Chapter 23 #3
“And then a few years ago, I had finally let Chloe sit me down and put me on one of those online dating thingys,” she gestured at the laptop.
“And Olly had been on his for about six months at that point, and we had been swapping horror stories at our weekly dinners. And believe me, darling, we had some good ones. I went out with one man who told me he wanted me to meet his pet, and then he pulled a real-life tarantula out of his pocket at the restaurant. Can you believe—”
“Mom.” If Maddy didn’t stop her, the tarantula story would turn into its own hour-long soliloquy.
“Right. Sorry.” Bunny took a breath. “So, Olly and I were having one of our dinners. At his house. And he had had a terrible date the night before. He thought she was a venture capitalist and she was actually a ventriloquist, who spoke through a puppet the entire night. I was laughing so hard I had to hold onto him to keep from falling off my chair.” She smiled softly.
Her eyes came up. “And then he looked at me, sweetheart, and I just—knew. I would rather be sitting there with Olly than across from any man on any of those silly websites. And I think I had known it for a while, honey. I just hadn’t let myself see it. ”
Maddy knew that feeling.
Bunny’s eyes had gone a little wet. She blinked it off immediately, reached for a tissue from the box on the counter, and dabbed it efficiently, without smearing her makeup. The Bunny version of crying. Maddy had seen her do it at exactly two funerals and one Hallmark commercial in 1999.
“It is not the same as your father.” Bunny pressed a fingertip to the island, once, like she needed Maddy to write it down.
“It will never be the same as your father. James was the love of my life. He is still the love of my life, and Olly knows that. Olly wants that. We talk about him all the time. All the time, honey.” Her voice wobbled.
“Do you know how rare that is? To find someone who doesn’t need me to be over your father in order to love me.
Who’d rather sit and remember him with me.
There is not another man alive who could do that.
And your dad.” She pressed her lips together.
“Your father loved Olly. There is no one on earth he’d have trusted more to look after me. I know it in my heart.”
Maddy’s eyes were stinging. She’d come in here so sure her mother had done something unforgivable, and instead she was sitting here listening to her tell he she fell in love with a good man who’d loved her father too.
And the anger she’d been carrying around about Bunny and Olly for the past three weeks ran out of steam.
One thing still cut worse than the rest though. “Then why didn’t you just tell me? Why lie to me?”
“Because.” Bunny’s hand fluttered up helplessly.
“How was I supposed to tell you, honey? You don’t…
You never pick up the phone. For fifteen years, it was two minutes at a time, and I’m meant to find the moment in there to say, darling, I’ve fallen in love with your father’s best friend.
” She shook her head, slow and tired. “And then you were here, and it was so wonderful having you home, I was afraid that if you found out, you’d leave.
So, yes. I lied. And I’m not proud of it.
” She reached out and wrapped her fingers around Maddy’s forearm.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I just wanted to spend some time with my baby girl. ”
That knocked the legs out from under the whole speech Maddy had walked in with, because the opening Bunny couldn’t find was one Maddy had welded shut herself, and she’d been so busy being the wronged party that it had never once occurred to her to wonder what it had been like on the other end of it.
To love someone who never picked up the phone.
She should have stopped there. She’d gotten what she came for. The Olly thing was out in the open, and it wasn’t quite the betrayal she’d made it out to be, and the smart thing would be to take the win, go upstairs, and lie down.
“I was so jealous of you.” She said instead, the words barely above a whisper. They had been sitting inside of her forever, and this morning she was too cracked open to swallow them back down.
Bunny squeezed Maddy’s forearm, her voice much smaller than usual. “What do you mean, sweetheart? When?”
“My whole life.” Maddy looked down at her hands on the counter.
She couldn’t make eye contact for this. “You owned every room you walked into, without even trying. You’d just arrive, and the whole place would turn.
And I was keeping score in my own house, against my own mother.
Because you walked in and got the whole room for free, and I had to earn every inch of mine, and it was never enough.
How does anybody compete with that?” A tear escaped and she didn’t bother wiping it.
“I built a whole career out of being the best at what I do. I produce a show about people clawing each other half to death for a medal. And it started here, Mom. In this house. With me trying to get my own dad to see me over the top of you.”
Her hands were shaking around the coffee cup. She flattened her palms against the cold island, and made herself look up at her mother. She’d finally said it, out loud, to Bunny’s face. There was no taking it back now.
She finally looked up, and the first thing she saw was that she’d hurt her.