“You would never do that to me.”
“You’re asking me to pick, mother. I don’t want to do it but if you make me… it isn’t going to be you.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said, clutching her temples. “You can’t do this to me.”
“I’m not doing anything to you, mother. I’m starting a family with the woman I love, like a normal man. This is exactly what you wanted. A decent mother would be happy for me.”
She burst into tears. I felt a tug in my heart. I didn’t want it to come to this but I didn’t see any other way she would understand. This was the last straw. I walked up and led her to the door.
“You can’t do this to me,” she said, blubbering.
I sighed, already exhausted. Apologizing would be so much easier but it would just take us right back where we started. Brenna was my life now. If my mother’s prejudice made any kind of sense then I would listen to her, but it didn’t.
“It’s your move now, mum. You can be a grandmother to mine and Brenna’s child if you’re ready to accept her. You lose us if you can’t.”
She looked at me through tears. “Charles, please,” she said.
“Good night mother.” I closed the door, remembering to lock it this time. I leaned back, letting out a breath that felt like it took fifty pounds off of me. That was it. We weren’t having that discussion again. She could be a grandmother, or she could reject my new family. I swallowed. She hadn’t always been this bad. Before my dad died, she was more… normal. She didn’t have nearly as many airs about her. She came from money so she was as spoiled as anyone with that kind of background was, but she hadn’t been nearly as judgmental or classist as she was now.
After he died, it was like she felt she had to overcompensate for no longer being married to a man as powerful and established as he had been. She felt she needed to seem as good or even better than she had been when she was married to him. She felt like she needed to have the perfect image and that included the perfect match for me. She took it too far and now we were here. I had said my piece, even if it meant never talking to my mother again. I was never debating Brenna’s place in my life again.
I took the stairs three at a time, heading up to Brenna’s room. Why didn’t she tell me what had happened between her and my mother? I would have done something. I would have protected her. I had no idea that they had had a confrontation seven years ago. So many things made sense now.
I knocked at her door.
“Brenna?”
Nothing. I knocked again.
“Brenna, it's me. Let me in, I want to talk to you.”
Still nothing. I paused and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.
“Brenna?” I said, entering the room. It was empty. I checked the bathroom and the closet but she wasn’t there. I checked my room, the guest rooms, the upper floor, and the terrace, everywhere. By the time I got back down to the living room, I was panicking.
“Brenna? Brenna!” I checked my office and the kitchen. Nothing.
Shit, she was gone. She was running. It was too much for her and she was hiding. I cursed, going back upstairs, running through all the places she could possibly be. I already checked the upstairs but I needed to get something.
We hadn’t quite gotten to the point where we spent every night together but often enough, we spent the night in each others’ rooms. I walked to my nightstand and opened it. The velvet-covered ring box was still there, right where it had been for the past few weeks. I didn’t usually keep anything in there so I was never scared that Brenna would find it looking for something else.
I was making it happen tonight. She wasn’t running from me again. I’d never push her away. It was the two of us from here on out.
28
Brenna
I always knew that this place was small, but goddamnit.
I looked around the apartment. How was it that it looked even smaller now than it did when it had all of mine and my mother's belongings in it? It felt so empty. My mother hadn’t actually been living here for several weeks now. I had Charlie to thank for that.
She was living comfortably at a posh recovery center. She had around-the-clock care and was receiving treatment from countries leading oncologists, all on Charlie’s dime. Not even in ten lifetimes would I have been able to afford to send her there. I talked to her every day, and she seemed to be getting better. She was responding to the treatment and because there were other patients there, she was making friends and had a community so she wasn’t as lonely.
Yet another thing I had to thank Charles Hampton for giving me. My eyes started to well up. I had just left the house. Sitting there on the armchair in my old apartment and the only thing I could think about was him. What had life even been like before I knew him? Not just meeting him again this second time around, I meant since the first time. Working at Dana point beach and having a massive crush on the cute lifeguard.
That summer completely changed my life. Charlie had transformed my life in so many way
s. My hand went to my stomach. That was what it was, the pregnancy hormones. That was why I was crying, not the fact that my child was going to grow up with split parents. People made it work all the time, but I wanted Charlie. Our relationship was over before it even got a real chance to start, because he cared more about what his mother and his peers thought than about me.