Chapter 42
Gabrielle
“I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t think you’ll be here long enough. Why are you here?” I demanded.
“I told you. I wanted to see where you were living. You’re my daughter.”
“Well, you made it very clear that if I left school and moved away, you would have nothing to do with me.” My mother didn’t like the idea of me leaving school, and when I did, she cut me out of her life, refusing to see reason. Everything had to be her way or no way.
“Oh, Gabby, people say things all the time.”
“No, they don’t. Mothers don’t tell their daughters that they don’t ever want to speak to them or see them again.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry about that. I was hurt.
You leaving school like that was a blow to all of our dreams, Gabby.
You have your whole future to think of. You have such great potential.
I thought you wanted to be a journalist. You know with Kurt’s influence you could have a prime spot on NBC, but you need to have your degree. He can’t work magic.”
“How is Kurt?”
“Oh, Kurt is Kurt. He said to say hello. Anyway, when you stormed off like that with your hot-headed temper, well, I… didn’t know what to do.
Cutting you off seemed like the best idea at the time.
But Gabby, I miss you.” She looked around the house.
“You can’t possibly be happy here in this… place.”
My mother was a tool. A manipulative, snobby tool. I knew she meant well, but damn, I didn’t want to be a newscaster on NBC. “Mom, those are your dreams. Not mine. I don’t want a spot on TV. Not at NBC, not anywhere.”
“Well, you don’t have to be on camera. There are plenty of wonderful positions for journalists.”
“Mom,” I placed my hand on top of hers. “I know this is going to disappoint you, but I don’t want to be a journalist.”
“Of course, you do. That’s what you’ve wanted your entire life. Well, at least since I married Kurt and he—bless his heart—inspired you.”
“He did inspire me. He inspired me to pursue my dreams, but journalism isn’t my dream. It was yours. I want to write.”
“Exactly, honey.”
“No. I want to write novels, fiction. Romance to be exact.”
“Oh Gabby, be serious.”
“I am serious.”
“You can’t be. You can’t make any money writing novels. Look at the Internet. It’s full of starving authors.”
She was exasperating, and had the ability to shoot my dreams down with one sentence. “Maybe it’s not all about the money.”
“Well, whatever else could it be about?”
“Maybe it’s about the story, and the fact that I love to write them.”
“Well, you can do that as a hobby.”
“Mother. I already have a contract with a publisher. They’ve already sent me an advance. My book is due out this fall.”
“Seriously?”
I nodded.
“How much of an advance?”
“Forty thousand dollars.”
“That’s all? Honey, you can do so much better than that working for NBC.”
“That’s just the first book and doesn’t include the royalties. Really, Mother, this is none of your business anyway, but I have a contract and I will be getting much more on the second book.”
She scoffed and waved her hand at me.
“They’ve promised a hundred and eighty thousand for the second book.”
Her eyes lit up like firecrackers. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? That changes everything.”
I looked at her, unable to refrain from rolling my eyes. She was a piece of work for sure. How quickly she could turn when there was money talking.
“So, you’ll be able to move out of this…” she glanced around the living room, wrinkling her nose in disgust, “… place.”
“I don’t have any intention of moving.”
“You can’t be serious. What is it about this house, this tiny town that is so alluring? I hope it’s not that… that guy.”
By “that guy,” I assumed she meant Brodie.
And now we were back to the very reason I hadn’t introduced Brodie as my boyfriend.
My mother wanted me to marry some snobby, wealthy NBC executive who would no doubt cheat on me with every new actress in Hollywood.
There were several that came to mind who’d been to the house for the specific reason of meeting me.
It always infuriated my mother when I never showed interest in any of them.
I shrugged, unable to hide my feelings for Brodie.
I’d spared him the humiliation she would ensue upon him, but since he wasn’t here now to receive any of her snide remarks, I blurted out, “Yes. ‘that guy’ as you called him means everything to me. This is my life, not yours. It’s my choice what work I do, as well as who I make my life with. ”
She stood, holding her purse in her hands in front of her, her lips pressed firmly together. “Gabby, I want you to come to dinner next week. I’ll send a car.”
“Why?”
“I have some friends coming, I’d like you to meet them.”
I knew my mother, and when she said she had friends coming over and wanted me present, it meant a young, usually handsome, wealthy country-club bachelor.
One who spent most of his spare time on the golf course, making the next deal of the century, and who would no doubt bore me to tears about how he’d made his fortune or inherited it.
Most of them usually turned out to be even bigger snobs than my mother.
“Did you not hear what I just said? I don’t want to meet your friends. I am happy here. Brodie is my choice. I love him. You’re just going to have to accept that.”
“For God’s sake, Gabby, you know very well what I had to go through after your father died and left us penniless.”
“Don’t talk about him that way.” My dad may not have been the wealthiest man, but he’d loved me.
I’ll never forget what he’d told me when I was little.
He’d told me to always be myself and never compromise my beliefs and dreams to please someone else.
I hadn’t realized until that very moment that he’d probably been talking about my mother.
“I know you loved him, but I had to scrape and save every penny I made just so you could have new shoes to wear, or a new dress for school.”
I’d never considered our living situations to be as awful as she made them sound.
We’d always had a decent place to live. True, she’d had to go to work after my dad died, leaving me with the neighbors, but I didn’t think that was so unusual.
Tons of kids got dropped off at day care centers and neighbors while their moms went to work.
Granted, most of those places didn’t have a Thomas, but that wasn’t her fault, and there was no point in telling her now.
She went on with her self-important drivel, “We were very fortunate when Kurt came into our lives. I only want what’s best for you. I don’t want you to suffer the way I did.”
At that point, I’d had enough. “I think your time is up. Please leave.”
She sighed, then shook her head. She reached out to stroke my cheek with her finger, but I flinched away before she could touch me.
“Someday you’ll understand, Gabby.” She turned and walked out the door and strolled down to the car.
I watched as the driver let her in the back seat and then got back in himself before they pulled away from the curb.
Relief filled me as I shut the door, then panic set in. “Oh my God. Brodie!” He had to be furious with me. I quickly found my cell phone and called him, hoping he would understand why I hadn’t told her who he was to me, but it went straight to voicemail.