Chapter Twenty-Three
“Are you sure about this?” he asked me from where he sat, atop his coffee table.
His scowl was deep, this one denoting his unquestionable concern.
It made me want to kiss him right between the eyebrows.
“If by are you sure you mean is it time? Then, yes. If by are you sure you mean am I ready? No. But I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”
“I won’t lie to you—I’m nervous about leaving you here with that,” he said, nodding toward my lap.
I smiled, setting aside the book as I leaned toward him from my spot on his couch and reached for his hands.
“Babe—you’ve been looking out for me since you made me that first dirty martini. You have and no doubt will protect me from many things—but this isn’t one of them. I have to do this. I feel it in my gut.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to read it first?”
My smile stretched into a grin, and suddenly there was way too much space between us. I let go of his hands as I stood in the space between his legs. He tilted his head back, so as not to lose sight of me, and I took hold of his face and traced my nose down the length of his.
“I love you for offering, but no. I’m good.”
I punctuated my statement with a kiss, and he hugged me around my thighs.
“You know where to find me, should you need.”
I nodded and kissed him once more before we let each other go. He left me alone in his flat as he went to start his Sunday evening shift in the Parlour, and I returned to my spot on the couch. I picked up my copy of All the Shades of Summer —the edges of the hardback tattered after all the time it had been in and out of my purse over the years. I smoothed my hand over the cover and stared down at it for a moment.
Rory and I were still getting used to the idea of the two of us being parents. I knew it was happening, that there was a life inside of me, but it didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like anything. On Saturday morning, I called and set an appointment at the clinic to get another test—an official one. I was scheduled to go in first thing Monday. Rory was going to go with me. Maybe after a doctor confirmed, it would really start to sink in for both of us.
In the meantime, we agreed to keep the news to ourselves for a while—outside of Diane and Brady. But if I was being honest, I still hadn’t reached a place of happiness .
I was happy with Rory .
I was relieved the tectonic shift that occurred when I told him about the baby had resulted in declarations of love and a deeper sense of security in our relationship. I knew we still had a long journey ahead of us, but it was the peace that came with my confidence that the journey would be long which comforted me the most.
I was no longer afraid we would fall apart; that I would be the one to mess up.
He was becoming less and less of a mystery as the days went by—but it only made me love him more, not less. I was beginning to understand that knowing someone intimately and being known and loved anyway was possible for someone like me, and it held its own immeasurable value.
Rory was still choosing all over nothing —he was choosing me, regardless of the consequences, and I chose him right back.
Still, something was missing inside of me.
I wanted to feel happy about the life we’d made, but all I felt was fear. I didn’t feel maternal. I didn’t feel excited. I was just as terrified sitting on his couch as I had been sitting on the edge of my bathtub after I’d peed on that plastic stick.
For the first time in my whole adult life—I needed my mom.
All the Shades of Summer was written for me. A mother to her daughter.
I didn’t know what I would find inside, but I knew it was time I found out.
I cracked open the cover and turned to the dedication page.
To my daughter, the great love of my life.
I paused as Rory’s voice reverberated in my head.
Are you sure about this?
Turning the page, I took a deep breath and started chapter one.
I read it in one sitting, everything else forgotten until I’d reached the end.
And then I cried.
No—I wept .
That’s how Rory found me later that night, in a puddle of my tears.
He didn’t say anything but came directly to me and pulled me into his arms. I curled myself against him, fisting his shirt in my hand as I let it all out.
The pain. The anger. The resentment.
The sorrow. The disappointment. The longing.
I cried until I was completely empty.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Rory asked after I’d finally fallen silent.
There was no hope in sorting through the compilation of images which now resided in my head as a result of reading my mother’s book—images conjured by a woman who knew how to use the English language to paint the most beautiful picture. All the Shades of Summer was full of them, each one a depiction of what it meant to be a mother. And not just the kind of mother Maeve Nielsen turned out to be, but the kind of mother she wanted to be—the kind of mother she couldn’t be, no matter how hard she tried.
“She was scared,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and pathetic even to my own ears. Still, I continued, “And I—I can’t erase any of it. I can’t un-feel twenty-five years’ worth of hurt—but I get it. I get it, Rory.”
Shifting myself until I could see into his eyes, I confessed, “I am her now. I’m so scared. And what makes it worse is I know what it’s like—” I choked on another sob. “I know what’s it’s like to be the child of a woman that chooses fear over love—and I don’t want to be that kind of mother. I don’t want to ruin my child like that. What if I can’t do this? What if I’m just like her?”
He hesitated for a moment. Then, rather than answer me, he got up, scooped me into his arms, and carried me to his bedroom. It wasn’t until he laid me across his bed and lowered himself on top of me—pinning me so I had no place else to go, and no place else to look—that he spoke.
“I know you’re scared, sweetheart. I am, too. That doesn’t make you her.”
“But—”
“No. Listen to me—you are not Maeve Nielsen. You will not choose fear over love. It’s not in your nature. You moved across a bloody ocean on the wishes of a father you never met. That’s not fear. You were chasing love . And you found it in that bookstore. Even when the odds were against you, what did you do? You dug in your heels, you put in the work, and you turned that place around.”
“But—”
“I’m not finished,” he declared with a raised brow. I sealed my lips closed as he continued, “Your mother chose to go it alone. She didn’t have to. It might not have looked like a fairytale, but she didn’t have to hide you all your life.
“That’s not you. The fact that you’ve been crying over this for who knows how long—which fucking guts me —is proof that your heart works differently than hers did. You are not alone. Not anymore, and not ever again. That’s a choice you made. That’s the kind of woman you are.
“I don’t care what the future holds, I’m in this with you. And you can be as scared as you want to be, but I won’t have you believing the worst of yourself. Am I understood?”
I stared at him, wide-eyed. He’d never spoken to me quite like that before.
It dawned on me then just how much he hated to see me cry.
With his eyes still staring into mine unwaveringly—the rest of what he said began to seep inside of me, down to my very bones.
I wasn’t alone.
Not anymore.
Not ever again.
There were no more words left to say. He’d said them all. So rather than speak, I lifted my head off the bed, pressed my lips against his, and kissed him until I was breathless.