stop replaying that awful scene in my head—on how she’d picked Sandy over me.
“Honey, you’ve been avoiding me. Last time we spoke, it didn’t end well.” Her voice trailed off.
I didn’t peek up to look at her, moving the canvases around as though they weren’t straight enough, which was stupid because they were already in the box.
There was a silence in the room that sucked up all the air, and I couldn’t breathe, anger threatening to choke me.
I needed to stay calm. I needed to just do this for myself. This was no longer about pleasing my mother and getting her approval. Connor was right. Nui would be there, and she was the professional after all. The weight of an artist wasn’t measured by her mother’s approval, was it?
“Mom, let’s just not talk about it.”
“No, honey. We have to.” She walked toward me, and I stared at her sandals, the ones that Daddy had purchased for her when we were on vacation.
We had gone to Destin, Florida, driving there from Wisconsin. We were window-shopping down a row of local shops, and my mom stared at the shoes forever, wanting to buy them but knowing she shouldn’t splurge. My father, being the man that he was, had gone back to the shop to get them and surprised my mother with them the next day.
“I …” She bent down and knelt beside me. “I don’t know how to act in front of them.”
Her words forced me to look up at her, her honesty revealing a vulnerability that she hardly ever showed. She fiddled with her fingernails, her chin downturned, and all of me wanted to hug her in that very moment.
“I … I love Richard. I do. But I don’t know where I quite fit in yet, and I want everyone to just get along. I want Sandy to like me. I want Sandy to like you. I want you to like Sandy. I want you to love Richard like he already loves you.” She peered up at me and offered a sad smile.
I hadn’t realized this, that she was having a hard time with the transition. I’d assumed that she was happy.
“Mom …” I reached for her hand and squeezed it.
The first of her tears began to fall. “No. Listen, Charlie.” She swiped at her eyes. “Your dad will and always be the love of my life.” Her tears caused my own tears to well up. “He always took care of us in the best way he knew how. But we struggled, and you know that. I didn’t want that to happen to you. Parents want their kids to have a better life.”
She met my eyes then, cupping my face as she used to do when I was younger, when I was still her little girl. “And I know you’re talented. God and everyone knows you have talent, Charlie. Maybe I was afraid of that talent, that it wouldn’t pay the bills, that it would ruin your life, and for that, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to ever struggle like I did, so that’s why I pushed you in college. But not once did I think you hadn’t been born with a gift, a gift of creativity, a gift of art.”
Did she really believe that? The one burning question in the back of my throat filtered out. “Did you throw away my paintings?”
Her eyebrows furrowed, and she reeled back, confused at my change in subject. “What?”
I swallowed, my gaze dropping to the floor. “My paintings were ruined, put out in the rain, thrown out in the garbage.” I remembered that day vividly, the pain slicing my chest like a dagger to my heart. I held my breath, meeting her eyes, waiting for an answer.
She vehemently shook her head. “I swear to you, I didn’t. Why would I do that? Honey, do you think I hate your art?”
I released a breath because that had been weighing heavily on me for the longest time. It had to be Sandy because who else hated me that much?
She bent down, lifting my chin with the lightness of her fingertips. “I love you and everything about you, and my biggest mistake, my biggest downfall, is not making you believe that. For you to even consider that I’d do such a thing … because I would never …” She sighed. “I just wanted to make sure that you were taken care of, that you’d have a stable future.”
I placed my hand over hers on my