Chapter 8 #2
“Not good, not good at all. I probably don’t have a job.
In fact, I had my business vehicle towed to the office.
Last night I made a run to the office to retrieve anything I still wanted.
I don’t plan to go back. If the car being returned to the parking lot doesn’t register with my father, the resignation email I sent last night should fill in the blanks.
Mom threatened me with being disowned, just what they did to Debbie.
I told her, go right ahead. She couldn’t buy me.
Then Peter finally called after avoiding me for days, and I broke off our engagement,” she declared, then broke into laughter.
Riley nodded. “If that’s all it took, he’s not much of a fiancé.”
“Well, the good news is, I think I did grow from this mess,” she muttered. “For the record, I am incredibly ashamed of who I was.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “There’s nothing quite like lying in a hospital bed, staring out at the world, all alone because you’ve chosen that.
And I’ll have to explain that in a minute, but it makes you think.
It makes you look back on everything that’s gone on in your life, wondering if certain things hadn’t happened, would you still be who you are today?
So, I get that there’s an awful lot of animosity in your heart right now, plus shock, anger, and probably a lot of self-recrimination. ”
“Self-loathing,” she corrected. “I think that’s the primary thing right now,” she said, then took a moment. “My parents, as much as I hate it, were being exactly who they are.”
He nodded and pointed out, “And it’s good that you can recognize that because they won’t change.
The fact that we can actually sit here in the same room and not be at each other’s throats is another huge thing.
To me it means that we are very closely aligned in terms of having taken the worst of what happened to us and trying to make something better. ”
“I’m not there yet,” she said, “because I’m still dealing with the betrayal.”
“Debbie did tell me that she had told your mother how she had lied early on, but your mother chose not to tell you. She did tell your father, who didn’t tell you at all either.”
She looked over at him and nodded. “That’s another betrayal that I find very difficult.
She was acting like she was there for me, but now I can see the poisonous little bits and pieces that she filtered through my brain about how you weren’t right for me and how you undoubtedly were having affairs while you were gone. ”
His eyebrows shot up at that.
She nodded. “And it wasn’t just once or twice.
It was a constant stream of small innuendos that I was in no shape to even begin to deal with because I was still hurting so much from what had already happened.
It’s no excuse for what I did, but it was a hard time to go through,” she shared quietly.
“And that’s no excuse, absolutely not, because there is no excuse.
At the same time, you’re right. I’m not that same person.
Otherwise, I would never have kicked my parents out of my life. ”
As she looked over at him, her lips twitched, and she added, “The cops came here.”
“You called the cops on them? For real?”
“My dad wouldn’t leave and raised such a ruckus,” she shared, and then she started to chuckle.
“You should have seen the look on his face when the officers escorted him out. He was furious, and I half expect him to turn around and buy the damn building so he can evict me. And I wouldn’t be shocked if he did. ”
Riley shook his head. “He might, but, if he wants any contact with his family in the future, that would probably not be the smartest thing.”
“I don’t think he particularly cares,” she declared. “Harold Reginald Montoya is a lot of things, but he’s not one to let things go easily. To him, it’s all about appearances.”
“Of course,” Riley agreed. “So, how was your mom today?”
“Awful,” she replied, her smile falling away.
“I mean, let’s get real. It was a horrible scene.
I was pretty plain-spoken about all of it, and she was equally plain-spoken about me not ruining a perfect merger by breaking up my current engagement and blowing up my life, all because I found out a little information that makes absolutely no difference.
And then she went into how I was so eager to blast you out of my life that I really have no right to have a problem with any of this right now because it was fully justified. ”
Riley shrugged. “Of course she said that. She needed you on her side because then you can become a robot like she is.”
“I don’t even know how they found each other,” she muttered, staring at him. “They’re both so much alike. They even think the same.”
“Well, they say somebody is out there for everyone,” he quipped.
Cain chose that moment to let out a happy woof. Riley laughed as he stroked the dog’s belly. Gail gave him a good scrub too.
“I can’t believe you found this dog. He’s been missing for a couple weeks, I think.”
“He seemed to have been looked after somehow in the tunnels. That, of course, is always the trick.”
“But who would do that?”
“I don’t know,” he conceded, shaking his head. “I’m still working my way through that.”
She gave him a knowing nod and asked, “You’re not gonna leave it alone, are you?”
He shrugged sheepishly and added, “It’s a bit of a mystery.
I want to get to the bottom of it, of course.
And this guy? I’m not sure where Cain will go because we don’t know if Timmy, the young man who legally adopted him, will be in a position to continue to care for him.
The dog needs space, exercise, and somebody to look after him, not to have somebody use and abuse him, block him in one of the tunnels. ”
“God, no,” she whispered, as she gave Cain a hug again and resumed rubbing his belly.
He stretched out his paws, one of them coming down hard on her shoulder, and she chuckled. “Apparently I’m already part of the furniture, as far as he’s concerned.”
“Yep, that’s about the way of it. I don’t think he’s slept much and was pretty traumatized by being dumped down there,” Riley said. “So, as far as I’m concerned, he’s in my care until I know exactly what happened and whether he’s got a good place to go.”
“Then what will you do?” she asked, with a wry look in his direction. “He’s not a small animal to be looking after.”
“No, and that’s all the more reason he needs to be with somebody who has land. So, I’ll just wait until I figure out about what happened to his legal owner, the young man in a coma now. Ultimately, I believe whatever happened to Timmy had an awful lot to do with what happened to Cain.”
She nodded, glancing at Cain, giving him more hugs.
Riley added, “However, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m worried about you.” She looked at him in surprise and then frowned. He added, “Debbie is also very worried about you.”
She shook her head.
He raised a hand, shushing her. “Don’t go shaking your head because you and I both know how quickly a pit of depression like that can develop into something that’s very hard to get out of.”
She took a deep breath. “Until now, I wouldn’t have understood anything about that.”
“And this is not the first bump in your life, but it’s another rocky, hilly, nasty patch.”
“That’s for sure.”
Riley stayed for a while, and then, promising to get back to Gail, he and Cain left for his mom’s.
He hadn’t even explained to Gail why his mother was an issue.
Although Gail knew his mom, so she might get it already.
He had a different kind of a control problem than she had with her parents.
Riley’s mother was not easily distracted.
As he walked into his mom’s place with Cain, she bounded off the chair and bolted into his arms. He held her close and chuckled. “I’m fine, you know.”
She stepped back, stared at Cain as if suddenly seeing him, then reached out to pet him, almost as if she needed a moment to gather her thoughts. When she could she straightened, frowned, pointed one finger, and opened her mouth to berate him.
He immediately interrupted her. “No, Mom. I’m not here for that.
If you’ll just yell at me or tell me that I’m a bad son for not letting you take over, I’m out the door.
I’m leaving.” Her jaw dropped in shock, and he nodded.
“Yeah, this is the new world. I will not in any way take that kind of verbal abuse. And make no mistake, it is abuse.”
She scrunched up her nose and shook her head.
He held up a finger. “Yes, it’s abuse. If you would deal with your issues through therapy, the therapist would tell you the same thing.
” She blinked at him several times, and he added, “So, if you want me to be anywhere close to this location and to see me on any kind of a regular basis, some changes must be made.”
She didn’t even know what to say and just stared at him in shock.
He grinned. “I know. Apparently that’s a bit too much for you.”
In the background, he noted the long, lean man standing there, but he had a smile on his face. “Hi, Gary.”
Gary nodded, reached out a hand, and Riley shook it. “I’m really glad you shared that, Riley. I’ve been trying to get her to understand that what might work when you were being raised, when your lives were intertwined by necessity, isn’t something that works for independent adults.”
“No, it won’t work at all.”
“You kicked me out of the hospital,” she reminded him, staring at him, then shook her head. “How am I supposed to forgive you for that?”
He snorted. “No forgiveness needed. You were damaging my ability to heal. You were treating me like a two-year-old when I needed to be treated like a grown man,” he told her, not pulling his punches.
“I know you love me. I know that you did it because you love me, but that is not what I needed. It’s what you needed, and I couldn’t help you with what you needed because I had to look after myself. ”