me she was dying and had three weeks to live?
“Is everything okay?” I asked cautiously.
She linked her fingers together and placed them on the counter. “Of course.” She waved her hand in the air as if scattering my words away and stared at the French doors. “I always seem to forget how beautiful your garden is.”
“Is that what you came here to talk about? My garden?”
My mother frowned at me. “Of course not.” She took a small bite out of her bagel and wiped her hands with her napkin. “How are you?”
She gave me a meaningful look. The same look she gave me as a teenager when she knew I’d fucked up and wanted me to confess.
I took a sip of my coffee. “I’m good,” I replied slowly.
“Are you really?”
“Mom…what’s really going on?”
“Wes spoke with me,” she confessed.
“About?” I asked a little sharply.
“He’s concerned about you.”
“He’s concerned about me,” I repeated back dully.
“Well, yes!”
Impatiently, I waved my hand in the air. “Mom, just tell me what he said.”
“He says you’ve been acting erratically and unpredictably. He says the two of you have had terrible fights and he tries to work through things with you but you’re inconsolable.”
I was in a state of shock. I’d seen a dark side of Wes. But never in a million years did I think he’d try to turn my own mother against me. This was a new low.
“And you believe that?” I sputtered.
“Of course I do. I mean, you’ve clearly been unhappy for a while.”
“How would you know?” I snapped.
“Well, I have a pair of eyes that work perfectly fine. It’s clear something is wrong with you!”
“For legit reasons that you don’t even know about!”
“Tell me,” she urged. “Maybe I can help.”
“It’s none of your business and no, you can’t help.”
My mother crossed her arms. “Now calm down. I didn’t come here to get into a fight with you.” She stood up and walked around the island, her hands outstretched for a hug. I took a step back. My heart was thumping so hard, I could barely breathe.
“He told me you expressed to him that you weren’t happy in the marriage.”
Of course he did.
“He loves you dearly. My God, he was a wreck when I talked to him.”
I dragged my hands through my hair and took a deep breath. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Everyone else around me saw this wonderful man. No one ever saw the side I did. He hid it so well that I looked like the liar. I looked like the villain.
“You have to give your marriage a chance.”
“You shouldn’t hand out advice when you don’t have the full story.”
“Enlighten me, then. Fill in the blanks.”
“Will you believe me?”
She hesitated. Just for a second, but long enough to show that she probably wouldn’t. She saw my life, my marriage as a trophy she could tote around and show off to her friends, and if I told her just a small bit of how I was feeling, she’d do everything in her power to talk me out of it.
“I’m beginning to think I married a complete stranger.”
“Victoria, that’s ridiculous. You—”
“Can you let me finish?” I threw my hands up in the air. “You’re so quick to correct me when you don’t even know the full story.”
“Fine. Keep going.”
“As I was saying, I think the man I married isn’t what he seems.”
“It doesn’t matter!” She couldn’t help herself. She had to give her opinion. “You stop at nothing for the people you love the most.”
Wes would stop at nothing until he captured my soul and put it in a glass jar.
“And I know you love Wes,” she said.
“I love the side of him that’s good,” I admitted slowly. “Yet, unfortunately, even when that side is out, I can’t help but wonder when the bad will creep back up.”
“Victoria, you are a married woman. You made vows.”
Based on how my mother said the four-letter word, it sounded sacred. A consecrated moment of promises you should never try to escape.
“So do you want to tell me what’s going on inside that mind of yours?” she asked.
Seconds ticked by. My mother waited for an answer while I stared at my half-eaten bagel as though it held all the secrets to my problems. I thought of the brief note he left on my pillow the next morning. I thought of how Wes and I lived at cross purposes, where he assumed “sorry” made the slate clean and his long hours provided me with