Chapter 14- JADE
The argument doesn't end that night.
It continues the next morning over coffee. It picks up again at lunch, circling back to the same points, the same fears, the same accusations. By dinner, we're both exhausted, but neither of us will let it go.
"You don't understand what that family is," Mom says for the hundredth time. "You don't know what they're capable of."
"Then tell me." I set down my fork, pushing away the food I can't eat. "Really tell me. Not just warnings and lectures. Tell me what happened with you and Olive. All of it."
Mom is quiet for a long moment. She stares at her plate, and I watch something shift in her expression. The anger fades, replaced by something sadder.
"Olive and I were roommates in Boston," she says finally. "We met at Wellesley, but we didn't get close until senior year. She was a math major, working at an educational company writing test questions. I was in the lab, running tissue samples. We were both just trying to figure out our lives."
I stay silent, afraid that if I speak, she'll stop.
"One day, she got a check in the mail. Anonymous. No return address. Sound familiar?” Mom's voice takes on a distant quality, like she's looking at something far away. "The exact amount of her student loan debt, down to the penny. Almost one hundred seventy thousand dollars."
The parallel hits me like a physical blow. Phoenix did the same thing to me. The exact same thing.
"She deposited it," Mom continues. "We didn't know who sent it or why.
A few weeks later, my friend Amelia invited us to Hawaii.
She was housesitting at this incredible estate on Maui, and she wanted company.
" Mom pauses, her jaw tightening. "The estate belonged to Nicholas Crawford. The man who'd sent the check."
"So you were there," I say slowly. "When Olive met Nicholas. You were with her."
"I was there for all of it." Mom's laugh is bitter. "I met James the same night Olive met Nicholas. We both got swept up in it. The money, the lifestyle, the attention from these powerful men who seemed to want nothing more than to make us happy."
This isn't the story I expected. I thought Mom had been on the outside, watching her friend make terrible choices. But she was right there in the middle of it.
"What happened?"
"At first, everything was perfect. James was charming, attentive. Nicholas seemed genuinely in love with Olive. We spent months going back and forth between Boston and Hawaii, living in this fantasy world." Mom's hands clench around her coffee mug. "Then I got pregnant."
I freeze. She never talks about this. Never.
"I was terrified," she continues. "James and I had only been together for a few months. I didn't know if he was ready for that kind of commitment. But Olive was so excited. She was there when I found out, holding my hand, telling me everything would be okay."
"What happened with James?"
Mom's face hardens. "I caught him cheating. Before I could even tell him about the pregnancy, I found out he'd been with someone else. And when I almost lost you, when I was in the hospital fighting to keep you alive, do you know where he was?"
I shake my head, my throat too tight to speak.
"A strip club." The words come out flat, dead. "Nicholas told him what happened to me, and instead of coming to the hospital, he went to a strip club. That's when I knew. He didn't deserve to know about you. He didn't deserve to be your father."
"And Olive disagreed?"
"She pushed. Kept pushing. Said you deserved to know your dad, that I was being selfish." Mom's voice breaks. "We had a terrible fight. She said things. I said things. And then I left and never looked back."
I'm reeling, trying to process everything. "So you and Olive stopped being friends because of me?"
"Because of him. Because she couldn't accept that I knew what was best for my own daughter."
"Who is he?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "My father. Who is he?"
Mom goes cold. Her expression shutters completely. "No one. He's no one. And that's the end of it."
I can see I won't get more. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
"But what about Olive?" I press. "You said the Crawfords destroyed her. If you were there, if you saw it happen, what changed?"
Mom is quiet for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is softer.
"It didn't happen all at once. That's what people don't understand.
It was gradual. After I left, I'd still hear things through mutual friends.
How Olive stopped working. How she stopped traveling back to Boston.
How her whole world shrank until it was just Nicholas and that estate and the role she played as his wife. "
"Maybe she was happy."
"Maybe." Mom doesn't sound convinced. "But the Olive I knew had dreams. She wanted to go back to school, get her master's degree, do something meaningful with her life.
The Olive who married Nicholas gave all of that up.
She became Mrs. Crawford, and that was enough for her.
Or at least, that's what she told herself. "
I think about the woman I met at the cocktail party. The cool assessment in her eyes. The way she moved through that crowd like she was performing a role she'd rehearsed a thousand times.
"And you think Phoenix will do the same thing to me."
"I think the pattern is already repeating." Mom meets my eyes, and I see fear there. Real fear. "He paid off your debts, just like his father did. He moved you into his house. He's isolating you from your family, from your friends, from everyone who might tell you the truth."
"I'm not isolated. I'm here, aren't I?"
"You're here because you had a fight. Because you needed to escape." She leans forward, her voice intense. "Don't you see, Jade? The fact that you needed to fly across the country to breathe, that's not normal. That's not what a healthy relationship looks like."
I want to argue. I want to tell her she's wrong, that Phoenix loves me, that what we have is different. But the words stick in my throat because some part of me knows she has a point.
"Phoenix isn't Nicholas," I say quietly.
"Are you sure? Because from where I'm standing, history is repeating itself."
"I'm not Olive."
"No, you're worse!" The words explode out of her. "At least Olive didn't know what she was getting into. You know, and you're choosing it anyway!"
The accusation hangs in the air between us, brutal and raw.
Mom takes a breath, steadying herself. When she speaks again, her voice is hard. Final.
"I can't watch you destroy yourself. I won't."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you have to choose." She meets my eyes, and I see nothing but steel. "Him or me. The Crawfords or your family."
I stare at her. "You can't be serious."
"I've never been more serious in my life. If you go back to him, don't bother coming home."
"Mom—"
"I mean it, Jade."
The tears come then, hot and fast. "So that's it? You're giving me an ultimatum?"
"I'm giving you a choice."
"And if I choose him?"
Her face hardens into something I've never seen before. Something cold and distant and utterly unforgiving.
"Then I guess I'll know where I stand."
She walks out of the room without another word.
I sit alone at the kitchen table, sobbing, feeling like I'm being torn in half.