Chapter 49 Stone
Stone
I’m miserable. Completely miserable. Hercules can’t make me feel better. Not even the resort can.
The reason I’m miserable—I won’t say her name. I refuse to say her name.
I rub my eyes before staring at the computer screen, going through the last of my emails, cleaning up the inbox.
Someone knocks on the trailer door. “Boss!”
“Yeah?”
“Delivery!”
I yank on my hard hat and meet Isaac outside. A flatbed truck has arrived filled with steel beams, a material that will probably kill a few ley lines. Hell, there’s a lot of them running under this resort. A few pieces of steel in one area couldn’t hurt . . . that much.
I tell them where to unload the metal and turn to go back into my office when Hercules barrels past, bleating and basically being a happy baby.
Must be nice to have that kind of innocence.
I reach down to pet him as a black SUV with tinted windows rolls up. I frown, because it’s not Pane’s vehicle.
Maybe it’s Rhett.
But when the passenger door opens and I get a glimpse of white, I know it’s not Rhett. It’s definitely not Pane.
It’s Sylvia, my mother.
She steps out wearing her signature white pantsuit. Her dark hair is secured at the nape of her neck, and the one gray stripe that’s woven into her otherwise ebony locks is whiter than it was last time I saw her.
She takes a look at the resort, drinking it in, and for a moment, I stand there wondering whether I should go into the trailer or greet her.
Decision made, I cross the red clay while Hercules runs alongside me. My mother sees me and smiles stiffly, as if she’s had to train her face how to do this trick.
I frown and her lips slowly dip into a frown.
“Stone,” she murmurs.
“Sylvia,” I spit.
Her green eyes—eyes that match mine—linger on me for a moment before they swish to the resort. “It looks good. I knew you boys had the skill to build on your own. Of course, you could have done it within the company. You didn’t have to . . .”
“Leave?” I finish when she can’t.
She nods, mouth tight. “Is there someplace we can talk?”
I want to tell her no, we can’t talk. We can never talk. But she’s come all this way, and it’s loud, and I don’t like scandals or spectacles.
“You can come inside. Pane isn’t here.”
“I didn’t come for Pane. I came to speak to you.”
Something about that makes my stomach coil tight.
I lead her into the trailer, and when we’re inside, I point to a chair. “You’re welcome to sit.”
“Thank you.”
I take a seat behind my desk. “You thirsty?”
“No, I can’t stay long. I’m on my way to Palm Beach.”
“Building a new hotel?”
“Yes. It would have been a good one for you to oversee.”
“I’m tied up for the foreseeable future.” I pick up a pencil and twist it between my fingers. But the stupid pencil reminds me of Coco, how she would stick them in her hair, so I drop it on my desk.
My mother sits ramrod-straight in the chair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her relaxed in my entire life.
“Stone, there are things I didn’t get a chance to say before you left. The competition with Pane—you were both so close to becoming president I couldn’t decide.”
“So you pitted me against my brother head-on? This is how you nurture friendly competition?”
Her voice hardens. “What was I supposed to do? Pick one of you to become the next CEO?”
“Yes, Sylvia.” My nostrils flare in anger. “You were supposed to pick one of us to lead the company. We shouldn’t have competed against one another.” I exhale and lean back in the chair. “Pane won fair and square. I don’t have hard feelings about that.”
Her shoulders sag slightly. “But you have hard feelings about other things.”
“You mean about the fact that you kept my father from me for my entire life? Yeah, I’ve got some feelings about that.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Yes, I do!” I explode.
She blinks, stunned by my response.
Everything that’s been building up in me—my anger at Coco, the agony I suffered because I loved her, discovering her betrayal—I’ve kept it all bottled up tight for weeks. But seeing my mom, this is the cherry on top, the moment that breaks me wide open.
“Stone . . .” she says feebly.
“Since you don’t seem to understand that what you did was so horrible, let me break it down for you.
” I drum my fingers on the desk to give me a way to focus on something other than how torn apart I am.
“When you divorced my dad, you made me think he didn’t want to have anything to do with me or my brother.
You perpetrated that lie, fed it, and stoked it until Pane and I were so full of bitterness toward him there wasn’t room in our hearts for anything else. Then you know what happened?”
She shakes her head slightly.
I lean forward. “One day I ran into him on the street. Instantly recognized him. It may have been twenty years since I’d seen him, but I knew my dad.
He explained what you’d done, how you told him if he attempted to see us, you’d destroy him financially.
Now you tell me this—what kind of mother does that to her sons?
What kind of mother shields them from a father who loves them? ”
Sylvia cringes. “I assure you, Stone, there were reasons.”
I slam a fist on the desk. “No, there weren’t.
There were no reasons strong enough for you to do that.
He’s not an awful person. He didn’t abuse you, or us.
The one fault he had was that he wasn’t a Maddox.
Hell, you didn’t even let us take his last name.
We took your last name.” I lean back in the chair.
“The bottom line is, he wasn’t good enough. ”
“And what do you know about good enough?” she demands, clutching her purse so hard her knuckles become pale hills.
“What do you know about raising two boys and making sure they keep the family name strong and won’t let the company die a sad death?
Do you know how many companies fold when the head family member dies?
Do you know how many don’t survive? Maddoxes are survivors, and I needed my boys strong enough to carry that name into the next generation. ”
“And now you don’t have either of us. You did this, Sylvia. You. You pushed Pane and me away. We will never run the Maddox Group. We’re forging our own path, one that isn’t based on lies.”
The corners of her eyes tighten. “I know from your perspective, this is hard to understand. My goals, my motivations must seem so foreign to you.” She rubs her forehead, and this may be the first time I’ve seen what appears to be vulnerability from my mother.
She’s an ice queen through and through. The whole time we were growing up, she never shed a tear, not even when her father passed away.
“All I wanted was for my boys to grow up strong and be ready for the world. But I see now what I’ve done.”
“And what is that?”
Her gaze latches on to mine, and regret swirls in her eyes. “I thought I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From him. From him leaving, because when you have money like we do, people only want you for so long before the shine wears off.”
“What? That’s not true.”
Wait.
If anything, I should be agreeing. I should say, Yes, you’re right—all anyone ever wants us for is money.
But Coco didn’t. She never asked for a dime.
Don’t think about Coco now. Not here. Not yet. This is about Sylvia.
“I realize now I was training you to leave before anyone could leave you, and I suppose I deserve it.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
Sylvia unsnaps her purse and pulls out a tissue, blotting her eyes. “Your grandfather was a cold man, and I suppose I inherited much of his temperament. Though it may have looked like my actions were done to keep love away from you, I was only trying to keep you from heartbreak.”
My voice softens. “How?”
“Because it’s inevitable. No matter what we do in life, we wind up destroyed. My marriage would have ended. I just did it on my own terms. I did it to keep us safe, to protect you.”
“But it didn’t protect me or Pane. It destroyed us.”
She shattered us, and on purpose. My mother, thinking she was protecting me, only made my life worse.
She lowers her head in shame. “Pane and I have talked, though I doubt anything will ever fully heal the rift between all of us.” She sniffles. “I didn’t want you to be like me, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I taught you to let go first.”
Her words are a punch to the gut. She taught me how to let go first, how to distrust first, how to leave first. How to ignore what someone’s saying and abandon them before they have a chance to abandon me.
Just like I did with Coco when I left her in the chapel, all alone, when she tried to explain why she’d let me be an amnesiac—for the town, and for me, because of who it made me.
She stood there in that wedding dress trying to tell me the truth, and I left her.
A heaviness sets in my chest. It weighs me down, like someone has rested a boulder on my heart.
It’s familiar, almost cozy, a feeling I’ve embraced for years, but for a few short weeks I didn’t have it. I was lighter. Honest. Open. I want that again. Not the man trained to leave, but the one brave enough to stay.
I want to be who I’m supposed to be. It’s what I deserve.
The weight that’s been pressing on me suddenly lifts, and I feel a hundred pounds lighter.
“You may never forgive me,” Sylvia whispers.
It’s almost a question. My answer comes swiftly. “I can try.”
“What?”
“I can try . . . Mom.”
Her eyes well with tears and she nods. “Thank you.”
I nod back. It’s all I’ve got in me.
“My plane taxis in half an hour. I must go.”
I rise and walk her to the door. “Thank you for coming.”
She gives me a timid grin and opens her mouth to say something, but then throws her arms around my waist and hugs me.
The last time my mom hugged me, I must’ve been ten years old. For a split second, I’m not sure what to do, but then I relax and pull her tight, hold her close and feel how small she is, how frail, how she smells of jasmine.
I don’t think I’ve realized how fragile she is until now. She’s a small, thin woman who won’t live forever, one who wants to have a relationship with her children.
Something inside me breaks as she holds me. Tears fill my eyes until one falls, dripping onto her head, and I gently brush it away.
She looks up. “Is everything okay?”
I nod, feeling my lips tipping upward. “Everything’s just as it should be, and there’s some steel beams that need to be returned.”