Chapter Fifty-Four
“Kara, it’s Mom. I…I guess you know that. I miss you, honey. Please call me.” She listened to the silence of the voice mail system. “I’m sorry.” She hung up the phone, feeling just as empty and deflated as she had after each of the last four messages she’d left.
Mimi had known it wouldn’t be easy for Kara to accept that she’d hidden Roland, and her past, from her, but she hadn’t expected thirty days of the silent treatment, which is what Kara had handed her.
When Kara had awoken in the hospital, she’d set her jaw like a rebellious teen while Mimi had tried to repair their fractured relationship.
Everything she did or said pushed Kara further away.
Her efforts to protect her daughter had made her the enemy.
Ted came into the living room and sat next to Mimi on the couch. He’d lost so much weight, his shirt hung from his chest. His sunken cheeks perked up when he saw Mimi. “How ya’ doin’? You okay?”
Mimi nodded, her insides twisted and frayed. She hadn’t noticed until after the incident how Ted always asked after her, how sincerely interested he was in how she was doing. How could she have been afraid to trust him with the truth of her past for so long?
Ted looked at the phone in her hand. He took it from her palm and placed it on the coffee table. He took her delicate hands into his own. “Mim, she’ll come around. She’s been through a lot.”
Mimi’s lower lip trembled. “She has seizures. Something could happen.”
“She’s a big girl. She’s sorting through everything that happened in her own way, at her own pace.” He dropped his eyes. “She’s just…confused.”
Something in Ted’s voice changed. “Ted?”
Ted looked away.
“What is it? Have you talked to her?”
Ted let go of her hands. He cracked his knuckles.
“Ted, look at me. What’s going on?” she pleaded.
“I was worried. I’ve been taking her to her doctor appointments.”
“Wha—”
He lifted his eyes to meet hers. “She didn’t want me to, at first, but I convinced her.”
“She’ll talk to you? Let you drive her?” The hurt in Mimi’s voice was palpable.
Ted nodded.
A tear slid down Mimi’s cheek.
“Mimi, she loves you. She just feels like she’s been duped.”
“Duped?” Mimi stood up, her voice escalated. “Duped? I was protecting her. Who knows what he would have done all those years ago.” She folded her arms across her chest and turned her back to Ted.
“Mimi,” Ted urged.
Mimi shook her head. Her daughter had chosen Ted over her. Ted. Mimi’s shoulders shook. How would she ever repair the damage she’d done? “What has she told you?” she asked.
“Nothing much,” Ted said. “She’s scared, but wants to be in her own apartment. She feels like her family was stolen from her.”
Mimi shot him a pained look. “She doesn’t even want us in her life, Ted.”
“Yes, she does. I told her, Mimi. I explained that you only did what you thought was best, but I didn’t really know what to tell her. I still don’t have all the details. I had no idea Roland even existed until this mess erupted.”
Ted was right. She had no reason to be hurt, or mad. She’d kept secrets from him. She’d kept secrets from Kara. She’d hurt everyone in an effort to protect them. Mimi left the room. When she returned, she carried a photo album and a box of tissues.
Mimi sat down on the couch next to Ted, the fabric-covered album in her lap. The white satin had yellowed. The knot holding the album shut had permanently crimped the ribbon. She ran her hand over the delicate white eyelets, remembering her and Al’s wedding day.
The photographs portrayed a family anyone would want to be part of.
She, in her white wedding gown, Marissa to her left, her three-year-old cherub cheeks puffed with happiness, her little fist clenched around a tuft of Mimi’s dress.
To Al’s right, Roland stood in his Sears three-piece suit, his hair cropped short, his eyes trained on Marissa, the hint of a smile on his face.
Mimi touched the photo just above Al’s face. The hole he’d left in her heart was suddenly there again; the loneliness, too. She covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Ted, and plucked a tissue from the box. “I didn’t realize I’d react like this.”
Ted put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to show me these.”
Mimi blew her nose. “I want to. It was wrong of me to hide so much of my life from you. I want you to know, to see.” She flipped the pages to Roland and Marissa’s fourth birthday.
Roland and Marissa leaned over opposite ends of the birthday cake.
Marissa’s eyes were wide as she stared down at the cake, her cheeks full of air as they blew out the candles. Roland’s eyes were trained on Marissa.
The next page displayed a series of photographs of the kids playing in the grass. In each photo, Roland was intent on Marissa, regardless of the puppy before him, or the wrapped gift his father held.
Mimi flipped a few pages forward. Marissa held up a cast on her right arm, a forced smile on her lips. Mimi quickly turned the page. The image was too painful for her to bear.
Another photo revealed scratches on Marissa’s arm, a distant look in her eyes.
Mimi flipped forward. Marissa had aged. She was no longer a carefree toddler.
There was less baby fat around her cheeks, and a wary look in her eyes.
Roland had changed as well. Dark circles shaded the space beneath his eyes.
“He looks exhausted,” Ted said.
Mimi nodded. “By this time, he’d been sneaking into Marissa’s room at night for about six months.” She looked away, her cheeks hot.
“I don’t…Did he…”
“No. It wasn’t like that. It was like he wanted to own her.
He would sit in her room and stare at her, or climb into bed next to her.
When we’d come in, he’d grab hold of her and not let go.
” Mimi wiped her eyes, the memories reigniting old fears and hurt.
“Marissa used to scream and cry as we pried them apart. He’d yell, ‘I’m not hurting her.
She’s mine! She loves me!’” Mimi took a deep breath.
“He scared her, demanding she tell us that she loved him. The way he looked at her, with those…those cold eyes, like he could hurt her as quickly as he could hug her. She was terrified of him. As Roland’s obsession worsened, Marissa became afraid to eat, sleep, or be anywhere but by his side.
I tried to figure out what he wanted, but it was like he just wanted Marissa all to himself. Nothing would dissuade him.”
Ted took Mimi’s hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mimi shook her head, wiping fresh tears from her eyes.
“Yeah, right, Ted. Could you just imagine? You move here, you meet a single mom, and she tells you she’s hiding out from her daughter’s twin brother, who just happens to have obsessive tendencies?
Or maybe I could have said that my husband left me and his daughter to go live with his crazy son. ” She looked away.
“Mimi, you know what I mean.”
“As the years went by, I let him go. It was as if he had been part of a bad dream, and we could start our lives anew.”
“But Kara—Marissa—had to have some memories.”
Mimi folded and unfolded the tissue she’d been holding.
She nodded, lifted her eyes slightly, looked at Ted, then dropped her eyes.
“She remembered. I helped her forget, pretended he never really existed.” She stood and paced the living room.
“It wasn’t hard, you know? She was just a little girl.
We moved, she made new friends, and eventually just stopped asking about him.
I guess…I guess maybe she forgot, or blocked it out, I don’t know.
” She slumped down onto the couch. “God, Ted, I really screwed up.”
Ted sat back, blowing out a long sigh. “She feels like she doesn’t know who she is.”
“She said that?”
Ted nodded. “You could have told me.”
“Maybe,” Mimi said. “Or maybe if I’d told you, you would have run the other way.” Mimi’s forehead creased. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
Kara lay in her bed, her sweatpants and sweatshirt soft and warm against her skin.
She hadn’t done much more than lie around since she’d come out of the hospital.
She wanted to move forward, but was powerless against the physical and mental exhaustion that kept her tethered to the bed or couch.
She couldn’t see through the fog of what had happened.
She had spent the last few weeks wondering if she should leave town or not.
It was hard for her to remember why she had been so determined to leave Williamsport.
Had it been to escape Daryl and the marriage, or had it been to get away from her mother’s prying ways?
Maybe it was to escape the discomfort of her relationship with Ted.
Now everything had changed. Mimi wasn’t prying, Ted was kinder, and Kara was stuck.
In some strange way, she missed Dean. She couldn’t believe he was dead—gone.
The idea of never hearing him taunt her again was too much for her.
She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened.
She knew she had to find the strength to move forward, but she didn’t know how.
She didn’t want to hurt Mimi, and yet she didn’t want to give up her dreams, either.