Chapter 45
E verybody was dressed in black. I was at an outdoor chapel with walls of glass in Malibu that my mom loved. I looked down at my hands and they were speckled with age spots. I wore a black pantsuit.
Up at the front of the chapel, as I made my way through hordes of people, I stopped at the closed casket and gasped.
There was a large picture of my radiant mother on a wooden easel right next to it.
Someone handed me a program and I took it wordlessly.
It said, “In loving memory of Jacqueline Ruby Quinn.” My knees buckled.
I nearly fell to the pew behind me when I saw the date.
Twenty-five years since the last time I saw her.
Where had the time gone?
Looking at the program in my hand, I began to read.
Jackie Quinn was a loving mother, incredible friend, generous mentor, and a Golden Globe–, Emmy–, and Academy Award–winning actress.
Jackie was a self-proclaimed “late bloomer,” but when she landed the starring role in the TV show Starlet as a washed-up actress trying to restart her career, she became not only a Golden Globe winner, but a bona fide superstar.
Her career spanned twenty-five years and in that time, she became an icon. ..
I couldn’t read any more. My eyes were blurry with tears—a mix of unbelievable pride that my mom had achieved all her dreams and more and sinking, sour regret that I’d missed it all.
“I didn’t think you’d show,” a hardened voice behind me said and I flipped around to come face-to-face with Benny.
But it wasn’t the Benny I left in that kitchen all those years ago.
It was Benny at fifty, gray-streaked hair and very fine lines at the corners of her eyes.
She wasn’t smiling. She was assessing me like I might make some sort of scene.
“Where did the time go?” I asked her in a desperate whisper.
“I haven’t seen you in twenty-five years and that’s the first thing you say to me?” Benny said, in a ruthlessly dismissive tone. “Life moved on without you. That’s what happens when you leave people behind and never come back.”
“But I don’t remember any of the past two decades.”
“Not surprising,” Benny said, barely concealing her loathing toward me.
“Mom called you every week. You never answered. You left us and probably just worked until you forgot we even existed. I hope it was worth it. You didn’t even say goodbye to your own mom.
You broke her heart, but we survived. Not that you care. ”
“You told me to leave,” I cried. “That night. You told me to leave.”
“I was angry,” she said, voice rising. Several people looked over at us. “I never in a million years thought you wouldn’t come back.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t come back.”
“What?” Benny said. “You made the decision to stay away from us every single day for the past twenty-five years. What are you saying? That was your choice. You missed everything.”
“Mom had her big break,” I managed to say, my voice wobbling.
“Mom had a lot more than just her big break. She had the most incredible career. I did, too, not like you cared. Ravi brought me on as his tour photographer and I got to have the career of my dreams as a photographer. Alex won a James Beard Award for his restaurant, The Perfect Bite. Did you even know any of this? Did you not keep tabs on us at all? You really left and cut us all out? That easily? How could you, Charlie?”
If it was twenty-five years later, that meant I was fifty-five. Had I really left that night and thrown myself into work? Had I never come back?
“Oh, wow, he came,” Benny said, nodding toward the entrance of the chapel. “Another one of the broken hearts you left in your wake.”
I looked behind me and saw an older version of Alex, walking hand in hand with a dark-haired woman and two teenagers that looked exactly like the spitting image of both Alex and the woman.
My heart stopped when his eyes landed on mine.
We stared at each other across the thrush of people for one, two, three seconds before he shook his head and turned back to his wife and kids.
So he’d been ready to meet someone else, and all those years ago, I drove him straight into this woman’s arms.
I deserved that.
I deserved all of this.
“I’m sorry, Benny,” I told her. “I’m so sorry.”
She narrowed her eyes at me with a look I’d never seen her face make. Pure, undisguised hatred.
“Sorry?” she scoffed. “If you think you can come here to Mom’s funeral and beg for my forgiveness, you’re wrong. I gave you a million chances. Sorry won’t cut it. I will never ever forgive you for what you put Mom through. I will never forgive you for abandoning us.”
“Please, Benny,” I begged. “Please.”
“No.” She lifted her hand up to stop me and she walked away, leaving me in the aisle, alone. I walked toward the doors, like I was an outsider. Like I didn’t even belong here at all.
I deserved Benny’s ire, her refusal to even touch me, her lack of warmth.
Even seeing her a little broken was my punishment, like she was an orphan without any family, because basically, that was what she was.
My mom had called me for years and I hadn’t returned her calls, had never talked to my little sister again.
I’d driven away the man I could have loved and told him to meet someone else.
My entire life was spent alone. Just the way I supposedly wanted it.
So, why didn’t it feel nearly as satisfying as I thought it would?
Regret was a pain worse than heartbreak.
Regret was a sickening drop of your stomach.
Regret was knowing you could have changed it all, but decided, every single day, not to.
Regret was having to live with your failures.
Regret was ceaseless emptiness.
Regret was intolerable, a sickening reminder that the only thing you can never ever get back is... time.
And I deserved nobody’s forgiveness, especially the one person I wanted it the most from, who was now lying in a casket, without ever reconciling with the daughter that was her biggest wish in the whole world.
It was too much to bear. Leaving Benny and Mom that night, I told myself the pain of heartbreak hadn’t been worth the reward of love and beauty and aliveness and light.
How wrong I’d been. I knew that now. All I had left were regrets.
I wished I could go back to that night, make a different choice, stay, work it out.
But it was too late.
This was what I got for running away, for choosing the safety of isolation over the potential for love.
I loved Benny. Loved my mom. Loved Alex. I loved life . Loved life so much that sometimes it broke my heart. But that was the point!
Benny and Mom had been right—you need to give life every last bit of you, hold back from nothing, throw yourself at risk. Cautious living was no life at all.
If I could go back, I’d do everything differently. I’d try to repair what I broke. I’d apologize to Mom and Benny until they forgave me. I’d beg Alex to take me back, to give us the chance he wanted to give us.
Standing by the door, I was ready to leave again, tears streaming down my face. Benny was speaking at a podium at the front. She looked so tired. So worn and bruised. I wanted to go to her, hug her.
“I NEED TO GO BACK TWENTY-FIVE YEARS,” I screamed fruitlessly, but nobody seemed to hear me. “TAKE ME BACK. I NEED TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE.”
My vision swam, and my peripheral was shadowed gradients, like the walls were closing in on me.
I banged and banged on the closed door until the sides of my hands ached, cried until my throat burned, screamed, and begged, and pleaded with a God I’d never believed in.
“I NEED TO GO BACK.”
More banging.
Nobody heard me.
Nobody cared.
Nobody wondered where I was.
I was invisible.
And I deserved it.
The church started to swirl and blur, the people at the pews fading into blackness, and suddenly I was falling to the ground, and I heard loud voices, footsteps, beeping, sounds of what seemed to be a hospital at work...