Chapter 13
Jeanie
“Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apology.”
—Eloisa Hobby
Jeanie paced the cobblestone alley behind the Nestled Inn, moving back and forth in front of the row of gleaming scooters. Several guests had exited, claimed a scooter, and zoomed away.
They greeted her, and she greeted them back as if nothing was out of the ordinary. As if her mind and body weren’t a terrible jumble of fear, worry, regret, and shame.
Luna’s question about the night of Jack’s accident had thrown her into a tailspin and Jeanie had lied to buy herself time. She prowled the B sunlight, sea breeze, and birdsong filtered in, sending Jeanie’s thoughts aloft.
How easily prayers and daydreams could take flight in such a sacred space! The chapel restored the soul with its simplicity and connection to the island’s beauty. Here, one could meditate on life’s daily miracles that so often slipped past unnoticed. A quiet hallelujah to the gifts of peace, nature, and joyful rejuvenation.
The chapel gave her rash hope.
Jeanie stepped to the altar, her footsteps echoing loudly in the still asylum, disturbing the peace. She cringed and quieted her gait.
At the altar, she kneeled and brought her hands up to pray.
But once in position, Jeanie didn’t know what to pray for. Forgiveness for sure, but it seemed inadequate. Grace? She certainly wanted that. Mercy. Yes. That was the one. She needed mercy.
She pressed her palms together, lined up her fingertips, and moistened her lips. Before she could pray, the chapel door creaked open, and a shaft of light fell over her.
Jeanie didn’t have to glance over her shoulder. She knew who stood there.
If this were a western movie, right now, the outdoor speakers would be playing the theme song from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly instead of the beachy stylings of Jack Johnson’s “Better Together.”
“Mother.”
The word was frost in the air. Footsteps came closer, rattling the pine floors behind Jeanie. She didn’t dare look back.
Her soul quivered. She had it coming. She avoided this moment for twenty-two years and believed she had escaped retribution. But no. The time had come. She bowed her head.
“What did you do?” The steely blade in Luna’s voice thrust deep.
Knifing Jeanie right in the gut. She dropped the prayer hands and clutched her belly.
Luna stalked closer to the altar. “You think God will save you? Is that it?”
Oh dear. This was much worse than she imagined! You can’t ditzy hippie-chick your way out of this one, Jeanie Vincent Montgomery. No? Rats. It was her go-to.
Time to own up.
Or risk losing Luna forever.
Her heart was thumping so hard and fast, Jeanie feared she might pass out. Take your lumps, take your lumps. This is it. No more hiding.
Drawing in a breath so deep it pushed a gulping shudder down her spine, Jeanie stood tall and slowly turned to face her daughter.
It took every ounce of bravery she could muster. Her knees knocked and mouth went dry. She dug her fingernails into her palms and braced herself for the hardest conversation of her life.
The light from the open door behind her daughter cast Luna in silhouette. Hands on her hips, she stepped forward, facing Jeanie down like an Old West gunslinger. Luna’s piercing hazel eyes seared her, their usual warmth replaced by icy betrayal that cut straight to Jeanie’s core.
Her stomach roiled and she wilted under her daughter’s accusatory glare.
The sun-dappled interior of the chapel, normally an oasis of tranquility, now felt jarringly incongruous—a cruel irony—as dark emotions churned within her. The island paradise had become her own personal hell.
“You knew.” Luna’s voice quavered, her lower lip trembling.
Jeanie wanted to reach out and touch Luna’s face, but the look in her daughter’s eyes stopped her. She stood rooted to the spot beneath the bell tower, terrified that if she moved, she’d topple over.
“You knew Dad was driving drunk that night. You knew Paul pretended to be driving and dazed from a head injury to save Dad from prison.”
Jeanie opened her mouth but could think of no words to defend herself. What she’d done was indefensible.
“You hid the truth from me.” Luna crossed her arms, chin raised in defiance, as if bracing for a blow. A blow that Jeanie had already inflicted through her lies. “You encouraged Paul’s lie and abetted him in deceiving law enforcement.”
A choked sob escaped Jeanie’s lips. The crushing weight of her lies—over two decades of accumulated deception—pinned her down and stole air from her lungs. Even the tropical birdsongs sounded like accusations in her ears.
Liar, traitor, deceiver.
Luna inhaled sharply, a single tear carving a trail down her flushed cheek.
“Sweetheart—”
“How could you, Mother?” She spat out the sentence with heated venom that pierced Jeanie’s heart. “You let me believe Paul was drunk and caused the accident! Your lies broke us apart and left him with a false DUI conviction!”
The knot in her throat tightened brutally at the anger in Luna’s eyes—anger Jeanie fully deserved. Luna was right—her deceit had destroyed Luna and Paul’s relationship and damaged Paul’s life forever.
She blinked back scalding tears.
“Dad was an alcoholic, and you knew it.” Luna clenched her fists at her sides. “Not only knew it, but you enabled him.”
Defensiveness grabbed Jeanie. “I loved your father, and he loved me.”
“Mom, you were trauma bonded to an addict. Your relationship was so codependent, it could be in the DSM. You were an enmeshed enabler.”
A heated flush of shame started at the bottom of Jeanie’s feet and rolled up her legs to her solar plexus, burning a forest fire straight to her heart. She didn’t know what the DSM was, but it sounded bad.
“Do you remember that wretched book you used to read to me?” Luna asked.
“Wh-what book is that?”
“The book you loved so much. The one that made me cry every single time you read it. Even so, you kept reading it. I should have known then how messed up you were.”
“I don’t know what book you mean.”
“The Giving Tree. The story about a tree that gives and gives and gives to the little boy and the boy never even thanks the tree. And then he grows up, cuts her down, and builds a house out of her and at the end, as an old man, he has the audacity to sit on her stump.”
“I loved that story. It reminded me of a mother’s love for her child.”
“I know you loved it. But it has nothing to do with your love for me. It’s the story of you and Dad. He took and took and took and you gave and gave and gave. Mom, stop giving yourself away before you’re nothing but an old stump!”
Jeanie couldn’t have been more stunned if Luna had slapped her hard across the face. Was that really the way she saw things?
“You met Dad when you were thirteen years old. You married him at seventeen. You dated no one else. You told yourself some fantastical story about your fairy-tale romance, but it wasn’t true love. It was just a toxic pattern. It was a codependent dance.”
Luna’s words held up a mirror to Jeanie’s marriage. A mirror she spent half a century avoiding looking at.
“For years, you denied Dad’s issues. You probably still can’t face the truth. I can say that because I lied to myself plenty about my own dysfunctional marriage, ignoring Herc’s gambling addiction, sweeping it under the rug, when I knew in my heart that things were bad. But I didn’t want to look. Couldn’t see it.”
Yes, maybe her marriage hadn’t been as wonderful as Jeanie liked to pretend, but she had loved Jack, and he had loved her to the best of his ability.
“What you say is true. I’ve refused to acknowledge it for a long time. It was easier to pretend everything was fine than to face the reality of your father’s addiction. But he loved you, Luna. So much.”
“I know that, Mom, but it wasn’t enough.” Luna hardened her chin. “When I was a kid, I had no security. No safe place to land. Not until my grandparents died, and you inherited the house. The Victorian was my only stable home growing up, and now we’re about to lose it too, because you are so desperate for another fairy tale.”
Luna’s words pummeled her because they were on point. Jeanie winced, and her heart thudded painfully in her chest. “I had an idealistic view of love, but I tried my best. I know better now, and I’m sorry.”
Luna didn’t speak, just stared at her hard.
It was too little, too late. Jeanie knew it. What a mess she made!
Her daughter stepped toward Jeanie with her eyes narrowed. “You covered it up. You made excuses for Dad. I thought you were blind to his spiral into addiction, but you saw it, didn’t you? And you didn’t care because all that mattered was keeping the status quo.”
Jeanie had enabled Jack’s drinking for so long, sweeping away the debris while turning a blind eye as he worsened each year. She was complicit. What kind of mother chose a lie over her own daughter’s well-being?
Jeanie’s own mother, that was who, and Jeanie was no better than Francine. Maybe even worse because at least her mother had been open about who she was—cruel, invalidating, manipulative, unempathetic. Francine Vincent embraced her role as a controlling authoritarian and never pretended to be anything else.
But that night, on the rain-slick road, Jeanie realized she would lose Jack if not for Paul. And Jeanie had acted like her mother. What she’d done to Paul showed her dark side that she inherited from Francine.
She herself had used an innocent and sacrificed not just her daughter but Paul as well to serve her own selfish needs. If she was ever to be redeemed, she had to face how she had so greatly impacted Paul’s life for her own. She was the villain here and there was no way around it. Paul was the victim and she the perpetrator.
Oh, she told herself a different story that night. She told herself she had no choice. Jack’s third DUI meant prison, and it would devastate Luna to lose her dad. So she gave Paul the whiskey and told him to guzzle it to protect Jeanie from more pain and to keep their fractured family intact.
And Paul had done it because he loved Luna, and Jeanie had let him take the fall without any concern for how her lies would affect his life.
But in the darkest depths of her heart, she knew preserving Jack’s secret meant keeping her greatest shame hidden—her inability to stop him from drinking. Her love was powerless against his addiction. She couldn’t face that, couldn’t admit that booze meant more to him than she did. That his addiction overpowered her. Hiding from it had seemed the only option and, in her cowardice, she selfishly put her own self-interests first.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” Luna scowled.
Jeanie wouldn’t deny it, wouldn’t double down as Francine would have done. In the same scenario, her mother would have deftly spun things around. Francine would first deny, then attack, and if Jeanie still stood strong—which, granted, was rare—Francine would play the victim, accusing Jeanie of awful things to justify her own terrible actions. But Jeanie would not do that to Luna.
“I have my reasons,” she said, “but it’s no excuse. None at all.”
Luna blinked. “Damn straight.”
“I thought I was protecting you. I didn’t want you to lose your dad. Instead, I destroyed Paul to save Jack.” Her voice cracked as her throat spasmed. “I’m so sorry, baby . . .”
But even as Jeanie spoke the words, she knew they were hollow, empty platitudes that could never undo the damage she wrought. She failed her daughter in the most fundamental way a mother could fail her child.
She had put her own needs first.
Luna plunked down in a pew then, as if her legs would no longer hold her aloft. She dropped her head into her hands, her back rigid, shoulders shaking with quiet, convulsive sobs.
Aching over her daughter’s grief, Jeanie wrapped her arms around herself, feeling small, alone, and adrift in a storm of her own making. She didn’t deserve an ounce of pity.
The full impact of two decades of lies hit her in that agonizing moment. She saw how one deception bred so many more, a cancerous web steadily spreading, silently contaminating everything it touched.
Each small lie intended to shield Luna had ultimately hurt her more. Cut deeper. Robbed her of trust and innocence.
And now, the damage was irreparable.
Luna’s youthful relationship with Paul, her implicit belief in their family, her sense of stability and home—all had been utterly shattered the night Jeanie protected Jack and convinced Paul to drink alcohol so he would fail the sobriety test. A wound so deep and jagged it couldn’t heal easily.
If at all. She saw now how evil her actions had been.
With trembling fingers, she stepped toward Luna, yearning to comfort her, to make amends, though knowing, deep down, that she lost that privilege long ago.
“Please . . . You deserved the truth. I should have told you before.” Squeezing her eyes shut, Jeanie prayed her daughter could somehow grant her the redemption she wasn’t worthy of. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Luna didn’t respond, just kept her head down.
Jeanie held her breath. She was close enough to touch her now, but she didn’t dare.
After an eternity, Luna raised her head and met Jeanie’s gaze, eyes bloodshot but her posture softening. Could Luna forgive her?
“I don’t know how to forgive this betrayal. Maybe I can’t. Maybe that possibility died the night you chose a lie over Paul’s well-being.”
Her words sliced into Jeanie, each syllable a new cut, laying bare the gravity of her failures. Luna was correct.
“You’re right,” Jeanie said through quavering lips. “What I did . . . it’s unforgivable. I betrayed your trust in the most profound way, and I treated Paul horribly. I took advantage of his love for you. I did that. I was far more than wrong. I was selfish to the core, and it is the deepest regret of my life.”
“I don’t understand how you could lie to me all this time.” Luna’s small, broken tone speared Jeanie’s heart.
Her fragility threatened to shred Jeanie’s last sinew. “I—”
“You know how much I loved Paul. What he meant to me. Why? Why did you let me kill that love? Why did you let us break apart? And why did you push me to marry Herc?”
“May I sit down?” Jeanie lowered her voice.
Without a word, Luna nodded and scooted over, leaving Jeanie space in the pew beside her.
Jeanie perched on the edge of the bench seat, unable to relax. She crossed her legs at the knee and angled them toward Luna.
Her daughter shifted away from her.
Letting out a soft sigh, Jeanie blinked back tears. She had no right to cry. She caused all this. “I was wrong. So wrong.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I thought I was protecting our family . . . but I destroyed your trust. I’m so deeply sorry.”
The silence swelled between them until Jeanie thought she might break beneath its immense weight.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. If I had known the truth, I wouldn’t have married Herc. Why did you champion that relationship, Mom? Was it simply because Herc was a Boudreaux and came from money?”
“That was part of it, yes,” Jeanie said. She was done fudging the truth. “I lived the struggle of being married to a man who couldn’t support his family. My wish was a different life for you. Paul—”
“Paul came from Vista Verde,” Luna said. “That’s another reason you didn’t tell me the truth. Admit it. You solved two problems by having Paul take the fall for Dad’s DUI. It kept Dad out of prison and got me away from Paul.”
Startled by Luna’s statement, Jeanie started to deny it, but had she? “If I did, it was unintentional.”
“But maybe subconsciously?”
She saw the truth in Luna’s eyes. Forgiveness would not come easily or quickly after such profound betrayal. The devastation was too raw, too vast. Jeanie had no right to expect instant absolution.
“It pains me to say, but it’s possible. I told myself I was protecting you. Keeping you safe from my mistakes. I didn’t expect the world to change so quickly. In my generation and all those that came before mine, a woman’s greatest aspiration was a successful marriage. It’s all our society let us have.”
“Mother, I wouldn’t have married Herc if I’d known Paul wasn’t driving that night, if he wasn’t drunk.”
“I know.”
“I did my best, but I couldn’t love Herc the way he deserved to be loved, because I’d given my heart to Paul long before. God knows I tried, but deep down, Herc realized he was my second choice. Here’s the big irony, Mom. Your lie convinced me to marry a man you thought would provide for me, but Herc left me penniless.” Luna gave a harsh, humorless laugh.
“You can’t regret marrying Herc. You wouldn’t have Beck and Artie without him.”
“That’s true and I can’t blame you for everything that happened,” Luna said. “I went through with the marriage. I stayed for nineteen years when I should have gotten out. That’s on me.”
“You would never have abandoned Paul if you’d known the truth. It is on me. All of it,” Jeanie said.
“That might be the case, but I can’t beat you up over it. Not if we want to heal. Hanging on to a grudge will not make our family whole.”
Jeanie could hardly believe Luna was ready to forgive her. She was unworthy of such kindness and compassion. “Do you mean it? Can you overlook the terrible thing I did? Can Paul forgive me?”
“Paul is the one who told me to go easy on you.”
Jeanie couldn’t hold back the tears any longer as her eyes sprang leaks. She was a sad, foolish old woman who’d caused her own suffering. “Did he?”
“Paul’s a good man. He always has been.”
Jeanie felt so horrible about all the heartache she caused. “I know.”
Luna held her arms out, and Jeanie sank into her daughter’s embrace. They hugged each other and sobbed together. Despite everything, it seemed Luna believed Jeanie had some kernel of good inside her. She clung to her daughter, her only port in this storm of her own making.
They stayed locked in the embrace for a long time before Luna leaned back to look at Jeanie. The encouraging expression on her dear face belied her bone-deep exhaustion.
“I don’t know if I can ever fully forgive you, but if I let this destroy the goodness inside of me . . . you’ll have taken everything.”
Jeanie reached up to cradle Luna’s face in her hands, both remorse and gratitude swelling within her. Her wise daughter had found the courage that Jeanie hadn’t.
“We’ll take it one day at a time,” Jeanie vowed, her voice hushed yet fierce. “However long it takes. You lead, and I will follow.”
Luna stared into her eyes, as if confirming Jeanie’s sincerity. Then she gave the faintest nod before pulling Jeanie close once more.
Their journey to healing would be long and fraught with setbacks. They both knew words could not instantly mend the fractured foundation between them, but it was a start. They could walk forward together, slowly finding their way back to each other.
If Luna could summon even an ounce of grace for her now, perhaps, in time, full redemption would come.
“You do know you’re not off the hook, right?” Luna said.
“Yes, I will do my absolute best to make amends to you, my dear daughter. No matter what it takes. I am committed to change.”
“No, not to me, Mother. You need to apologize to Paul.”