The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,374

a pull from her cigar and turns to gaze around the room.

She’s made quite a recovery since the last time I saw her.

I drove her home from Remi’s house the day all of this came out. She and Gigi had a confrontation that turned physical. She’d been nearly catatonic with grief. And I forgave her in that moment. She may have kept his secrets, but she was my grandfather’s victim, too. After her husband left her for another woman. My anguish felt like a trickle compared to the monsoon of it that roiled in her. Without her asking me to, I forgave her for the lifelong lie.

“Actually, I would have done something different,” she muses. “I wouldn’t have married a man thinking somehow I was going to be the making of him. No one makes anyone but themselves. And people don’t change unless they want to.” My emotions are in turmoil and I want to shake the cool, unruffled expression off my mother’s face.

“I thought you were going to say, I wouldn’t have raised my children in the same house as the man who tried to murder their father. How could you live with him? Knowing that he’d tried to have his own son killed? And how could you watch us grieve for a man who wasn’t dead.”

“Your grandfather was a dangerous, wicked man. But he loved you and your brothers. If I’d tried to take you away from him, he would have killed me. I was worried that if any of you disappointed him, he’d hurt you, too. So, I cracked a whip on your backs to keep you safe.”

“Why didn’t you let me go to Wellesley?” I ask.

She looks startled and then pensive. She opens her mouth and closes it twice before she finally answers me. “That’s where Gigi went to school. It’s where she met your father.” Mom admits with a deep sigh as if admitting it is a weight off.

“Wow. So, that’s why you didn’t let me go?” I rear back – surprised how much empathy is mingled with my incredulity.

My mother’s expression clears, and she lifts her chin as if I’ve offended her. “I would have let you go, Regan. You kids had already paid so much for his sins. And by then, I knew he’d never been mine to lose, in the first place.” She takes another draw from her cigar and blows a smoke ring.

“So then…why?”

“The same reason as everything else. Your grandfather forbade it. He only let Remi go because unlike you, Remi could afford to pay his way.”

She leaves out that it’s because the men in my family all got access to their inheritance when they were eighteen. I had to wait until I was thirty.

“So, he lied about that, too. And made you take the blame…” That hurts more than it should. Especially, when in the grand scheme of things, it’s the least of his crimes against me.

My mother shrugs it off. “Oh yes. You were his pet. He couldn’t bear to be the bad guy in your eyes. And even though he never expressed remorse for what he did to Lucas, he thought he’d gain some redemption in raising the three of you. And I let him because I knew that as long as he loved you and as long as you followed his rules, you’d be safe. But I hated how close you were…when you and I were at such odds.

Before I can ask, she starts speaking again.

“I should have turned Liam in. I was barely old enough to buy liquor, with three very young children, a violent and cunning father in law, a broken heart, a shattered ego, and a business to run. And I didn’t have a soul to confide in about the worst thing that had ever happened to me.”

She takes a puff of her cigar and blows an expert smoke ring. It’s like she’s speaking from my heart.

In that moment, I see my mother in an entirely new light. She’s always been this fearless, unstoppable, resilient, tough as nails, bitchy-as-fuck, hard ass. She’s successful, flawlessly composed, so utterly capable that I forgot, that she's also just a woman. Flesh and bone and with a heart as prone to pain as mine.

I’ve had challenges, but nothing like what she has overcome. I don’t think I’d make the same choices as her.

But I can’t say for sure.

The night my daughter was born, I lay awake all night with her in my arms, making promises and vows