37. Mason Die on a Hill
MASON Die on a Hill
I would definitely consider my mother and me to be close.
But, at the same time, she tried to keep us at arm’s length in some ways, never made decisions for Parker and me.
I’m not saying she wasn’t pulling the strings behind the scenes.
But, on the surface, she felt it was very important for us to call our own shots.
Honestly, sometimes I wished she’d yanked a knot in me a little sooner when I was wallowing all those years.
But maybe it would have just made me resent her.
I knew it was highly possible that, when I went to find her, she would be with Elizabeth, which could be complicated.
Because obviously I couldn’t talk to her about what I’d discovered if that was the case.
But, to my surprise, she was alone in her rose garden, wearing her big sun hat with the ribbon tied under her neck and her gardening clogs.
My heart surged with love for her. I didn’t want to argue with her.
She was the only woman whose heart I would never, ever break.
And nothing broke my heart like being out of her good graces.
But Robbie deserved to know the truth.
I had racked my brain about how to find out what it was. But, short of a blood test, what would I even do? And I didn’t want to ask anyone else and stir this pot. So I decided the best thing to do was go straight to the source.
Mom smiled when she saw me. “My baby boy,” she said, kissing my cheek, holding out her hands to the sides to avoid getting dirt on me.
“I have to talk to you,” I said seriously.
She sighed and took off her gardening gloves. “Is this about the girl?”
The girl. My heart fluttered.
“No. Not about Daisy.”
She smiled. “Oh, good. Because I really like this one, Mason. I think she’s good for you.”
“She is good for me, isn’t she?”
No. No. I scolded myself. I was here on a mission. I wasn’t going to let her distract me.
Mom looked at me. “Well?”
“This is an inside kind of talk, Mom.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, wow. An inside kind of talk. All right.”
I let her walk first to the back door—like she’d taught me. She removed her clogs on the brick floor by her gardening sink and washed her hands, wiping them on the cloth she kept hung over the side. She continued across the hardwood threshold into her bright, modern kitchen.
“Would you like some lemonade? A drink?”
“Mom! Could you just sit down, please.”
She sighed and sat down on the banquette at the breakfast room table by the sunny window.
She undid the ribbon on her hat and placed it on the table, running her fingers through her hair.
How many times had we sat at this banquette to talk?
I thought for a second about Daisy, about how she’d never gotten this with her mother, about how incredibly lucky I was that I had.
She was here and she loved me fiercely and, even as an adult, I got to have this with her, see her most days.
Sometimes I wondered if I’d stayed too close to home, to my parents, if maybe it wasn’t healthy.
Yet I was seeing now that it was a gift.
But I needed to focus. I was mad at her.
“What in the world is going on, Mason? You’re making me nervous.”
“Mom, please tell me that you didn’t know about Robbie.”
She gasped and leaned toward me. “Know what about him? Is he sick?”
“No, Mom. He’s not sick.” I rolled the words around in my head for a second. Did this make any sense at all?
“Well then what, honey?”
I blew out my breath. “Mom, is he Tilley’s son?”
She furrowed her brow and reached over to take my hand. “Honey, are you feeling okay?”
I pulled my hand away, leaned back on the banquette, and crossed my arms. “Don’t do that, Mom. I know you know he’s Tilley’s son.”
She cocked her head, and a concerned look passed her face. For a moment, I wondered if I was crazy. “Sweetheart, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “Robbie is Elizabeth and Charles’s son. I was there when he was born too fast right there in Dogwood.”
“You were there when he was born right there in Dogwood,” I repeated.
“I certainly was.”
“So you watched Tilley give birth to him then.” I stated it like a fact, but I was starting to feel a little less certain.
She was so steadfast. My mother was a woman who valued honesty—but she would lie like hell to protect the people she loved.
She’d done it for me. And while, sure, she technically loved me more than Elizabeth, I knew Elizabeth was the closest person on the planet to her.
She’d burn at the stake before she’d tell her secrets.
I wasn’t even sure why I was here. I’d never get the truth out of her.
She sighed, but she didn’t argue with me, giving me the notion that maybe I was right. “Honey, where is this nonsense coming from?”
I knew better than to say what I said next. “It’s coming from Tilley, who just told me that Robbie is her son, and no one would let her keep him because she wasn’t married to Robert when he died.”
A flicker of recognition passed over Mom’s face, but she recovered quickly. “Oh, well, if Tilley says it, it must be true. I mean, last month she was dating the king, but for goodness’ sake, let’s put her on the witness stand.”
I leaned forward over the table, studying Mom’s face. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think this mock indignation is covering for Elizabeth, and I think Robbie deserves to know who his mother is.”
Mom smiled her smile reserved for something ironic. “Okay. Let’s just say—for argument’s sake—that Robbie is Tilley’s son. Which is ridiculous. But let’s play out this scenario.”
I smirked.
“So, Robbie is sitting down the street happily married to Trina with four rambunctious but lovely children. He talks to his mother every day; we all have dinner together once a week. Robbie has a great job and a wonderful life and has spent every day since he was born knowing that he was loved unconditionally by his well-respected, kind, good-natured parents.”
I knew where she was going with this, and it was annoying because I knew that she was about to make a good point.
“Okay, Mom. And?”
“And so let’s just pretend for argument’s sake again that Robbie is Tilley’s child. That Robbie, in real life, has a father who died before he was born, who never knew he existed, and a mother who, when that happened, absolutely lost her damn mind.”
My mother never cussed, so it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Also, Mom and Elizabeth always insisted that when we talked about Tilley, we cited that she had “delusional disorder,” which was what her neurologist and psychiatrist had agreed was the most fitting diagnosis, although maybe not one hundred percent “it.”
“If you were Robbie, would that set of circumstances make you feel safe and happy? Would knowing that your real father was dead, your real mother was delusional, and your entire childhood was a lie help you sleep more soundly at night? Would that be a kind and generous thing to do to a boy who’s practically a brother to you? ”
I was more convinced than I had been when I walked in here that Tilley was Robbie’s mother. But I was also seeing Mom’s point. Which wasn’t fair. I walked in here with my straight-and-narrow moral compass and now things were getting all confused in my mind.
Mom took my hand again. “Sweetheart, your concerns are unfounded. But, even if they weren’t, sometimes we make decisions that feel untruthful, sometimes we keep secrets, because we are trying to protect the people we love.
It’s hard and maybe it isn’t right in the black-and-white sense of the word.
But sometimes loving someone means letting them just be happy. ”
Sometimes I wondered if my mother had been to some sort of secret CIA school where she had learned to be this persuasive.
“Mom, I do not believe you.”
She nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. But what do you think Robbie is going to say when you go tell him that Tilley says she’s his mother?”
I hadn’t considered that. Really, I’d never planned on telling Robbie at all. I’d planned on Mom and Elizabeth feeling guilty about the secret they’d kept and telling him themselves. But if any people would die on a hill, it was those two.
“Mom, I know you know how to work me and everyone else. But I would like for you to know that I think what you two are doing kind of stinks.” I wasn’t allowed to say “sucks.” “And I think Robbie deserves the truth.”
“So do I,” she said evenly, smiling. “And he knows the truth. He has the same two loving parents he has always had. And that’s that.” She paused and said, “Who else was there when Tilley made this crazy confession?”
“Just Daisy.”
“Does she understand that Tilley isn’t quite right all the time?”
I nodded. Maybe my mom was right. Maybe Robbie didn’t need to know if his parents weren’t his real parents.
And maybe Drew didn’t need to know that Maisy was actually his child.
What good was that going to do? It would distract him from the recruiting sessions he’d worked for years to get.
It could potentially even ruin his future.
Maybe the truth wasn’t as important as just letting people be happy. “Mom, you’re infuriating.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why I would be infuriating to you for getting you off this ridiculous flight of fancy.”
I squinted at her. Tilley had seemed so in touch with reality lately.
Maybe that was what was confusing me. Had she said this last year, I wouldn’t have given it another thought.
Maybe I was putting too much credence in a few weeks of evidence instead of the entire lifetime I’d had before.
Either way, I knew that I had gotten everything I could—which amounted to nothing—out of my mother.
It was none of my business. I was going to shut my mouth.
For now, I was going to spend the night with a beautiful woman who, to my knowledge, had never lied to me. And I hoped she never had to.