phenomenal mother to our lucky children.”
My eyes fill with tears at his words, and I squeeze his hand. He turns toward me, and I mouth I love you to him. He squeezes my hand back.
Carol raises a brow, and the room is quiet as everyone awaits her response expectantly. And instead of congratulating her son for finding the love of his life and on the upcoming birth of his first child, she stands and walks out of the room without a word. The door clicks shut behind her, and we all sit in stunned silence for a second.
Heat creeps up my back as anger sparks deep inside and explodes through every nerve ending in my body.
Is she freaking serious?
Hell no, lady.
I don’t care if she’s my mother-in-law. You don’t respond to your son’s bleeding-heart confession by walking out of the room without a word. You don’t respond to your son’s words that his wife is pregnant with silence.
I may be starting to understand the Dalton family, but what she just did isn’t okay.
I stand as heat pricks behind my eyes. My fists are clenched as I walk toward the door. I think Luke says something, a feeble attempt to try to stop me probably, and maybe Jack and Kaylee say something too...but the rushing in my head prevents any of their words from registering.
I’m going to give Carol a piece of my mind, and I move with speed before I can change my mind and before anyone can stop me.
I throw open the door, and I open it with such force that it bounces back against the spring doorstop and slams shut behind me again.
I find Carol standing in the hallway a few steps away from the office. She faces away from the door.
“You have nothing to say to your son?” I ask, my voice full of venom.
She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t even acknowledge that I spoke.
But through my red haze of anger, I see her shoulders shaking. She sniffs as she finally turns around, and her hand is over her mouth as she cries into it. Her eyes are red as tears stream down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She brushes the tears away. “For taking care of my son. For being everything he needs.”
Understanding dawns on me. She ran out so nobody would see her like this. I’m sure I’m the last person she wants to cry in front of, and yet somehow it must be better than crying in front of her children.
The tender heart in me can’t stand to see anyone crying, so it’s natural as I move toward her and open my arms for a hug. I’m surprised when she moves her hand from her face and moves into my arms, and I hold her for a beat as she lets out the pent-up emotions she tries so hard to hide from everybody.
“This is hard,” I say softly. “It’s okay to let your kids see that you’re struggling.”
She seems to pull herself together at my words. “No, it’s not,” she says, moving out of my arms. She sniffs again and wipes her cheeks with her fingertips. “They need to know they can come to me with anything and I’m strong enough to handle it.”
I shake my head. “They need to know you’re human. They need to see that you have emotions, too, and that it’s okay to express them. Luke still has a hard time showing me what he’s feeling. He learned that from you. I don’t want either of you to feel like you have to hide what’s inside because you know what?” I hold my hands out wide. “There’s more room out here than in there.” I point to her chest at the end.
She sighs. “It’s just not who I am.”
I shake my head. “But it’s okay to run out of a room when your son finally opens up to you?”
She presses her lips together. “I’m just so happy for him. He’s doing well despite everything we did to mess him up.”
“You didn’t mess him up,” I say. “He’s a wonderful man, and you’d know that if you bothered to get to know him.”
She stares at me a beat, and nerves rattle around inside until she speaks. “He’s right, you know,” she says. My brows dip because I don’t know what she means. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
She leaves the hallway with those words, and now it’s my turn to cry by myself for a minute.
CHAPTER 26
Jack stands on the