14. Anika
— ? —
Anika
I needed my mother. I’d reached a point where I had to retreat to my comfort zone.
Neil drove. Before we left, I held out my hand. “Phone.”
He handed it over without protest. I dropped it in my purse with his, where they would stay until we got back. The rules applied everywhere now. He’d stopped questioning it.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked as we pulled onto my mother’s street with modest houses and neat lawns. A world away from the triplex.
“I’m sure I need to see her. I’m not sure she won’t murder you.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I never said this would be comfortable.”
He pulled into the driveway. My childhood home looked exactly the same as it always had. Yellow siding, white trim, a garden that my mother tended with the same fierce dedication she brought to everything else in her life.
Including protecting her daughter.
“Maybe I should wait in the car,” Neil said.
“You’re not waiting in the car.”
“Your mother hates me. Angry mothers intimidate me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just…” I searched for the right word. “Disappointed. Intensely. With the fire of a thousand suns. Stop pretending what you did isn’t disappointing.”
“That’s so much better.”
I got out of the car before I could change my mind.
The front door opened before we reached it. My mother stood in the doorway, arms crossed, expression carved from stone. Nadja Roy was a small woman, barely five feet tall, but she had a presence that made CEOs nervous. Neil, to his credit, didn’t flinch.
Much.
“You disturbed my sleep,” she said, “just to ask something simple about my daughter.” Her eyes were ice. “I haven’t decided yet whether I regret it.”
Neil swallowed. “Mrs. Roy…”
“My daughter called me crying. Three times. Because of you. You think one phone call and a nice speech about April third makes up for that?”
“No. I don’t.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
Neil met her gaze and didn’t look away.
“Nothing that would be enough,” he said. “But I’m going to try anyway. Every day. For the rest of my life.”
My mother studied him for a long moment. Her eyes were dark, assessing, merciless. I’d seen that look reduce grown men to stammering apologies. Neil just stood there and took it.
Then she turned to me.
“You. Inside.” She pointed at Neil. “You. The garden. You’re pulling weeds until I decide what to do with you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The garden has weeds. You pull it with your hand. Now.” She turned and walked into the house, clearly expecting to be obeyed.
Neil looked at me.
“She’s serious. You disturbed her sleep and you made her daughter cry. So,” I said.
“I gathered that.”
“The gardening gloves are in the shed. Try not to kill anything important.”
I followed my mother inside. Through the window, I watched Neil walk around to the backyard, find the shed, and emerge with gloves that were slightly too small and a look of bewildered determination.
He knelt in the dirt in his dress shirt. Under the sun.
And he started pulling weeds.
“He’s really doing it,” I said.
My mother joined me at the window. “Did you expect him to refuse?”
“I expected him to negotiate. Offer to hire a landscaper and offer something bigger. Find some way to make it easier.”
“And instead?”
“Instead he’s getting dirt on his thousand-dollar shirt.”
We watched him work. He was terrible at it. He kept pulling up flowers by mistake, looking around nervously before replanting them. His technique was all wrong, yanking instead of twisting, and he was going to have blisters by the end of the hour.
But he didn’t stop and didn’t complain. Didn’t even look toward the house for validation.
“Sit,” my mother said. “I’ll make tea.”
I sat at the kitchen table, the same one where I’d done homework and eaten breakfast and cried over my first heartbreak. My mother moved around the kitchen with practiced efficiency, filling the kettle, selecting cups, arranging biscuits on a plate.
“How are you, really?” she asked without turning around.
“I don’t know. Some days I think we might actually make it. Other days I want to throw something at his head.”
“Both are valid responses.”
“He’s trying. He’s really trying. But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to check his phone during dinner, or miss something important, or…”
“Or be the man he was before.”
“Yes.”
My mother brought the tea to the table. Sat across from me. Her eyes were softer now, filled with a concern that made my throat tight.
“Do you still love him?”
“I never stopped.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked out the window. Neil was still there, still pulling weeds, still terrible at it. His hair was damp with sweat, his shirt untucked, his expensive shoes caked with mud.
He looked ridiculous. He looked like he was trying so hard it hurt.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I still love him. I just don’t know if love is enough.”
“It’s never enough on its own. Love is the foundation. But you build a marriage with trust and respect and showing up when it matters.” She sipped her tea. “He wasn’t doing that.”
“No.”
“Is he doing it now?”
I thought about the past week. The questions he’d answered, the lists he’d made, the way he’d defended me at the restaurant. The notebook where he wrote down everything I said, like he was terrified of forgetting again.
“He’s trying.”
“Trying is a start. But talk is easy. Actions take time.”
We drank our tea and ate biscuits. Watched Neil slowly make his way through the garden, leaving a trail of slightly crooked rows and confused-looking plants.
“He’s been out there for four hours,” I said eventually.
“I’m aware.”
“You’re not going to tell him he can stop?”
“Should I?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t.”
At the end of the day, my mother went outside. She was carrying a glass of water, the first thing she’d offered him since he arrived.
I watched through the window as she approached him. He stood, dirt-smeared and exhausted, and faced her like a man facing judgment.
“You hurt my daughter,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Neil was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
“Because I was scared. And stupid. And I didn’t know how to tell her I felt like I was losing her, so I wrote it down instead of talking to her.”
My mother studied him. The silence stretched so long I thought she might send him away. Tell him never to come back. Tell him he’d never be worthy of her daughter.
Instead, she handed him the water.
“Come back next Sunday,” she said. “There’s more weeds.”
She turned and walked back into the house. Neil stood there, holding the glass, looking like a man who’d just been pardoned.
Through the window, our eyes met.
I was almost smiling.