Chapter 20 #3
Rebecca is staring at me, her face pale. Her chin trembles. A single tear escapes, tracking quickly down her cheek. She doesn’t wipe it away. She stares at her hands, knotted together on the table. “I deserve that,” she whispers. Her voice is shredded. “I deserve all of it.”
“You don’t deserve anything from me,” I say, and the truth of it is a cold stone in my chest. “Not my anger, not my understanding. You forfeited that when you had someone else in our bed and abandoned our daughter.”
She nods, a quick, jerky motion. She sniffs, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. When she lowers them, her mascara is smudged. “Leo, I was in a…a bad place. After Emma. A really bad place.”
She takes a shaky breath, her gaze fixed on a sugar packet she’s turning over and over.
“I was spiraling. I…I didn’t know that’s what it was.
I just thought I was failing. At everything.
I’d look at her in the bassinet and feel this…
this tidal wave of panic. What if she stopped breathing?
What if I dropped her? What if I loved her wrong?
” Her voice hitches. “She had colic, and she’d scream for hours, and I’d just…
sit there on the nursery floor, holding her, crying with her, convinced her pain was my fault somehow.
It was like my brain turned against me, whispering that I wasn’t cut out for this, that every other mom had it figured out except me. ”
She pauses, breath hitching, and I can see her throat work as she swallows hard.
“I remember I could barely produce any milk. Every time we went to the pediatrician and they weighed her, it felt like I was failing. Again. You were there, Leo, but you weren’t seeing it—not really.
Not how deep it went, how much I was drowning and needed someone to throw me a line. ”
I remember those days. The exhaustion so deep it felt like a physical substance in our bones. I remember her quietness. I’d attributed it to fatigue. I’d see her staring out the window while Emma napped, and I’d think, She’s just tired. She’s resting. I never saw the cliff she was standing on.
“I would’ve,” I say, leaning back, the vinyl creaking under me. “You could’ve told me. We could’ve figured it out together.”
Her laugh is bitter, short, echoing off the cafe’s walls where the alt-rock track fades into static for a beat.
“You were in your own world, Leo. Lectures, students—you had purpose, direction. I envied that, you know? It ate at me, because suddenly I didn’t.
You had a place to go where you got to be you, and I was just…
a milk machine who couldn’t even do that right. ”
She pauses, pulling a lace-edged handkerchief out of her bag and dabbing at the corners of her eyes.
“I felt…invisible. And then there was someone who saw me. Who made me feel like a person again. And I gravitated toward that feeling, selfishly, at your expense. At Emma’s.
” She folds the handkerchief into a smaller and smaller square. “It was wrong. I was so, so wrong.”
I watch her, and I feel this sickening mix of empathy and absolute, unadulterated revulsion. I can understand the darkness she was in, but I can’t bridge the gap between “I’m struggling” and “I’m leaving my child without even a goodbye.”
“So,” I say, the word feeling heavy and dry. “How’s Michael? Did the grand romance survive the move to Boston?”
She looks down, then out the window. A long pause. “We’re…not together anymore. We haven’t been for a few months.”
Shocker. The guy who helps you blow up your life isn’t usually the one who helps you pick up the pieces.
“So you left your family for someone who didn’t even stick around,” I say flatly.
Her face crumples. “I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds like you torched your entire life to the ground for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” she says quietly. “It was a wake-up call. It made me realize I needed help. I’m seeing a therapist now. I’m on medication. I’m trying to figure out who I am outside of being someone’s mother or someone’s girlfriend.”
“Good for you.”
“Leo—”
“What do you want, Rebecca?” I lean forward again. “Why are you here? Why now?”
“I want to be a part of Emma’s life,” she says, her voice gaining a sudden, desperate traction. “I know I can’t just…step back in. But I want to figure out an arrangement. Something that works for both of us. Weekends, or holidays, or…”
I stare at her. “That’s really convenient.”
“I’m her mother. I miss her every day, Leo.”
“But are you, though?” I counter, keeping my voice low, aware of the couple nearby scraping chairs as they pack up. “For the last nine months, her mother’s been nothing but a ghost. No calls, no postcards, no letters, nothing. Just gone.”
She swallows hard, the sound audible over the faint clatter from the counter where the purple-haired kid stacks mugs. “I’m trying to change that. I’m here now, trying to make it better. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“You’re trying too late.” The words are simple, final. “A good time to ‘try’ would have been before you packed a bag. Or when you were sitting at home alone. Or any of the mornings you woke up and chose not to call, not to write, not to ask how she was.”
She opens her mouth, but I don’t stop. The dam has broken.
“I have Emma to think about. Her stability. Her heart. And I can’t let someone into her life who has one foot in the door and one foot out, who can bolt when things get hard.
She’s been hurt enough. She’s asked me almost every single day where you are and when you’re coming back.
And I’ve had to look at her and tell her I don’t know, over and over again, until she’s finally stopped asking. ”
Rebecca’s face crumples but I keep going.
“So no. You don’t get to waltz back in here and ‘figure out an arrangement’ like we’re negotiating a business deal. This is my daughter’s life. And I’m not going to let you break her heart again just because you’ve decided you’re ready to play mom now.”
“So what?” Rebecca’s voice turns sharp, defensive. “I’m just supposed to disappear forever? Pretend I don’t have a daughter?”
“You already did that.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I almost laugh. “None of this is fair, Rebecca. What’s not fair is that Emma thinks her mother left because she wasn’t good enough.
What’s not fair is that I’ve gone through six nannies because Emma’s so angry she can’t help but lash out at anyone who tries to get close.
What’s not fair is that our daughter had to celebrate her fifth birthday without her mother because you were too busy figuring yourself out in Boston. ”
She flinches.
“You want to be a part of her life?” I say it slower this time, letting each syllable settle.
“Fine. Get a lawyer. File a petition for visitation. Show up to every hearing, every meeting. Go through the proper channels and prove to me—and, more importantly, to a family court judge—that you’re serious about this, about her.
That you’re stable. That the next time you feel yourself starting to spiral, your first call won’t be to a guy named Michael or a travel agent, but to a therapist, or to me. ”
Her eyes are wide, the pupils huge. “You’re really going to make me do that? Go to court? Over my own daughter?”
“Yes.” It’s the simplest, heaviest word I’ve ever said.
Her eyes sharpen. That soft, wounded-bird act she’s been doing for the last twenty minutes suddenly cracks, revealing something harder underneath. “You don’t get to unilaterally decide if I’m ‘stable’ enough to see my own child. That’s not how this works.”
“It’s exactly how it’s worked for the last nine months,” I fire back, not raising my voice. “You made a unilateral decision. Now you’re dealing with the consequences of it. Welcome to the other side.”
She leans forward, her eyes flashing. “I made a mistake. A massive, devastating mistake. But I am still her mother, and I have rights, Leo. You don’t get to play God with my relationship with my daughter just because you’re angry. You want to punish me.”
I stare at her, and for a split second, I see the woman I used to love—the one who fought for what she wanted.
“It’s not about punishing you,” I say, but it’s a thin defense and we both know it.
“Isn’t it?” She leans forward, her hands flat on the table. “Because it sounds like you want me to jump through hoops. To pay. You want me to suffer enough until I finally earn a seat at the table. That’s not about Emma’s stability, Leo. That’s about your anger.”
She’s not wrong. A sliver of her accusation finds its mark, but I can’t afford to let it in. “My job is to protect her. From instability. From more disappointment.”
“From me.”
“Yes.”
She lets out a short, humorless laugh and looks away, out the window.
“You know, part of me getting better…part of therapy, has been learning to stop people-pleasing. To stop bending myself into a pretzel to be the person everyone expects me to be. The perfect fiancée, the perfect mother.” She looks back at me. “The perfect penitent.”
I run a hand through my hair, rolling my eyes. “My god, this isn’t about you finding your fucking voice, Rebecca. This is about you walking out on your five-year-old child.”
“And what if I want to see my child without having to hire a legal team to do it?” she challenges. “A mother shouldn’t have to petition the state for the right to hug her daughter. And you don’t get to be her sole gatekeeper forever.”
“For now, I do. You gave up that right when you left her in her bed and didn’t come back.”