fall asleep until late.” I crossed to the Nespresso, touched that Edward had thought to bring tea pods from his office. My own tea was brewing when I hitched my chin at her laptop. “What’s today’s special?”
“Cherry turnovers. Not your favorites, but Annika did the choosing.”
“Would you have picked something else?” I asked, making it sound teasing, when really it wasn’t.
She didn’t blink. “I’d have picked salted caramel brownies. Or honey scones.” She knew I loved the latter. I barely breathed when she added, “You didn’t have to come for me yesterday. But you did.”
“I’d have come sooner if I’d known,” I said, and she did smile then. But what started shy turned sad, before fading into regret. She seemed about to say something, but stopped.
“What?” I coaxed.
Drying on its own, her hair was waving in a gentle way. Her furrowed brow was something else. She was struggling.
“Say it,” I said. “Please?”
She took a breath, and in a voice laced with sorrow, said, “He was wrong.” My father. “But it was wrong of me not to tell him he was wrong. The thing is, that isn’t how it was between us.”
“How was it?” I would never, ever, have asked that back in Connecticut—would never, ever, have asked it growing up. To ask would have been to challenge, which wasn’t in the nature of our relationship. But that life was there, and we were here.
She must have felt the same distance, because she said, “Traditional. He was the head of the family. My job was to support him.”
“You were the enforcer.”
She made a small sound. “So to speak. Your father…” She studied her tea.
“Please.”
“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” She shot the sky a timid glance. “Not that He doesn’t already think ill of me.”
She was speaking of God this time, but I wasn’t going there. “Why was Dad so angry at me?”
“Well, I often asked him that. He loved you, loved you very much.” She sipped her tea.
Taking mine from the Keurig, I slipped into the armchair kitty-corner to her. It was too early in the day for this kind of discussion—but really, was it ever too early to discuss matters of the heart? What if the moment passed and never returned?
“Then why?” I asked.
“You did things he didn’t understand. You made decisions without consulting him.”
I waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, I said, “That’s it? He was offended?”
“Threatened. You broke the mold.”
“But you did, too.” If ever there had been an example of someone following her dream, it was my mother. “Look at the bakery.”
She sniffed. “He barely knew about the bakery.”
“Of course he did. You went there every day.”
“He didn’t see me there. I might as well have been cleaning toilets at the Town Hall. My bakers did the early morning work, so that I could be home and cook breakfast and make the beds. By the time I left, he was already at work. I got back before he did to cook dinner. He never saw anything different at home from how it was when you and Liam were first born.”
“But you earned money. We couldn’t have rented a place at the shore those summers without it. I couldn’t have gone to college without loans. Liam couldn’t have. The money you earned was crucial.”
“We didn’t discuss it.”
I was floored. My face must have shown it, because she actually laughed. “Oh, Mackenzie. Your generation takes so much for granted.”
“You’re only sixty-five, Mom. Hadn’t the women’s revolution already begun by the time you were married?”
“For some.” She considered. “Even for me. I was able to get a loan to start the bakery. Vendors would work with me, whereas twenty years earlier they wouldn’t have.” She returned to the crux of the discussion. “But your father was old school. He was uncomfortable with the idea of his wife helping support the family. Breadwinning was his job, and if he didn’t do it, he would feel less of a man.”
“It was ego, then?”
“It was the deal. He worked. I raised the kids.”
“But how could he not see what you were doing?”
She shot me a did-you-not-hear-what-I-just-said look, and there was something so familiar, so normal about it that I nearly laughed. This was my mother. She didn’t waste time repeating things. She was efficient, which was how she accomplished as much as she did.
Emboldened by the frank back-and-forth, I asked, “Did you love him?”