Chapter 1 #3
“Yeah, she can be angry all she wants. Sometimes certain things are necessary for my own physical healing and well-being,” Riley declared, frowning at his brother. “I’m hoping you understand that.”
“Now that I see you, I understand it completely,” he shared, with a sigh.
“This won’t take long, so don’t leave me here with no wheels.”
Jeremy nodded. “It’s also why Sandy and I went all in and bought a place of our own a few months back. I was hoping to save up more before we did that, but there was just no way that we could continue to live with Mom. I’m guessing that decision may have saved my marriage, … as well as my sanity.”
Riley laughed. “I can tell you right now that it absolutely did.”
With that, Jeremy turned off the engine. “You better get ready.”
At that moment, the front door opened, and his mom, bigger and rounder than he remembered, barreled out of the house, but the love on her face was still there.
He sighed and muttered, “Oh, man, I know she loves me, but sometimes …”
“I know,” Jeremy agreed. “She needs boundaries, … that’s all.”
Riley hopped out and walked toward his mother, who raced toward him. He laughed, opened his arms, and she threw herself at him and just wouldn’t stop crying, yelling, and calling him her baby.
When he finally stepped back, she tried to grab him again, and then she immediately turned to Jeremy and asked, “How bad was it to get him to the car? Did he need a wheelchair? Is he okay? What do we need to do to help him?”
Immediately Riley stepped back and called out, “Mom, stop it!”
She looked at him and blinked.
His tone may have been a little on the curt side, but he also knew that, with his mother, although it came from love, she could be suffocating, and this wouldn’t go well if he didn’t take a stand—immediately.
In the background, he saw another man standing there, watching the two of them. Riley explained to his mother, “I know you mean well, but I am just fine.”
She blinked again, her gaze going from one son to the other.
Riley shook his head. “If you’re going to start that smothering crap, I’m leaving.”
She gasped in horror, and even Jeremy winced.
Riley continued. “Now you need to hear me, and you need to understand me when I say that I will go find another place to stay if you carry on like this. If you cannot accept that I’m totally fine and that I’ve recovered from what happened, and that I don’t need mothering or smothering, then I won’t stay here.
I can’t stay here. I’ll meet you at a coffee shop or something occasionally, but that’ll be the extent of it. ”
She swallowed several times, looking at him as if she couldn’t quite believe he was speaking to her like that.
He nodded. “I love you dearly, but I cannot handle being treated like an invalid who has no value and who can’t do anything for himself.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, immediately cutting her off. “Yes, you did.”
She closed her eyes, and her partner walked down to join them. Riley nodded at him and reached out a hand. “I’m Riley.”
“I’m Gary,” he replied.
Riley looked back at his mom to ensure she was in agreement.
Gary spoke to her now. “Lily.”
She turned to look at him, but the shock on her face wasn’t something she was ready to let go of yet.
“We talked about this, Lily. We talked about it when you were down there, when you came home from the hospital, and we talked about it when we heard he was coming home,” Gary reminded her, his tone smooth. “Now you need to respond and to respect his space.”
She shook her head, but Gary put his hand on her shoulder. “You have to,” he stated. “This is not how you treat a man. He is not your little boy anymore. He’s, what, thirty-four?”
Riley nodded as he looked at his mom. “Exactly,” he agreed. “I love you, Mom, but no more of this.”
She raised a hand, took a few deep breaths, then she turned and announced, “In that case, make your own damn coffee.”
He burst out laughing. “I fully intend to.” He looked over at Gary and added, “Nice to meet you.”
Gary nodded. “She’s really, really struggling.”
“Well, she doesn’t need to on my account,” Riley declared, “because I’m fine.”
“I can see that, but something about your accident triggered …” Gary hesitated.
Riley nodded. “Triggered everything about my father’s accident.
I know,” he stated, “but I was in rehab and wasn’t in a position to deal with her while she was going through that.
She has to do that all on her own. Just as I was dealing with plenty of my own shit, and that was best dealt with on my own as well. ”
Gary smiled. “And it seems like you have. Are you back on active duty?”
“No, I’m on a medical discharge,” he shared, “but I do have a job that I’ve been sent to do that’s not very far from here. It’s not active duty, but it’s good work that I’m happy to do.”
Gary shrugged. “I’m not sure how that works,” he admitted, his smile still evident. “I was in the US Air Force for quite a few years, so I do kind of understand.” He glanced toward the front door that had been left open. “She will come around, but it’s taking her a bit of time.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I had to kick her out of the hospital,” Riley declared, his tone hard, “because it was just too much and not any of it good for me.”
Gary smiled. “All for the love of a good woman.”
“Yeah, if you say so,” Riley muttered, followed by a chuckle.
They walked inside, including Jeremy, who remained silent throughout this reunion. Mom was there, carefully avoiding anything about Riley. He looked at her and repeated, “Mom, I’m fine.”
Her face was pinched as she glared at him. “You wouldn’t let me stay.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he snapped, “and, if you would just think about it, you would understand why. Your anger about that is why you are still acting this way now.”
“I’m your mother. I should have been there to look after you.”
“But you weren’t looking after me,” he corrected her immediately, shaking his head. “You weren’t doing what was right for me. Trying to get them to go easy on me was the last thing I needed in that situation.”
“But—”
“You were doing what was right for you,” he pointed out. “Once I sorted that out, I realized that it had to stop. I needed to be pushed hard. I needed to believe I could do it. Alone. Nobody but me could do my rehab.”
She glared at him.
“Mom, my accident was not what happened to Dad. You couldn’t fix what happened to him either,” he snapped, staring at her.
“So, you were desperately trying to fix what happened to me. Yet giving the hospital staff a bad time and coddling me wouldn’t fix me.
The reality was, you were making it worse.
Now listen to me. If you haven’t gone to get therapy over Dad’s accident yet, then maybe you should. ”
She gasped and stared at him, but he wouldn’t relent. “I know nobody ever says it out loud because nobody wants to upset you,” he added, with a gentle smile. “However, I won’t pull any punches, particularly if I have an adult relationship with you from this day forward.”
Her face paled, and she glanced over at Gary, who just stood there watching her calmly.
“I’ve already told her that she needs some therapy,” Gary shared, “but she’s fighting it.”
“Of course she is because that means opening up to some of the most vulnerable parts of her world.” Riley walked over and gave his mom a hug.
“Yet she’s strong, and she can handle it.
However, it takes courage to actually take that step,” he told her.
“I know you can do it.” He looked down at her with a cheerful smile.
“So, now that we’ve gotten that all out of the way, any chance of a cup of coffee? ”
She looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, I can manage coffee.” And, with that, she turned toward the kitchen, and the worst of the storm appeared to be over.
Gail hadn’t meant to drive past Riley’s house. It was a habit that her car seemed to have adopted over her own commands. She almost hit the brakes in shock as she saw Riley get out of the truck beside Jeremy, just to be engulfed in a big hug from Lily Combs.
His mother was larger-than-life. Gail had often loved Lily for that quality, but it could also be a bit much at times.
Generally, Gail and Lily had enjoyed a really good relationship, up until Gail’s life had spun out of control. Even now that Gail was living her new life, it was hard to see Riley in that brief moment.
He looked good though. Healthy, strong, and vibrant, and, from the sounds of it, giving his mom hell.
Gail had slowed down almost immediately, trying to decipher what she had just seen, because Riley hadn’t been home in many years. She would have heard about if he had been. He wasn’t stationed anywhere nearby that she had learned either.
His job with the US Navy came with its inherent transient nature to move Riley wherever.
That had always been one of her problems with their relationship, afraid he would be transferred at any moment to the primary hub for War Dog training in Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas—a joint base setup, as far as she remembered.
Even to be transferred to Coronado was still over 1,000 miles away from her in Oregon.
Riley had shared how the SEALs special ops training with War Dogs could be anywhere, usually with fewer details shared with the public.
Maybe so, she thought, but still Riley couldn’t pick his location.
To save her sanity from all that worrying, she finally had to recognize early on in her relationship with him that this was who she was dating, then marrying—a military man.
Yet they had been lucky. Riley, even though enlisted in the US Navy, had been stationed in Portland, working out of the Portland Air National Guard Base at Portland International Airport in a joint K9 training effort to participate in missions, including drug interdiction and NORAD air defense.
So, in the end, it didn’t matter how she felt about it because this was who he was, and service to his country was important to him. Plus, he loved working with those dogs.