Chapter 7 #3
“Well, they would if other people stayed out of your lives,” she noted. “And I know that I blew it. I know that I’m the reason for everything that happened, and I’m so very sorry. I wish I could do it all over again in a more honest way, but I can’t.”
He was pleasantly surprised to hear her taking responsibility for all of it. He wasn’t expecting that at all. “That is definitely a different tune from what I’ve heard in the past,” he noted.
“And I’m sorry about that because I should have done something about it earlier. Gail asked me if I had ever apologized to you, and I had to admit to her that I had not. In all this time I never contacted you. I figured you would probably never even answer the phone.”
“I probably wouldn’t now if it had come up with your name on it.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So, the good news is, it didn’t come up with my name because, not only has my number changed, I have changed.
I am married. I have a child, and I am not going back to the person I used to be, which was very heavily under the influence of my parents.
I don’t mean that to be an excuse, just an unfortunate reality.
Gail doesn’t need any more of this pain. I already caused her far too much.”
She took a deep breath. “But something else she only just found out is how early on I had told my mother that I lied, long before I told Gail, but Mom never told Gail. That is on top of what she found out from you about our father orchestrating your reassignment.”
“Understood,” he replied. “Yeah, that’s one of those things that maybe, if you actually cared about a person, could be a deal-breaker.”
“Well, when somebody calls the police on our father, you can bet that that’s a deal-breaker. And I know for a fact she just threw my mother out of her apartment for the second time.”
“Sounds like she is blowing things up pretty well,” he stated. Inside, he was surprised, mixed in with a little bit of worry. Then he asked, “Is she okay?”
“No, she’s not okay. I don’t expect you to understand the many ways that she’s not okay, but I’m hoping you are listening to me,” she shared.
“I know I don’t have any right to ask you for anything, but I’m hoping you will call and check in on Gail because I’m worried.
I don’t know how bad it’ll get before it calms down, and I can’t do anything to make it better. ”
Riley shook his head, frowning.
When he didn’t respond, Debbie continued.
“I’ve already spent hours talking to Gail, trying to get her to not destroy her world, but she seems hell-bent on doing just that.
Understandably she’s angry again at me, even though we have come a long way in mending the damage I did to our relationship,” she told him.
“But this just brings it all back up again, and she’s incredibly angry at everyone again but is now being especially hard on herself. ”
“And what do you expect me to do?” he asked, his tone hard. “I didn’t bring any of this on. She contacted me and asked me to have coffee.”
“Are you telling me that you’re not in town to see her?” Debbie asked. “For somebody who loved her like you supposedly did, I can’t imagine you weren’t planning on contacting her while you were here.”
“Well, if I was,” he said, “I didn’t even get that opportunity because she contacted me first.”
“That should tell you something,” Debbie pointed out.
“What about Gail’s fiancé? She obviously moved on from me with no problem.”
“Yeah, well, part of the reason my mother went to talk to her today is because she doesn’t want Gail blowing up this business merger.
It’s definitely not a marriage of love. It’s a marriage of convenience for both of them, well mostly for my parents.
Peter and Gail both come from very different broken relationships, but, in his case, he was the one having affairs. ”
“And Gail is okay with that?”
“No, he promised her that he wouldn’t have any affairs, of course,” she quipped with a sarcastic tone. “But he also doesn’t give a crap about her. This is business all the way, and, if you know anything about my family, business will prevail first and foremost.”
“Right,” he said. “So, they’re still assholes, in other words.”
She hesitated, and then replied, with a note of irony, “Yes, apparently we’re all assholes.”
“Well, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree,” he added.
“But sometimes the fruit on the ground is the sweetest,” she retorted. “Believe it or not, I have come a very long way, and I have done years of therapy to try and deal with the fallout of ruining so much of my sister’s world.”
“Why do you think your mom didn’t tell her?”
“Because she hoped to break you up,” she declared, her tone succinct. “And it worked. Of course, our mom is no doubt using that against Gail, saying, If she had really loved you, she wouldn’t have allowed it, and it wouldn’t have been so easy to break you up.
“And yet”—Debbie sighed—“I am the one who’s taking the brunt of that.
And I should. … I don’t know why I chose you to target, except that Gail was Dad’s favorite, and I figured that if you guys were really strong in your love, your relationship would survive this.
And that wasn’t fair because I don’t think even now that I could have survived it myself, and I adore my husband. ”
She paused, adding, “The family pressure, the constant sly innuendoes, the talk about how you were never any good, you were probably having affairs while you were off on your missions, I mean, it just never stopped. And Gail held firm through all of it until I dropped a grenade in her world,” Debbie admitted, her tears heard over the phone.
“And I know I can never make up for that. It doesn’t matter what I do or say, it’ll always keep coming back around.
I know that, and I am here for her as much as I can be, but I don’t know how to help her right now. ”
“And you think I do?” he asked in astonishment.