33. Hard To Ignore
33
HARD TO IGNORE
C harlotte jumped when she heard her ringtone going off playing an electronic version of “Ding-dong! The Witch is Dead.”
She picked up her phone to see her mother was calling. Not that she needed to see the name because that was the only person with that ringtone.
Cruel on her part?
Probably. But it was a reminder to her that she was on her own and she was fine with it. The mother she once wanted or had was dead in her eyes.
What was left was a woman who was a blood relation and not much more.
But since she hadn’t talked to her mother in over a year, she did answer. Maybe it was important.
“Hi,” she said.
“Charlotte. It’s your mother.”
“I know,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’d be better if my children didn’t shut me out of their lives,” her mother said.
She rolled her eyes and wished she’d let this go to voicemail. “I believe you took that first step.”
“What Amanda did has no reflection on our relationship,” her mother said. “It’s in the past and she can’t let it go.”
Something in her snapped. “She was seventeen and pregnant and you were embarrassed for the family. You begged her to get an abortion and she wouldn’t. And when she found out the baby had no heartbeat and still had to deliver, you showed no compassion for her at all. You berated her as she went through childbirth and had to look at her stillborn child. Your granddaughter. It’s no wonder she left days later.”
“I’m not going to hash this out with you again,” her mother said. “You only know one side of it. You were fifteen years old and don’t understand it.”
“I understand what I need to know,” she said. “Why did you call?”
“I just found out Amanda had another child,” her mother said. “The least you could have done was tell me that. I feel like a fool that I had to find out at a charity event.”
“It’s not my job to tell you what is going on in Amanda’s life. If she wanted you to be part of her life, she would have let you in. She would have been in communication with you.”
“You mean like you’ve been?” her mother asked.
“The phone works both ways, Mom. Your treatment of your daughters is hard to ignore.”
“Don’t start to act like your sister,” her mother said. “You never used to be that way.”
“I know the truth. That is all I need to know,” she said. “I’m acting the way I feel I should be for me. What I need to do to protect myself.”
“You’re being dramatic,” her mother said. “Stop it, right now.”
“Mom,” she said. “I’m going to hang up. I don’t need this in my life.”
“Don’t,” her mother said. “I’m sorry. What is going on in your life? I thought things were wonderful with Landon. The last boyfriend before him, he wasn’t right for you. He was too old.”
Her mother barely knew about her relationships and most of the time she found it out through social media searches and then put her own spin on them for her country club friends.
“Landon and I haven’t been together for almost a year,” she said. “I left him.”
She wasn’t sure why she was explaining that other than she didn’t want her mother spreading false news.
“Why would you do that? He seemed like such a nice man. Just what you need in your life.”
“You don’t know what I need in my life,” she said. “You never did.”
“You need someone to take care of you,” her mother said. “You need constant praise and validation and always did. That is why you struggled so much as an adult. I gave it to you, but your father didn’t. When you left for college you started to rebel and that was your downfall.”
Charlotte hated the truth of her mother’s words.
Her mother did give her validation and she needed it as a child. But it was the wrong kind.
When she went to college, she started to see all the things she could do on her own if she put her mind to it.
Years of dating the wrong men had her falling into the role of needing to be cared for.
Not anymore.
She was doing a darn good job of taking care of her life now.
“My downfall in your eyes is what pushed me to be who I am today. Mom, I’m hanging up.”
She didn’t give her mother a chance to say another word and tossed her phone on the counter.
It wasn’t worth arguing and getting worked up.
“Marco, do you want to go for a walk to the beach?”
Marco stretched under her desk where he’d been sleeping. The clock on her computer said it was two and she’d been working since four this morning when she had to get on a video call for a client overseas.
She missed lunch but found she wasn’t hungry either.
What she needed was time and space to figure her life out.
That and her sister.
She tucked her phone in her pocket and walked to Foster’s beachfront and took her normal seat on the bench.
The breeze was warm but not as bad coming off the water.
She took a few calming breaths and started to think about her life.
She shouldn’t bug her sister, but she needed to know if she was overreacting and sent her a text to let her know when she could talk.
It was twenty minutes later when her phone rang in her pocket.
“Hi, Amanda. Is it a bad time?”
“No,” Amanda said. “What’s going on?”
She didn’t want to upset her sister, but she’d have to say she spoke to their mother to get to where she was going. “Mom called me.”
“That says enough right there,” Amanda said. “Why?”
She was going to omit the part about Amanda having another baby. It didn’t need to be said. “She said it’d been over a year since we talked. I thought I was clear the last time but guess I’m never clear enough.”
“Why did you answer it then?” Amanda asked.
“Because I’m weak. I thought maybe there might be an emergency. I don’t want to be completely cold.”
“I understand,” Amanda said. “I have moments where I wonder if I should let them see or meet Liam and Harper and then I say, nope. I’m happy in my life and them coming back into it would take that away. My kids don’t need them.”
“No,” she said. “They don’t. They have Drew’s family.”
“They’ve got their Aunt Charlotte too,” Amanda said. “It’s all they need from my side.”
She smiled. “I want your happiness and independence. Why can’t I get there?”
“Oh, honey,” Amanda said. “What happened between you and Foster?”
“Nothing major,” she said.
“Then I don’t understand,” Amanda said.
“There was one incident last weekend, but I think it’s over. I’m not even upset about it now either.”
“Tell me about it,” Amanda said.
She told her sister about Landon’s visit, Foster’s reaction, then Landon’s threat.
Since it’d been silent and they had a video of what Landon had done, she was pretty sure her ex was smart enough to not make waves as it’d make him look bad if it came across as how desperate he was to the point he couldn’t take no for an answer.
“I think that’s sweet that Foster stood up for you and then immediately wanted you to learn how to protect yourself if he wasn’t around.”
“Honestly, that might have been the part that lessened so much for me,” she said. “He knows I want to do things on my own. He doesn’t think I’m completely helpless even when everyone else does. Mom brought it up again and I think it set me off.”
“She has a way of setting everyone off,” Amanda said, laughing. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“I try not to, but it got me thinking about one thing.”
“What’s that?” Amanda asked.
“That as much as I love Foster and he says he feels the same way, he hasn’t said the words.”
“So you don’t believe him?” Amanda asked.
“I do believe him, but if he can’t say the words then something is holding him back. Do I want to be in another relationship with a person that is holding back on me? That can’t give me what I deserve? And am I selfish even thinking that?”
“You are absolutely not selfish,” Amanda said. “There are levels of happiness. Some of it is being content. You’ve been so guarded in your life for years.”
“You think I’m guarded?” she asked.
“You are. Maybe you don’t see it, but I do. Let me ask you something—in all your relationships with older men, you’ve said before you plan things out, right? What to wear. How to act. What you need to do in their presence so that you keep them happy?”
“It sounds horrible when you say it like that,” she said.
“I’m not trying to make you feel horrible,” Amanda said. “I’m trying to get you to see what I see.”
“Then yes, all those things were done,” she admitted.
“Which means that you were never yourself. You were content in those relationships. When you tried to have your true self come out, the guys pushed back. Or as I said months ago, you gave in to not create any ripples. It set the tone in your relationships.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It did. And I made sure that didn’t happen this time with Foster, and yet, I’m falling back into that pattern by not asking him why he won’t say the words to me. What could be holding him back? I haven’t told him I loved him again because I didn’t want him to think I was putting pressure on him. That’s on me.”
“It is on you,” Amanda said. “But what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I think I need a break. I need some space to figure it out. When I see him and I’m with him, I like how I feel and then I say it’s not a big deal that he doesn’t say the words.”
“It is a big deal to you if you feel he’s holding back. Don’t diminish your own feelings, Charlotte. You’ve done that too much in life. It’s time to stand up for yourself in every aspect you can.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s time to put me first.”