Dead silence hung on the line.
“I know why you did it. And I understand. You were tending to your own need to know, to your own worries, not checking up on me because you didn’t trust me.”
“You know me well.”
“You’re my mother. And we’ve been through some hard times together.”
“Yes, we have.”
“But it still hurts...you lying to me.”
“I know.” Barbara sniffed, and Marie knew her mother was crying. “And I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know. It really only started out as one small investigation—just to make certain that Connelly wasn’t somehow robbing you of your life savings. It wasn’t you I didn’t trust. It was him. And you’ve always known that. I liked him, by the way, last weekend. He’s changed. Anyway, right after I hired Tanner to check into the Threefold deal for me, all that mess happened with Connelly Investments and you really were in danger, and by then I didn’t know how to explain to you why I’d done what I’d done.”
“You could have trusted me to understand.”
“You’re talking to a woman with trust issues...” Barbara’s dry response made Marie smile again.
“But that wasn’t the only reason, Marie. You’re thirty-one. And still unattached. I wasn’t just afraid that you’d think I didn’t trust you, I was afraid I’d feed your own sense of not trusting yourself.”
Marie had just figured that out this past week. That she didn’t trust herself. “You knew that?”
“Of course. It’s been clear since you left for college and called home for the first week to run every single decision and conversation by me. You weren’t relying on your own judgment on anything.”
“I was homesick, Mom. The calls stopped after the first week.”
“Because you had Gabi. You were living with her. And relied on her judgment.”
She sat back. Stunned.
Her problem was worse than she’d thought.
“For what it’s worth, I came clean with Bruce this past week, talked to him about all this...”
“He didn’t know Elliott was working for you when we were all in Vegas together?”
“No.”
Her mother had married Bruce under the same pretenses that Elliott had married her?
The more she learned, the more confused she became. There was no doubt how loyal her mother was to Bruce.
“He wasn’t pleased when I told him, but he understood, too. And he had an interesting take on things.”
He was a psychiatrist. He would. “What was his take?”
“That you are very careful, obviously because of the horrendous relationship experience your father and I exposed you to during your formative years...”
Psychobabble...
“But that you have every reason to trust yourself.”
Marie rolled her eyes. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
“And how would he know that?” The man hardly knew her.
“You exhibit great trust in your judgment in that you find someone you know you can trust, and you stay there. And most important, you don’t always agree with them. You aren’t a follower. You stay strong in your belief. I can think of a lot of times that you’ve disagreed with me and told me so. And times when you disagreed with Gabi. And told her so, too. Not many people can do that, Marie. A lot of people with trust issues are more apt to agree with those they’re closest to in fear that if they don’t, they’ll lose them. And they also tend to agree with whoever they’re with while they’re with them, and then change what they say to suit the next person. Also, trust issues and closed minds commonly go hand in hand. Because one who fears his own ability to assess, doesn’t open himself up to that which would require him to assess.”