Chapter 24 Jude
Three Weeks Before the Wedding
I thought I was having my son over for dinner, not a cardboard cutout.”
I look away from an abstract painting of the ocean that I’ve been staring unseeingly at and bring my mother into focus.
Dinner is done, and she’s barefoot and curled at the other end of the living room couch from me, her attorney general armor left outside on the porch.
She’s smiling softly at me and holding her wineglass with worrying nonchalance over the cream-colored rug, until a touch of concern creases her brows.
“Everything okay over there, Rabbit?” she asks.
At the old nickname, I quietly exhale, pulling my mind away from Gracie’s rejection last night and into the present.
I hardly ever get to visit my mom when she’s off duty at home, since it would mean seeing my father, too.
But he’s in London for work, and I should be making the most of this rare pocket of downtime we’ve found.
“Sorry,” I say, taking a drink from my own glass and hoping the biting tannins will lift the fog I’ve been in. “A lot on my mind.”
She tilts her head, her auburn hair brightening to gold beneath the floor lamp above her. “Work, or the house?”
I lean back against the couch cushions, glad my mom can’t hear my mind repeating Gracie’s name with the relentlessness of an EKG machine.
“Both. But it’s fine,” I say. “I cut back my caseload, and I’m headed to Larkwood tonight. I’ve got a meeting with the art appraisal people tomorrow morning about that godawful hunting painting in the main dining room.”
My mom places a hand on her chest and looks affronted. “You wouldn’t be talking about the portrait of your hallowed ancestor, Great Uncle Rifle Dick, would you?”
I snort as I get a vivid mental image of the stout, red-faced man who presided over every family dinner, posing with his large, suggestively placed rifle. “The one and only.”
She shakes her head and takes a sip of her wine. “I never knew why Mom insisted on keeping that one up.”
“Are you kidding? That gun was one of her favorite dinner topics. ‘Look at the flared tip, Judy—what do you think it symbolizes?’ ” I say in my best Nana impression.
My mom lets out a cackle that’s so reminiscent of my grandmother, it’s almost like she’s here with us.
I’m grinning right back until, inevitably, questions rise inside of me that yank down whatever happiness was trying to emerge.
When was the last time she was this relaxed? Does she ever laugh when he’s around?
“Wow, I needed that,” she says, but a moment later, her smile fades. “It’s too easy to get caught up in the loss and complications and forget the good stuff.” She pauses. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that things were ever easy.”
I nod, thinking of how effortlessly Gracie pulls my most joyful memories of Nana from me like a lodestone. How much easier it’s become to talk about her when I know someone else will understand.
“I’m trying to get better at remembering the good,” I say, before adding carefully, “Talking about her helps.”
My mom’s gaze stays soft even though she sees right through my effort to open her up. “It’s not your job to walk me through this,” she says gently. “You’re already taking on too much as it is, sorting through the house.”
I lift a shoulder, my eyes breaking from her gaze.
I know she’s being sincere about the amount of work Larkwood adds to my already heavy plate.
But running on a lower current is something we stopped discussing when it became too painful for her—why the estate and its future were left to me instead of her.
“I’m glad it’s me,” I say, knowing I’m toeing into darker waters. But I don’t want to debate my plans for Larkwood again, and if I make my stance clear enough, there’s a chance she’ll drop it. The hand that’s been idly swirling her wineglass stills.
“So, you’re still going through with your plans?” she asks lightly, like this hasn’t been a blistering point of contention since the moment Nana left Larkwood to me. My back tenses.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I say, voice firm. Because yes, while Gracie has sown more doubt than I’d like to admit, I’m still convinced that my original plans are the best way forward.
She hesitates, then meets my eyes with the determination that got her elected to the highest legal seat in the state. My heart sinks. Here we go.
“You’re being short-sighted,” she says bluntly.
“There’s nothing short-sighted about how far I’ll go to get rid of it,” I counter, keeping my voice level.
She sits up. “I understand you have misgivings. But I don’t see why you can’t just keep it in the family. I’d be happy to manage it.”
“Right,” I say on a half laugh. “With all your spare time.”
“Then we could hire—”
“There’s no point, Mom,” I interrupt, frustration getting the better of me. “Your life is in Providence. Why do you want to hold on to something so—”
“Because Larkwood was my home, Jude,” she says, voice sharp and eyes bright with a loss that never healed. “It was the place I grew up dreaming in. The place I felt safest. A place that meant everything to me before—”
She stops. Closes her eyes. In the silence, we both complete that sentence in our own ways.
I only have secondhand knowledge of the desperate, misguided ultimatum Nana made to my mother: Larkwood or him.
I was fourteen and already packed off to boarding school in Connecticut, where Nana insisted I’d be better off.
But I know her plan backfired. Like so many women put in the same position, my mother felt no choice but to abandon her home and support system for a man who only used the opportunity to further isolate her.
“If you were to keep it,” she goes on, “you could raise your own family there and make new memories. Future generations would be able to enjoy a legacy property without any of the… connotations you associate with it.”
I stare at her as my heart starts punching out a hectic pulse I feel in my temples.
“Connotations?” I repeat weakly. It’s a politician’s blanket word for all the suffering that happened in that house.
I understand why she doesn’t want to name it.
But after weeks of struggling to keep the real story from Gracie and years of hiding it from Henry, it’s intolerable that the one person I can be open with is trying to spin the truth into something more palatable.
“It’s called domestic abuse, Mom.”
At my quiet voice, her mask falls. Her gray eyes are suddenly older, lined from holding back more pain than any one lifetime deserves. “Selling Larkwood won’t rid us of the past,” she argues, voice constricted.
I bite my lips together and close my eyes. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also can’t help being frustrated by her rose-tinted phrasing. After a moment, I force myself to meet her gaze. “But it isn’t just the past. You’re still with him.”
The set of her square jaw hardens, and every instinct I have says to backpedal. I know better than to push her into talking about this if she’s not willing, but after the week I’ve had, I’m floundering—clumsily stomping on all the eggshells I usually tiptoe around for her.
“That’s none of your concern,” she says, and I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a wail that I have to stifle in response. Concern for her safety and well-being has been the thesis of my life.
At whatever my face is doing, she hurries to explain, “You don’t live under our roof anymore. You don’t know how hard your father has worked to—”
“To what?” I cut in. Stop lights and emergency sirens scream to life in my brain, but the words shoulder their way past all of them. “Only bruise you in places you can cover up with a pantsuit?”
She flinches like I’m the one who’s raised a hand to her, and regret is a monster that swallows me in one toothy gulp.
We stare at each other, frozen, because I fucking know better.
I know better than to take my anger at him out on her.
None of this is her fault, but blood is still roaring in my ears.
I’m on the verge of apologizing when she speaks.
“I’ve told you, he doesn’t do that anymore. ”
I’ve barely managed to wrestle down my anger when it seethes back to life at her quiet lie, rippling beneath my skin in sickening waves. It takes all my power to redirect it to the correct target. I know her words are born from a place of protection, but tonight, I feel pushed past my limits.
“No?” I ask, setting my wineglass down with a clatter. “So you’ve been seeing a couples counselor, he’s in anger management, and you don’t have to wear long sleeves at all your press conferences, like last summer?”
A dull red flush creeps into her pale cheeks. “This isn’t a conversation I’m going to have with my child. You’re not responsible for saving me, and villainizing your father isn’t helping your case.”
“My case for what?” I ask desperately. “Wanting to see my mother safe and happy for once in my life?”
She sets her own wineglass down on the coffee table a little too hard, and I know I’ve gone too far. “Is this how you are with your pro bono clients? Judging them for decisions you couldn’t possibly understand?”
The question twists the blade that’s been embedded in my chest since the first time I saw my father’s hands become weapons.
Of course I know it’s complicated. I happen to know it takes, on average, seven attempts to leave an abuser for good.
Many people, like the woman seated across from me, never try at all, and it’s not because they’re weak.
They face the threat of retaliation. Concern for their children.
Income and resource obstacles. Emotional dependency, and a thousand other reasons.