really sure what we are. The past few days have been fun.” And sweet. And eye-opening. “But we work together. I don’t think he’s too concerned about that, but…”
“But you are?”
“Yeah. I’ve had a bad experience with dating coworkers, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean that will happen this time.”
I nodded, leaning back into the sofa, my arm brushing against hers. “How did you and Russ meet, anyway? I mean, I know you were at the restaurant, but how exactly did it happen again?” I felt a bit guilty even asking this. It was my mom. I should have known her and Russ’s story, but it’s amazing what details slip your mind when you spend seven months trying to forget it even happened.
A small smile broke out across her face. “It was a coffee shop, actually. He tried to pick up my order.”
“What? How?”
“When they yelled out a very clear, ‘Elaine,’ he came up and bumped into me and claimed they had said, ‘Russ.’”
I huffed out a small laugh, shaking my head, imagining his frank nature shocking my mother.
She opened her mouth like she was about to speak again, but then suddenly, her face crumpled like a napkin. Her hands moved to cover her face, hiding from me while her shoulders tensed against mine.
“Mom?” I grasped her arm in some alarm.
My touch seemed to unleash something from deep within her. Now, she was crying. She tried to stop once but only succeeded in moaning and sputtering a laugh, desperately wiping tears from her eyes.
“Mom,” I said again. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, taking a deep breath. “This place and all the Christmas things…it’s been fun, but I’ve had a hard time not reliving last year. It’s been good not being home, but it’s been hard, too. I miss him so much.”
Pure relief filled my entire body. Her words filled cracks in my heart almost instantly. I needed this so badly, to hear her say she missed him. That she hadn’t forgotten. Now, it seemed silly to even have questioned that. Perhaps she had been putting on a good face, too.
She cleared her throat and wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Mom, I need to see you cry.”
Her face looked up to mine. “What?”
I stared at her, collecting the thoughts that suddenly rang so true in my mind. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find it in me to be happy for her or even try to get along with Russ. After this week, I truly felt like I could do that. But I needed to know my dad was still a part of our lives.
“I need to see that you miss Dad. I’ve been dreading Christmas because I didn’t want to feel like we were forgetting him. I don’t go home anymore because Dad’s not there. And it doesn’t look like he’s ever been there. Which…I get it, but you’ve got someone new, and you seem so happy all the time, and we never talk about him, and I…” I broke off, willing my emotions to settle, but this conversation had been too long in the making. There was too much that needed to be said.
Her hand grasped my arm. “I have been happy. Russ is a good man. He’s brought fun into my life that I never imagined having again. But I’ve also been sad. I’ve been worried. I’ve felt guilty. I’ve been crying for your dad while married to another man. I’ve been trying to put on a happy face for you kids. I’ve been so many things that I don’t know what I am anymore.”
I turned to face her, both of us clasping the other’s arms while we released our built-up emotions.
“Do you think you jumped in too soon? Should you have waited to get married again?” I blanched as soon as I said the words. Perhaps I was pushing things too far.
“No,” she said gently. “You have to understand. I was so tired.” Her voice broke, and she took a minute to wipe her eyes.
“You had every right to be tired, Mom. You had just buried your husband.”
She shook her head. “No. It was more than that. I began grieving him when the doctor said the word terminal. It was the slowest and most torturous way to watch somebody you love die. Two years of getting your heart broken every day was almost more than I could take.”
She leaned forward, wiping her eyes. The whiffs of her coconut shampoo next to my nose made her seem so human somehow. It was easy to forget that moms could be human.
“I know. We were all part of that.”
“Even with all of that, do you know what the hardest part was?”
I wiped at the hot stubborn tear making a run down my cheek. “What?”
“Watching my children watch their dad die.”
Hot tears fell from both eyes now, drenching my cheeks. Her arm slipped around my waist and pulled me to rest on her shoulder. It got to be too much to keep wiping the tears away, so I let them come. I wondered if it was possible to cry all the tears out. I’d certainly had my fill the past twenty-four hours. I had always allowed myself to cry in private. But outside my doors, I was a rock. A machine. Holding myself rigid so as not to break. Any cracks or flaws at all and I would be done. Broken. I refused to be broken at work, or with my family. Only alone. Only at home.
But now I started to wonder if maybe being broken wasn’t a flaw. Maybe it was a beautiful shard of glass that could one day be made into a vase again. Maybe the flaw gave it character. It couldn’t be whole again, but it could be pieced back together—each unique shard helping to press and hold the others into place, some glue around the edges. Almost like new.