Chapter 17 #2
Hallie tilted her head to the side, trying to figure out what her mom was even talking about.
What game? What jerseys? Just… what? Honestly, the confusion was a blessing because it stopped her from feeling so nervous.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and I find it really hard to believe that you need these items so urgently that I need to leave work. ”
“I don’t think I appreciate the attitude, Hallie. You don’t need to be so—”
“So what?” Hallie broke in, feeling her heart rate start to rise.
“Difficult,” her mom said, confirming the word that Hallie knew had already been on the tip of her tongue. She could hear the frustration in her mom’s voice, like Hallie was so clearly in the wrong. “Am I really asking that much? I can’t believe that you’re too busy to take care of this.”
It was a tone that Hallie had grown all too familiar with throughout her life. And, in this moment, all it served to do was make her dig in deeper, unwilling to cede an inch. She was so sick of being made to feel like her feelings were too inconvenient to even be considered.
The idea that “family helps family” seemed to be a one-way street.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep, steadying breath, refusing to let the happiness she’d felt only minutes ago be washed away.
“I’ll have time to go in a few days,” she said, trying to find a tentative middle ground where she held her boundary but didn’t close the door on her parents completely.
Progress was measured in inches, not miles.
Her mom’s scoff was like a muffled gunshot. Like disbelief had been fired point-blank at Hallie, and she jerked slightly in surprise. “That’s not going to work.”
Hallie picked up a pen on the check-in desk and began to twirl it around between her shaky fingers, willing herself to stay calm. “Well, unfortunately, it’s not like my family owns the place. I’m an employee here, and I have rules that I need to follow.”
Obviously, Reese wouldn’t care in the slightest if Hallie ran out for something, but that wasn’t the point. It was the principle of the matter! Her mom thought that Hallie’s time wasn’t as valuable as whatever last-minute request she needed to make happen.
“Is that what this is about? That we sold the inn?” her mom snapped. Hallie heard muffled sounds through the phone, like she was covering the speaker while talking to someone else. Probably her dad.
Maybe Mason, in his infinite wisdom, could teach them about the mute button one day.
“Since you brought it up, I’m not mad that you sold the inn,” Hallie said. “I’m hurt that you didn’t even tell me it was happening until it was already done.”
Her mom was quiet for long seconds before she said, “Well, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
And there it was. Another nail in the coffin Hallie seemed intent to fill with so much rotten proof that it overflowed.
What was it going to take for her to accept the reality of her relationship with her parents? Did they need to tell her in no uncertain terms that they loved her less? That they didn’t respect her? That her feelings were an afterthought, at best, in their own lives?
They’d been showing her for decades with their actions.
“It would have changed something for me. To feel included in our family, which is something that historically hasn’t been the case.” She rolled her shoulders, realizing how much tension had seeped into her frame. Just from this one brief phone call.
It was jarring to realize just how much this conversation was taking out of her.
Sensitive, dramatic Hallie. She knew the words that her parents used to describe her.
Because, shocker, of course a six-year-old didn’t understand why her sibling got to do things like join sports and go to summer camps and have sleepovers with friends and she couldn’t.
Why there never seemed to be enough energy and attention to go around.
Finally, her mom spoke. “I don’t know what you want me to say. We knew that you’d figure it out. You always do.”
“Because I had to figure things out, didn’t I? It’s not like you or Dad had any interest in helping me,” Hallie blurted out, surprised at the anger in her voice.
And yeah, she knew that she was angry at her parents. She didn’t need a feelings wheel for that, at least. But she’d tried to tell herself that she wasn’t the little kid anymore, the girl who needed her parents’ love and support to make it through life.
That kind of childhood—to need support and approval and safety and get it only in half measures—left indelible scars. Ones that Hallie had pretended had healed when, at best, they’d just scabbed over. She picked them open again every time she thought this next time would be different.
Before her mom could say anything, Hallie spoke again. She needed to get this out before she lost her nerve. “You know what, I’m not doing this.”
“What, going to the storage facility? I really need those jerseys, Hallie,” her mom argued, not realizing the cliff she was standing on with her only daughter.
Hallie shook her head, even if no one else could see it. “I’m not doing that either. I’ll be mailing you the key, and you can do whatever you want with it. But what I’m really not doing is continuing to put myself through whatever fucked-up version of a relationship we seem to have.”
She didn’t think that she’d ever heard someone audibly gasp the way her mom did into the phone. Because she never swore at her parents. Hell, she barely ever raised her voice.
But Hallie wasn’t done. She was on a roll, and it felt good to be so brutally honest, even if she’d regret it later.
At least, she didn’t think she could regret it more than doing nothing.
“You don’t see me unless it’s because you need me to do something for you.
And all that I’ve ever wanted to do is make you proud.
Hell, I would have just settled for being included. ”
She waited, wishing that the knot in her stomach would dissolve. Because even if saying these things was the right thing to do, it was still hard.
Really hard.
“When have we ever excluded you? You were the one who left the holidays early. Abruptly and awkwardly, I may add. It was a very rude thing to do to Mason and Claire when they opened their home to you.”
She rolled her eyes. Truly, it was like after they’d had Mason, any empathy that they could possibly have for Hallie had been emptied out of their tanks. “You don’t even know what allergies I have. You literally birthed me. What does that say about you?”
“What does it say about you, Hallie, that you think the world should revolve around you all the time? We were running a very chaotic business. And yes, Mason was a very gifted child who required additional attention from us, so you were required to be a little more independent than most children. Is that such a bad thing? You act like we starved you or something.”
This was good. Well, maybe not good, but it was important, at least, for Hallie to hear just how far apart her and her mom’s interpretations of her childhood were.
And she knew, finally, that it wasn’t all on her. Because she did have people who loved her and didn’t treat her existence as an inconvenience. People who, even when she wasn’t at her best, still showed up for her.
“It’s clear that we aren’t going to see eye to eye on things, so I don’t have an interest in being part of a family that continually makes me feel like an afterthought,” she said.
“If you decide, somewhere down the line, that you feel like you understand where I’m coming from, feel free to call me.
Until then, I won’t be reaching out, and I’d ask that you do the same. Goodbye.”
“Hal—” But the words were cut off as Hallie hung up the phone.
She let out a deep breath, steadying herself against the desk for support.
What in the hell had she just done?
A few hours later, as Hallie was finishing up her shift, the exhaustion from earlier still weighed her down. She thought that having that incredibly difficult and long-overdue conversation would have made her feel lighter.
And briefly, it had.
Now, though, the reality of what she’d done was finally crashing down around her.
She’d gone no-contact with her parents, and by extension, her brother, too. Her whole family, in fact. And there was no lovable, eccentric aunt waiting in the wings either. Her parents were both only children. All her grandparents were gone.
She was alone.
She was trying to make peace with this as she pushed open the door to her apartment, hoping that Brynn would be around so that at least she could feel the comfort of another human being. That would help stave off the sense that she’d done something horribly irreparable.
“Brynn?” she called into the dimly lit living room. She didn’t have the internal fortitude to accidentally walk into an ill-advised situation with her right now. Starting to cry would probably be the ultimate mood killer.
Except that Brynn popped out of Hallie’s bedroom, of all places, and Hallie’s eyebrows lifted reflexively in surprise.
And even though she was not in the best state of mind right then, it still caused a quick flare of heat to burst through her, imaging whatever Brynn was getting up to in there.
It was followed quickly by her whole body softening just at the sight of Brynn.
“You’re home,” Brynn said, and Hallie couldn’t pretend that she didn’t love the sound of that coming from her lips.
Hallie smiled, taking Brynn in. She was dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, and her hair was pulled back in this adorable stub of a blonde ponytail that Hallie loved to play with whenever they were watching TV on the sofa together.
Was comfort porn a thing?
Because right now, all Hallie wanted to do was lean into Brynn and let herself be held up.