“I can’t do that and you know why.” If she called him, she would give in. She would break down, and she couldn’t afford a breakdown right now. She had to be strong.
But did Harry make her weak? Or merely lend her another kind of strength, the strength that came from truly loving another person.
“I don’t understand it,” her mother admitted. “I know I agreed with you last night, but you’d had a day, and sometimes a mother simply must agree with everything her baby says until such time as she can be a bit more reasonable. He made a mistake. He’s a man. He’s going to make a ton of them. Your father made them, and he was practically a saint.”
She glanced up at her mom. It was easy to write off Delphine Dellacourt Guidry as a “character,” as they would say in these parts. As she’d gotten older, she’d embraced her kooky side with gleeful abandon, but there had been a time when she was a widow with three children to take care of. There had been a time when her mother had cried herself to sleep every night because she missed the man she’d loved. “Do you wish you hadn’t met him?”
Her mom sat down next to her, a sympathetic look on her face. Her mother might not be the psychic she often claimed to be, but she was good at knowing how her daughter felt. “Honey, it’s never wrong to love someone. Never.”
“I’ve done exactly what I said I wouldn’t. I confused my son.” She should have followed her own rules. Never introduce a boyfriend to her son until she was serious about him.
Except she’d been very serious about Harry. Yes, it had happened fast, but she’d been in love with him and worried she wouldn’t ever feel that way again. All of her other relationships had been nothing compared to Harry. No one had ever made her feel more herself, stronger, more confident than she did when she was with him.
“It wasn’t wrong to bring him in. You had to figure out if he could love your son, and he did,” her mother said quietly. “And honestly, at some point you were going to have to tell Celeste. I might not like the woman, but Luc has the right to know where his father came from, who that side of his family is. I know you made the decision for good reasons, but at some point Luc’s will has to come into play. I assure you he will want to know. And to answer your question, no. I’m not going to say that in my grief at your father’s passing I didn’t have moments where I wished I hadn’t hurt the way I did, but I never would have taken it back. I got three amazing kids out of that relationship. I got a home I love. And I got him. I got to know him, to adore him, to know what it means to be genuinely loved. That’s what the pain means. I loved and that’s what we’re put on this earth to do, baby girl. We’re here to love, and that’s why you need to think about forgiving Harry.”
Would the need to cry ever abate? She felt like she’d been close to tears every second since that moment she’d known she would have to leave him. “It’s not that simple. I think Celeste will use any relationship I have to further her claims. I don’t even know what her claims are, but I know she’ll twist what Harry and I have. She’ll say we moved too fast, that I brought him into Luc’s life too quickly.”
Her mom nodded. “I know that’s what she’ll do, but don’t you worry about it. Marcelle and I are going to put the whammy on that woman.”
Sera groaned. “Don’t even start on that.”
“It’ll work, but if you insist on using the legal process, you should know that Remy’s talking to that lawyer in Dallas today,” her mom said. “I ran by the restaurant to check in, and your brother’s going to set up a phone call with him.”
“Good.” Talking to Lisa’s brother-in-law would settle some of her nerves. At least she would know what kind of position she was in.
There was a knock on the door.
Luc had gone back to rolling around with his stuffed animals. Soon she would have to make his lunch and put him down for a nap. Despite the fact that she should go out to Guidry Place and work on the flooring downstairs, she might lie down with him. She wouldn’t sleep, but at least she could hold her baby and remind herself what mattered.
Hadn’t Harry mattered?
Her mother stood. “I’ll get it. It’s probably Sylvie. Marcelle will have talked to her by now and she’ll be worried.”