Chapter 73 Mo
Mo
Mo was proud of her work. It was a beautiful wedding.
She was deeply ashamed, however, of her family.
She was pretty ticked off, too.
She tried to let it go as she turned her back to her family and leaned against the bar with Deli’s glass of wine, sipping as she thought.
Deli was an adult. Maybe it wasn’t her job to get involved.
Maybe Mo just needed to keep her head down until her mother and sister got tired of cloudy skies and finally left her alone.
Lachlan was busily pouring shots at the end of the bar for a handful of rowdy groomsmen and cousins to take out to the garden, but his eyes kept darting toward the back door.
Mo knew the feeling. After a few minutes, she couldn’t keep herself from listening as Rosemary and Laurie kept speaking in hushed tones.
“Remember her birthday?” Laurie said. “I’m telling you, Mom, it’s like any time the attention is on me, Delilah can’t handle it.”
Mo had heard enough.
“What is Wrong with you two?” she demanded as she turned.
“US?” Laurie pointed her thumb between her chest and their mother’s. “We weren’t the ones so desperate for attention we would pour perfectly good wine all over ourselves Flashdance-style!”
“Laurie, you didn’t even pretend to be concerned!”
“Please.” Laurie rolled her eyes. “This is her new stunt. She practically lapped it off her chest.”
Mo’s jaw dropped. She stared pointedly at her sister’s cleavage, pushed up and tumbling out of her too-short, too-low dress. “Deli’s chest? Have you seen yourself today?”
Laurie studied a cuticle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mo mimicked her sister’s voice. “Ohhh, Hamish! Please! Sign my ever-so-aaaammmple bosom!”
“Really?” The word came out in an incredulous huff.
“Yes, really—” Mo began, but her mother cut her off.
“Girls, enough.”
Mo hadn’t heard her mother’s Because I Said So tone in so long it sent a nostalgic, yearning fissure through her heart.
Laurie balked. “I’m not doing anything! It’s Maureen!”
“Maureen, I raised you to be a lady—not a wine-wearing troll who says bosom.”
“Ha!” Laurie jeered.
“And Lorraine?” Their mother scowled at the neckline of the nude bodycon dress Laurie had squeezed herself into for a wedding in a pub. “Put your tits away.”
Mo chuckled as Laurie sucked in a sharp breath and stared at their mother with her bottom lip protruding. Another strange pang rang through her, lost and wandering—like a thing trapped too far in the future, unable to get home.
It sobered her. She took a few breaths. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
She could have sworn she saw fear pass over her mother’s face before it hardened into impassivity, but she hadn’t known her mother in a very long time.
“I know you’d hoped I’d die before this day, Maureen, but, alas, I am still your only mother. Don’t I have a right to see my daughter? See her life?” She paused and cast a pointed gaze around the small pub. “Doesn’t Lorraine deserve the chance to save her daughter from the same fate?”
All her life, Mo was not allowed to be angry. She wasn’t allowed to rage at the endless flow of small injustices with a mother who was never wrong, never the bad guy. If she confronted Rosemary, the explosion that followed would always leave her torn open while her mother would be unscathed.
So Mo had learned to smother the sparks that threatened to catch. She became a thing that couldn’t burn. Like stone.
It had been twenty years since she’d been forced to choose between leaving Beth behind or dragging her into her mother’s blast radius. The ghost of Beth’s plea rattled in the attic of Mo’s heart.
Let me in, baby.
God, Mo had loved her. They’d had such little time.
Why can’t you just let me in?
The flame tore through Mo, desperate for oxygen.
She glared at her mother. “Whatever rights you had to me, to my life, you lost. You have no right to judge me or the people I actually call family.”
Laurie stepped closer with a mocking laugh. “Ha! These people?” She sneered at Cairn and Hannah playing cards near the fire.
“These people,” Mo said, her anger rising, “would have never done what you did, Laurie. You were supposed to be my sister.”
Laurie jabbed a finger into Mo’s shoulder. “I AM your sister!”
Mo should have suffocated the flame and said something to pacify. But there, in The Wallflower, burning with twenty years of resentment, Mo looked her sister in the eyes and said, “You used to be.”
The sentence dropped between the three of them, landing on the floor with a deafening sound.
Mo caught Lachlan’s eyes from the far side of the bar, his body rigid and his ears tuned.
On another night, she would have been by his side to comfort him after the arrival of his brother and the fallout with Deli.
But they were both being hunted by their ghosts, and hers were threatening to ruin a wedding, wearing pub-inappropriate heels.
“Maureen, Enough,” Rosemary bit. Her whisper was a hiss. “What, exactly, are you accusing us of, Maureen? What new imagined slight have the great villains of your life committed to excuse your father and your betrayal?”
Mo snarled, “I will never forgive you—either of you—for what you did to Beth.”
Her mother’s cheeks paled. Laurie seemed to shrink. For one impossible moment, the three of them teetered on the edge of the world.
Then Rosemary McDonnell spoke, and sent them all falling.
“How do you know about that?”
No apology. Not even the courtesy to deny it. Mo should have confronted her that day so long before. There was so much she should have said.
“How do I know? We knew how awful people could be, so we were careful. Beth and I kept our life to ourselves. I only told one person where Beth worked and what she did.” She spun on her sister. “But you couldn’t just be my sister. You had to be Mommy’s Little Helper. Right, Lorraine?”
Laurie’s eyes narrowed, her jaw set and her head dipped like a thing stalking prey—her desperation consumed by resolve. Mo had seen it before many times in their life—the flip of a violent switch.
If Laurie MacDonald thought she might get hurt, Laurie aimed to maim.
She brought her lips closer to Mo’s ear and wielded her words like a blade. “I did her a favor.” She pulled back with slow control, studying Mo’s face to harvest the pain she’d sown.
Mo barely recognized her own voice. “What the fuck did you just say?”
A cheer rose from outside as the local band started a new song.
Laurie reared back for another strike. “Poor Maureen, always running from anything hard. You would have left her eventually. At least Beth still had some good years to give someone else.” Laurie sighed.
“You were always too much like Dad, you know that? But your hero left us to rot away in this excuse for a town while Mom struggled to give you everything. Everything. And here you are, limping around like some martyr, waiting to die alone . . . just like him.”
Her words clamped around Mo’s throat. She couldn’t breathe. She barely managed to choke out, “I’m not alone.”
“Delilah isn’t like you, Maureen. She’s loyal. Just because you never had a daughter doesn’t mean you can have mine. Besides, have you forgotten?”
Mo heard the phone ring behind the bar. Lachlan answered, then responded with a very sharp, “You want to speak with who?”
“You broke your niece’s heart. You left her, too,” Laurie spat. “Perhaps Deli needs to be reminded. This has gone on long enough.”
As Laurie started for the door, the knowledge of what was about to happen to Deli propelled Mo’s feet forward, despite the way her body fought to stay still.
Mo had to protect her. She wouldn’t leave Deli again.
A shaking, too-thin hand caught Mo by the wrist. Her mother trembled in front of her, silent and colorless, eyes so wide and vulnerable it made Mo sick.
“Maureen, I—”
“Are you proud of her, Mom?” Mo growled.
“Your perfect little girl is just like you.” She snatched her wrist away and stormed after Laurie as she disappeared through the swinging door.
Lachlan caught her eyes for a desperate moment as he slammed the phone back onto the receiver. She didn’t have time to explain.
Mo and Lachlan called her name at the same time.
“Deli!”