Chapter 39
LILY
My eyes flutter, a fresh, cool breeze forcing me to snuggle deeper under my blankets.
It took me what felt like hours to fall asleep last night, as I stared at the ceiling, processing everything I learned.
I can’t even cry anymore. I’m just so tired of people lying and betraying me.
It’s left a bitter numbness in its wake.
It was definitely the nudge I needed to finally take my life into my own hands, regardless of what happens to others. I love my family, but it doesn’t mean I’m only here to serve them.
My feet hit the floor, and I grab my phone, opening the most recent text message from Sienna.
Romi still isn’t herself, but apparently she’s functioning.
And so will I today. I’ll go to the flower shop for the first time since my father died.
I expect it to be a mess. The fresh flowers I had on display have most likely wilted and need to be thrown out, but I want to put a bouquet together for Romi.
I walk to the window to close it, and find a single lily carefully placed there. I pick it up, rolling it around in my fingers, wondering how it got there. I don’t have to question it too much because I know Lorenzo was the one who left it there.
There’s been a bittersweet exhaustion through all of this that, despite everything, he’s still all around me.
I don’t know if that’s because the hatred got sucked out of me or that I know he’s still the one person I can depend on to help get me out of this situation that never had anything to do with him from the beginning.
A low, muffled sound comes from my mother’s room down the hall. Panic rocks me. What if someone’s come for her? What if I’m no longer the target?
I run to her room, collecting a vase from the hall table between our bedroom doors as the only weapon I can find, and fling open her door, raising the vase above my head, my heart racing.
My mother screams, then I scream as I see naked flesh. “Oh, eww. Eww.” Two bodies are tangled in the sheets, and I look away, disgusted. “Eww, no. Yuck.”
“Lily!” my mother shouts as I slam the door behind me and slowly step away. What the fuck did I just walk in on? I carefully place the vase down, even though the water and flowers remain to be picked up, and then descend the stairs, as if trying to run away from the visual.
I take each step in disbelief, recalling what I just saw.
Mom and Bentley?
“What the fuck?” I say, blinking and shaking my head.
“Lily!” my mother calls over the railing, looking down on me. Bentley is only wearing boxers as he comes to stand behind her.
“Nope.” I put my hand up. “I’ve had my fill of everyone’s secrets. I’m done.” I throw my hands in the air. “I’m done,” I say again, like a crazy person.
I walk to the kitchen and grab my favorite iced tea before pouring it into a tumbler.
My mother calls for me again, but I ignore her, making my way out the back door and into the gardens, losing myself amongst the flowers she worked so hard to maintain all of these years, despite my father threatening to burn them down.
“Lily?” my mother says cautiously from behind me. I turn in the direction of the sun, surprised that all I feel is a little grossed out at catching my mother having sex. I’m not even mad. I don’t blame her. My father was a horrible man. But that’s something no child wants to see.
“This whole week you’ve kept to yourself and barely spoken after Dad’s funeral, but you’ve made time to…” I can’t even finish the sentence.
She looks ashamed, and I hate that I’ve made her feel that way.
“I’m the worst mother. I'm sorry you found out the way you did, and right after your father—”
“I don’t give a shit about Father,” I finally say out loud, and it startles her.
“Don’t say that,” she says quietly, but it lacks any real forcefulness, and I realize with startling clarity that she was even more conditioned than I to come to his defense.
I couldn’t even comprehend how jarring my father's death might’ve been for her.
I thought her silence might’ve been due to her mourning the man she loved, but perhaps it was shock from the freedom she’s now been bestowed.
Sometimes, it’s too scary to believe the cage door is open.
“I just needed time to myself to process. I’ve always told you and your brother not to worry about me,” she says. And it’s exactly because of that that I always had.
“Has this just started with Bentley or…?” Her expression is enough of an answer. Right, so it was an affair. “Did Dad know?”
She rolls her eyes. “As if your father paid enough attention to me to even care.”
I place my hands on my hips. “Yep, then we’re still talking about the same man.”
“Let’s sit down and talk, shall we?” she says, looking at me as if I might run away at any moment. I sigh, taking a seat beside her, because in truth, I want to have a conversation with her as well. I just wasn’t expecting to have it in such an unorthodox way.
My mother stares at me, and the heaviness of all the things unsaid for so many years begins to settle into place. It's always acted as a barrier between us, except I’m not scared of it anymore.
“I hated him,” I confess. “I never understood why you stayed.”
She half smiles, then releases it, as if realizing for the first time that she doesn’t have to pretend that everything’s okay.
“He was a good man once,” she says wistfully. “At one point, I thought I was doing the right thing by staying, so you children wouldn’t feel his wrath as it became worse. I told myself at times that it wouldn’t happen again. Then I came to terms that his outbursts only happened now and then.”
“By outbursts, you mean abuse, Mom. He was an abusive drunk.”
The way she’s looking at me, it's as if I’ve slapped her in the face. Her mouth opens and closes, like she's unable to find a response. Perhaps a week ago, I might’ve been gentler with my words, sympathetic almost, but it’s time we took accountability for the blatant truths.
“I was scared the night your boyfriend hit him.” I don’t bother to correct her about Lorenzo and me no longer being together, because were we ever? “But I’d be lying if the thought of finally being free didn’t go through my head,” she admits.
My stomach drops as I acknowledge the same type of sadistic guilt I hear in her voice.
“Why didn’t you ever leave him?” I repeat. “And don’t say it was for us kids, because we both left this house a long time ago. Why did you choose to stay with him for all these years?”
I don’t know why it’s so important for me to know, because in my heart of hearts, I stayed, not yet ready to let go of the idea of the father he could’ve been, but mostly because I was too frightened to let my mother go.
It was only a few weeks ago that I pulled her aside in these very same gardens when Lorenzo ambushed our family dinner, asking her if she was okay—if my father had stopped. She denied knowing what I was talking about, as if I were the one going mad.
My mother sighs and wrings her hands. “I’m not brave like you, sweetheart. I was scared of what would happen if I ever did. I’ve only ever known this life. I was scared he’d not only take it all away but ruin any chance I had of a future, even if smaller in comparison to all of these things.”
My mother is materialistic to a degree; I suppose we all are. It’s part of the reason why I thought she might’ve stayed, but I realize now her fear ran deeper than mine.
“I only ever let myself steal moments of happiness with Bentley over the years. I even considered running away with Bentley once. He promised he had enough money set aside so we could run away and have a simple life.” She laughs to herself.
“At the time, I thought it was such a pipe dream, and I made him promise to look the other way when your father became… unpredictable. Ironically, now that the house is mine, I’m not so sure I want to live in it anymore. Maybe I want that simple life now.”
She stares at me, as if expecting guidance. I thought she was so devastated by the loss of my father, but this whole time, much like myself, she’s been battling with how to free herself from his ghostly clutches.
“We could sell the house,” I suggest.
“You and your brother wouldn’t mind?” she asks, sounding surprised.
I scoff. “I’d much rather see this house burn to the ground than you be left in it for another day. I just want you to be happy, Mom. I think it’s time we looked for our own happiness. Don’t you?”
Her shoulders shift, the noticeable tension she’d walked out with slowly receding.
As I look at her, I see the woman who raised me years ago.
The woman who used to play with me and my brother in the backyard as children, chasing us as if there were no worries in the world, until we realized the only concerns we had were the ones within the walls of our home.
If Bentley can encourage a rosy-cheeked version of my mother to rise to the surface once again, then they have my blessing.
“Are you happy, Lily? Is the flower shop really what brings you joy? I always thought the reason you opened it was for me, not because you actually wanted it yourself.”
My eyebrows shoot up. I'm surprised she’s so bold to say it finally. I lean back, weights evaporating layer by layer and freeing me.
“I did open it for you. I loved spending time with you in the garden. Even when I went to college, I knew I didn’t want to go into the corporate world like Vince and Dad. But then I made it my own. It wasn’t just for you. It was for me too.”
“And now?” she carefully asks.
Isn’t that the question?
I can be anyone and go anywhere.
This city that I once loved so much seems so small, or maybe I no longer want to be hidden amongst the masses and the chaos.
“I don’t know, but I’m working on it,” I admit.
The years of suppression and fear have been liberated from my mother in the matter of a week, but there are glimmers of the old her. The one that inspired me as a child. The one who laughed freely and danced on occasion.
The one who was radiant and smiled, not because society and my father told her to, but because she had something to look forward to.
With that knowledge, a certain peace finally begins to settle within me, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I can breathe.