Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
Cara
When I get home from work a week later, I find Gin sitting on the floor in the middle of the garage, frantically trying to scrub her face with her sleeves as I walk through the door.
It’s obvious she’s not only been crying, but crying hard, and fear clouds all of my senses.
My mother is not the crying type and the last time I saw her like this was the day my dad passed away.
Georgia or Tony would have called me if it was either of them. Hayden’s in Boston right now, so it couldn’t be anything he did. Or that she perceived he did.
“Mom? What’s going on?” She looks as if she’s going to get up, but I’m sitting on the floor with her before she manages it. “Did you fall? Are you hurt?”
When she opens her mouth, a hiccupped sob comes out instead of words, but she shakes her head to let me know she’s not injured.
An emotional meltdown, then. It’s very unlike her, so I simply wait, keeping her company while she gets herself under control.
Sitting on cement isn’t ideal for either of us, but I can’t leave her here like this.
“I’m fine,” she says about two minutes later.
“You’re clearly not fine, Mom. What’s going on?”
“Sherry told me that adorable house down the road from her is going on the market, and the real estate agent said I can have first dibs before it’s even public.”
Excitement bubbles up inside of me, but I tamp it down because I’m a lot happier about this news than she is and I’m not sure why. “This is what you wanted, Mom.”
“I can’t,” she wails, waving her hands around the piles of junk filling the garage. “I tried to do just one box and there’s so much and I can never do this.”
Nope. The three of us are absolutely not living in this house—with me caught in a fake marriage limbo—for the rest of Gin’s life because of decades of junk. “You don’t have to go through all this, you know.”
She sniffles, her lower lip trembling. “Why? Because your husband will just hire somebody to haul it all to the dump? Even the Gamble family heirlooms?”
It takes everything in me not to laugh at her.
She definitely wouldn’t appreciate that.
“Mom, there’s a difference between Gamble family heirlooms and generation after generation of Gambles living here, meaning nobody ever threw anything away.
When people don’t have to move, they don’t have to get rid of accumulated junk. ”
Her lips tighten and I wince. “It’s not junk.”
“Nobody’s throwing anything away without you.
And we don’t have to do it all at once, you know.
Buy the house and we’ll pack up just what you need—your belongings.
We’ll get your new home set up just the way you want it, and then we can start sorting through things, deciding what you want to keep, what should stay in the house, and what to sell or donate. ”
I can never be sure when it comes to my mother, but I think there’s a good chance once this house is in her rearview mirror and she has a cute little home of her own, the last thing she’s going to want to do is fill it with all this stuff.
“You won’t throw anything away without asking me first?”
I rest my hand on her knee. “I promise. Once everything’s settled, maybe we can have one or two nights a week where we do a set amount of time of going through stuff, and then we have dinner together.”
She brightens. “That sounds doable.”
“See? Now, how about I loop Hayden in, and he can get his real estate person to make the offer for you and set up the closings so the money for this house pays for that house, and the leftover will make a nice nest egg for you.”
I’m not surprised when she nods instead of saying anything about some of the egg coming my way.
That’s just not how her mind works, plus she probably assumes I’m all set because I married a man with money.
She doesn’t know that’s temporary, and I don’t want to think too hard about whether that would make a difference or not.
“Let’s get up off this cement floor,” I say, pushing myself to my feet. When she groans, I put out my hands and pull her up.
She brushes off her pants. “I’ll go text Sherry and get the contact info for the agent.”
“That sounds good.” Instead of heading into the house—my mother always leaves her cell phone on the kitchen counter, as if it’s a landline—she’s still for a long moment. “You okay, Mom?”
When she faces me, her lips curve into a smile. “I’m terrified, Cara. But I think I’m a little excited, too.”
For a moment, all of the resentment and hopelessness of the last few years fades, and I think about how trapped my mother must have felt. Trapped by her promise to her husband, her sense of obligation—misguided as it was—to her daughter, and fear of learning a new way to live her life.
“I’m excited for you, Mom. You’re going to have so much fun living in that neighborhood. And it’s not only Sherry. You know more than half the people who live there. And you won’t have to worry about anything.”
Once she’s gone into the house, I strip out of my work clothes and pull on clean shorts and a tank top. A full load has accumulated, so I start the washer before pulling out my phone to text Hayden.
CARA
The good news: Mom’s ready to make an offer on a house near Sherry. The bad news: She’ll be coming back one or two nights a week to go through all this junk, which might take four or five years.
HAYDEN
Even better news: She lets me hire somebody to haul it all away?
CARA
Worst news: She specifically made me promise I wouldn’t let you do that. Circle back to the good news.
HAYDEN
The best news: You’re almost free.
It’s unclear to me if he means I’m almost free of the house or almost free of him. Or maybe he means both.
Of course I should be happy about both. Especially since it means I’ll be free to do whatever I want, within reason. But, even though I’m genuinely excited for my mother, my happiness bubble loses some of its shine as I go into the house to figure out what we’re making for supper.
While I would never admit it to anybody—not even Mel, or maybe especially not Mel—I like being Hayden’s wife. And even though our marriage isn’t real, the divorce will be.
I knew this plan was a bad idea.