Page 102 of Not You Again

Mom tilts her head in question. “Did she expect you to be perfect?”

I frown, rubbing the spot on my finger where my wedding band used to be. Over the past eight weeks, Andie asked me for a lot of things. But none of them were about being perfect. She asked me to stop trying to solve her problems. She asked me to do the dishes because she hated doing them. She asked me to let her in and tell her how I felt. She asked me to let her be there with me in the hospital.

I love you feels so simple now. Why couldn’t I bring myself to say it back to her in the hospital?

“No,” I finally say. “She didn’t. I think I put that expectation on myself.”

“Kit.” Mom scoots across the couch so she can rest a motherly hand on my knee. “I’m not sure where you’ve gotten the idea that you have to be everything to everyone, including yourself.”

I swallow. “You gave up so much of your life to raise me, and Andie gave up so much of hers to be on the show and be married to me.” I’m still not sure we’re eligible for the “damages” listed in the contract, especially after Andie left filming to be with me in the hospital. That’s her dream of saving her business, potentially gone.

“It sounds like you feel guilty for taking up our time.”

Honestly? I do. But I don’t know how to voice it.

“Honey,” Mom squeezes my arm, “did it ever occur to you that I chose to have you?”

I know that. I’ve always known that. My parents were so young when they had me. Mom chose my dad over being left in her family will. Which is yet another layer to my guilt. “Don’t you think you could have had a better life without me? If you hadn’t married Dad?”

Mom grunts. “You’re not hearing me. I chose to have you, just like I chose to love your father.”

I meet her gaze. She says she chose it all, but I never thought about choosing to love somebody. I thought it was something that happened organically. That you were born into it or felt the connection and just fell into it. That there was no choice in the matter. None of the love in my life felt like a choice.

“The life you think I gave up to have you?” Mom smacks her hand against her own knee in frustration. “It was my choice to let it go. I was happy to do it. I chose to be happy.”

“Even though we both … left you?” I choke on the words. Dad slipped away in front of our eyes, and then I ran to avoid the memory of walls closing in. To avoid her because I couldn’t look at her in pain without my lungs collapsing. Leaving was the only way I could breathe again.

“We can’t control everything.” She sips on her coffee. “It hurt like hell when your father died. It still does. But we chose to love each other every day, even when it was hard. I can’t find it in me to wish I’d chosen differently.”

I swallow and stare at a spot on the carpet.

She nudges me with her fuzzy slipper. “And you came back.”

“Did I, though?” My voice catches. “I took a job that keeps me away from you most of the year because it pays well. So I can take care of you.”

“I thought you took your job because you like it.” She sets her coffee mug aside.

I frown. I can’t remember the last time I thought about whether I like my job. I like that it allows me to support her. I like that I can pretend, if I’m halfway across the world, that I don’t miss this single-wide trailer and the memories it holds.

But as I think of boarding a plane to Italy, I’m so weary of it all. The running, the pretending, the constant battle between my heart and my head. The life that showed me how to breathe again now threatens to suffocate me. I rub my palm across my forehead to ease the ache spreading beneath my skull.

Mom shakes her head. “You can stop using me as an excuse, Kit.”

My instinct is to argue, to circle the same point I made when I came home in the spring. That I do enough for me. But I can’t convince myself anymore. I only nod, staring at my hands.

After another long silence, she tells me, “I liked Andie. I thought she’d be good for you.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it work, Mom.”

“For me?”

“For me.” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat in an attempt to shake it. I drag my hands down my face and let out a heavy sigh. I feel like I’m on the edge of a breakthrough; I’m just not sure I want to know what the other side looks like.

“You care about her.” It’s a statement, not a question.

I swallow the lump in my throat and admit with a croak, “I do. But I’m a complication her life can’t afford.”

Mom’s question is gentle. “Who decided that? You, or her?”