25. Twenty-Five #2
“I loved your mother, just not the way she wanted me to.” His mouth was a flat line as the server delivered the food.
He managed a smile for her benefit, but his eyes were vacant when they moved to mine.
“We went to Vegas and got married. I was determined to make things work with your mother. When we got back, about a week later, I found out that Michael had left again.”
“That’s not my mother’s fault!” I barked.
“Did your mother make Michael leave Aggie? No, she did not.”
I relaxed, if only a little bit.
“Your mother knew two weeks before the wedding that Michael had left Aggie, however, and she set up the entire thing to convince me to marry her so there would be no options for Aggie and me.”
I was about to call him a filthy liar — my mother would never — but I remembered how she was with some of her other husbands. She hadn’t cared in the least about steamrolling other women to get what she wanted. She didn’t deny it either. She owned it.
“She did that to Aggie?” I ignored my breakfast because I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“Your mother is the sort of woman who goes after what she wants,” Mick explained. “She decided, for whatever reason, she wanted me. I don’t know why, because from the moment we got married, everything I did irritated her.”
He wasn’t wrong. My mother was like that with all of her husbands.
“You stayed with her, though,” I said, finally finding my voice. “For years. You were the stepfather I had in my life the longest.”
“I stayed because I made vows, and I was genuinely fond of you,” he confirmed.
“Plus, I knew once I exchanged vows with Eleanor that there was no hope for Aggie and me. At least this way, I would see her occasionally. I would be able to see Wylie and Lucy grow up, because I fell in love with them too.”
I took a long drink of my London Fog. “Obviously, you decided you couldn’t take the angst any longer and went back to Aggie at some point,” I said. “That wasn’t right. You should have told her you wanted a divorce first.”
“I told your mother I wanted a divorce two years before we actually divorced. She refused to give me an out and instead told me that she would submarine the movie series if I even tried. She was going to take financial stability away from all of you if I didn’t stay married to her.”
I tried to remember that time in our lives. I’d been in college, though, wrapped up in my own life.
“You couldn’t have known, Huxley,” he said, correctly reading my mind. “There’s no way you could have known. She went out of her way to keep it from you.”
“I just don’t understand why. She jumps from husband to husband with ease. Why wouldn’t she let you go?”
“Because, deep down, your mother is an unhappy woman. She didn’t want Aggie to be happy. She wanted them to be miserable together. If I was miserable too, so much the better.”
He wasn’t describing my mother. I wouldn’t believe that. And yet I did. I’d seen my mother in action so many times I’d lost count. I loved her, but she was a very difficult woman. I’d seen her revel in the misery of others as well.
I could imagine exactly what he was saying. “You still left her for Aggie,” I persisted. “You broke her heart.”
Mick took a deep breath, and I knew he was about to finish things out. Whatever he was going to say wasn’t going to make things better. No, it was going to make things worse.
“The night I told Aggie that I still loved her, I had to track your mother down at a hotel,” he said. “We were all in Austin, as I’m sure you remember. I found her in a hotel room with Cliff.”
Cliff. Mom’s fourth husband. “But …”
He nodded as I let everything sink into place in my head.
“Your mother is not a bad person,” he said.
“She was just sad and didn’t want to be sad alone.
I don’t even think she realized, not truly, what she was doing.
The second I saw her with Cliff, though, I was so relieved.
We hadn’t been living a real marriage for years at that point.
I took advantage of the opening and professed my love to Aggie.
Everything sort of spilled out once I told her how I felt. ”
He sipped his coffee again before continuing.
“There are a lot of little intricacies to the story,” he said. “I’m not the hero. I’m a villain too. We all did things we regret, and I’m really sorry for how your mother found out I’d gone back to Aggie. She saw us in Aggie’s dressing room. I hadn’t had a chance to fill her in yet.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “She pretended she didn’t see it and then marched out on that stage and attacked Aggie 15 minutes later.
Everybody’s lives changed in that moment, and I’m sorry that it happened.
I’m sorry you suffered for it, and I’m sorry Aggie suffered for it.
I’m sorry your mother suffered for it and Wylie.
I am not, however, sorry that I followed my heart. ”
I let the information sink in. He was telling the truth. I didn’t question that. The only thing I questioned was how I was supposed to feel about it.
“I’m going to have to talk to my mother,” I said finally. “There are some things we need to discuss.”
“I’m sure,” Mick agreed. “If you want me there to apologize — I never really got a chance to say I was sorry because she refused to talk to me after the fact — then I’ll go with you. I deserve whatever ire she wants to throw at me.”
Maybe he did. She deserved his ire, too, though. She’d manipulated him and then thrown a fit when things hadn’t gone her way.
“I think it’s better if I talk to her first,” I said, pulling out my phone. I couldn’t call her. This wasn’t a conversation that could be had when we weren’t face-to-face. Instead, I started typing out a text.
“What are you going to do?” Mick asked.
There was only one thing I could do. “Get her here. After that, we’ll have to figure things out like one big, messy family.”
Mick smirked. “Do you know how ugly that’s going to get?”
“Yup.”
“Are you going to tell her about Wylie before she sees Aggie and me?”
“Nope.”
He burst out laughing. “That’s probably a smart move.”
I finished the text and sent it without reading it.
You need to come down here. It’s important. Nobody is dying, but there’s something we need to discuss.
That was it. That was all I was giving her. “I think I need some alcohol,” I said, looking for the server.
Mick nodded and sighed. “Now you’re talking.”