Chapter Twenty-Five
Apologies with a but are not an admission of fault.
Nor can they be classified as a desire for forgiveness.
“I’m sorry but being here without my mother is hard.
I’m sorry but I really thought one of you would have had a baby by now.
I’m sorry but I’d had too much to drink and didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable. ”
“I’m sorry but . . .” was the closest Karen was ever going to get to admitting guilt.
Once Ash returned home after the weekend, and Harper and Jerry retreated to their sanctuary, Luna and Miley were left to hear all the “I’m sorry buts.”
One week turned into two, then morphed into three.
Miley started picking up overtime shifts, and Luna made excuses to work outside of the house.
The Mercier case was coming together much quicker than expected. It helped that the incentive for a day of hard work was an afternoon of pillow talk.
All the while Karen spent her days watching TV or scrolling through social media on her phone like a teenager. She’d treat every evening as if she was on vacation with an all-inclusive drink package. It wasn’t like Luna’s mother drank all day, but she never went to bed sober.
Luna felt like she’d taken a deep breath and couldn’t let it out. Relaxing in her own home wasn’t possible.
She’d stopped the occasional glass of wine at dinner because drinking one prompted her mother to drink more. If Luna so much as glanced at the glass in her mother’s hand, an argument ensued.
It wasn’t worth it.
When Nate suggested a weekend away, Luna jumped at it.
“I have some friends that live in the suburbs. They’re going up to Leavenworth for the weekend and wanted us to come along.”
“I haven’t been up there in years.” The town mimicked a Bavarian village in Germany, both in aesthetics and styles of food . . . and of course beer. It was in the mountains that were currently covered in snow. It sounded cozy and quiet . . . and perfect.
“Then you’ll come?” Nate asked.
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
When Miley learned of the trip, she planned something of her own. Staying home with Karen alone wasn’t something she wanted to do either.
The night before the trip, Karen drank a little more than the average and with that intoxication came a boldness that only alcohol inspired. “Leave me the keys to your car. I might need something.”
“No,” Luna said without apology. “We’re taking my car.”
“Why not take Nate’s? Or don’t you trust me?”
“If you need something, Harper isn’t far away. Or call an Uber.” And no, Luna wanted to add, she didn’t trust her mother. Not with a car that didn’t even have its permanent license plates yet.
“I don’t have Uber money. I barely have enough for my smokes.”
“Good thing there’s food in the house. And you bought cigarettes two days ago,” Luna told her.
“I know how to drive. I taught you how to drive.”
No, that was Harper and sometimes Ash. And Luna had practiced with Nana. The only thing Karen did was drive her to the DMV on the day she took her test.
“We’re driving my car. My brand-new car that I don’t even want the guy at the car wash to drive. If someone is going to put a scratch on it, it’s going to be me.”
Karen’s eyes were heavy with alcohol while they argued in the den watching the TV that neither of them was paying attention to. “Does it make you happy to talk to me like that? Am I not good enough for your fancy car?”
Here we go.
Luna released a defeated sigh. “I’m not talking to you like anything. I’m telling you no and you don’t want to hear it.”
“Telling me no like I’m a child,” Karen bit out.
“If you wanted your own transportation, you should have driven here from Alabama instead of taking the bus. Or have the means to rent something while you’re visiting.” Luna slowed down that last word to remind her mother that she was a guest.
At this point a very unwelcome guest.
Who was Luna kidding, her mother hadn’t been welcomed. A fact they both knew but didn’t say out loud.
“You always thought you were better than me. I thought that after Landon, you’d realize we . . . we’re not that different.”
Her mother’s insult hit exactly where she wanted it to.
“Most parents want their children to do better than them. They don’t stand around with a measuring stick comparing notes and hoping they come out on top.” This pissing match wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Luna knew that but found it impossible not to engage.
Karen took a big pull of her more vodka than soda and looked away. “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you.”
Luna removed the pillow that had been in her lap and set it aside.
“You know what, Mom. That worked on me when I was twelve. When you said that if you weren’t good enough, I could come here and live with Nana.
Then you’d cry and tell me how lonely you’d be if I left.
You’d start the fight, just like you’re doing now, and I’d coddle your feelings, ignoring my own. ”
“You did leave me.”
The absurdity of this conversation plucked at Luna’s last nerve. “You moved to bum fuck nowhere to live with your latest boyfriend and said I was old enough to figure it out on my own. I’d just turned seventeen.”
“That is not what I said. We were being evicted. I needed to move.”
“Narcissists can’t blame themselves, they’re not capable.”
Nate’s words rang in Luna’s head.
“You’re right,” Luna said. “You needed to move. I moved here and Nana let me drive her car back and forth to school that was forty minutes away so that I didn’t have to endure yet one more crappy man you invited into your life.
” In a calm Luna knew would piss her mother off more than yelling, she added, “Isn’t it funny how none of us lived with you when we turned eighteen. Yet somehow that was all our fault.”
Karen was pouting now, huddled over her drink like it was her only friend. “I did my best. It wasn’t easy.”
If only Luna believed that were true.
She unfolded from her chair, not caring that she towered over her mother in the process.
“I’ll be gone before you get up in the morning.
You have the house to yourself for the weekend.
I think you should use that time figuring out what your next move is.
Staying here indefinitely is not it.” With that, Luna turned on her heel and left the room without looking back.
By the time she made it to the top of the stairs, she was exhausted.
Emotionally spent.
Something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
The door to the attic was open by only a couple of inches.
And with God as her witness, Luna heard footsteps running away.
Luna walked to the door, opened it farther, and stared into the void. “If you’re going to eavesdrop on the conversation, at least close the door when you’re done, Ethel. I can’t afford to heat the attic.”
Nate and Tony stood just inside the door of what Tony called a chick store.
Luna and Clarissa had hit it off the minute they met.
Tony Junior was living the good life with his grandparents, giving the four of them an adult weekend. Something Tony and Clarissa coveted.
While the women shopped for whatever it was they didn’t think they could live without, Nate and Tony talked about them.
“I like her,” Tony said. “Not that you need my approval.”
Nate smiled. “She’s something else. She’s going through a lot right now and you’d never know it to look at her.”
“The mom?” Tony asked.
Nate had already mentioned the stress Luna had been under with the unwanted family visiting. And how much she needed time away.
“They have a complicated relationship.” Nate nodded toward the women. “This is the closest she’s been to normal since her mother arrived.”
“When is Mom leaving?”
“Hopefully soon. Luna took the first steps to moving her along her way.”
Tony scoffed. “Did she think she was just going to move in?”
“I think so,” Nate said.
“That’s fucked up.”
“Tell me about it. I’m kinda hoping this weekend relaxes her enough to push and demand her life back. Even in the times we do spend together, she’s constantly checking her phone and the cameras at her house to see what her mother is doing.”
“Cameras? Like a baby cam?” Tony asked.
“Not inside the house. Outside . . . you know, an alarm system.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know why she bothers. Her mother doesn’t go anywhere. And ever since she got there, the alarm hasn’t been set.” They’d stopped setting it at night after the first time Karen had opened the back door to have a cigarette and set off the alarm, waking everyone up.
“You know what they say,” Tony started. “You don’t just marry the woman. You marry her family.”
He sighed. “That’s not something I have to worry about for a while,” Nate said.
Tony looked over, lowered his voice. “She’s not a keeper?” he asked. “I thought you really liked her.”
“I do. But she’s pretty determined to not get married again.”
“She told you that?” Tony sounded surprised.
“She tells everyone that. Her ex was a real winner,” he said sarcastically.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
Nate watched Luna from across the store.
She was holding up something and showing it to Clarissa and they were both laughing.
“We’re still new. We work together like we’ve been on the same team for years.
We laugh. We talk about serious shit. The sex is .
. . incredible. She isn’t needy or possessive.
She even asked me to call her out on her own shit.
She’s thirty-five and does pro bono work.
I’ve never met anyone who literally works for free for people they don’t know. ”
“That’s a lot of green flags, my friend.”
Those green flags turned to look his way.
Luna smiled and waved them over.
“Let me know if you see a red one, will ya?” Nate asked his friend.
“I will.”