“Jesus, Mom.”
“I thought about that look every day. I still think about him every single day. Was he a good man? No. But he is the man I’ll die loving.”
“And you think that’s fair to Timothy?”
“It hasn’t been fair to any man, and sometimes the guilt eats me alive, but what would you have me do? Timothy lost his first wife, and I know at times he feels the same guilt that I do. We all don’t end up with the one we hoped to. He doesn’t resent me no more than I do him. We’ve made peace with it. And we’re happy.” She turns to me. “We are happy. We’re content.”
“Content is not love.”
“It is our version of it. I don’t think Roman would have made me happy. In fact, I know he wouldn’t have. Doesn’t make my feelings for him less crippling.”
“This is…”
“Roman loved you, Cecelia, he did. But he was a hard man to love and be loved by. Impossible. And it wasn’t just my mistake that cost us. It was his. He needed to own a piece of the world. There was some insatiable drive inside him, and it was his ambition that made him enemies, that cost him his family. All of his wealth wasn’t protection enough for him and the damage he’d already done.”
“Don’t make the same mistake she did.”
I set her wine glass down and stand. “You’re right, Mom. I inherited your heart. And don’t flatter yourself about it, because it’s been nothing but a fucking curse.”
“I know that too.” She reads my posture and pleads with me from where she sits. “Please don’t go, Cecelia. Don’t go away like this.”
I stare down at her and shake my head. “You’ve been lying to me my whole life.”
“If I would have told you this when you were younger, you only would have subjected yourself to his rejection. He loved you the only way he could, from afar.”
“It doesn’t make it okay! I treated him horribly. You couldn’t even come clean when he was dying?!”
“He didn’t want you there.”
Stunned, I stare at her. “But you were?”
“I sat by his side and kissed his lips before he passed.”
“Jesus, Mom!”
“He didn’t want you there because he didn’t want you feeling guilty because you didn’t deserve to. He didn’t want absolution. He was an absent father. He chose to build his kingdom over the both of us. He was incapable of voicing his feelings or expressing his true emotions. You wouldn’t have gotten the reunion you wanted.”
“I should have had the choice!”
“You had a choice. You met the man he was. That was Roman. Let me be clear. There were no deathbed confessions. That’s not who he was.”
I remember the day he stopped me at the foot of the stairs, his eyes pleading with me to see him past his mistakes. But I’d begged him in that boardroom and got nothing but a whisper of the same look.
“That house he built,” she rasps out, “it was a daydream we shared when we were our happiest, every last detail of it down to that garden which was meant to be mine. He punished himself by building it, a sordid monument to what could have been.”
I furiously wipe the tears from my eyes.
“It’s taken me twenty-six years to forgive myself, Cecelia. And I will serve out the rest of my life only truly loving one man. Don’t get me wrong, I love Timothy, so much, he’s good to me, and I’ve given him all I have left to give, but your father was the love of my life. Whether or not he deserved it. We truly don’t get a choice.”
“Do you have any idea what keeping this from me has cost me?! Do you even care? Of course, you don’t. You were too busy wallowing when I needed you most. You were selfish. He was selfish.”
She reaches out and grabs my hand as I glare down at her. “I care. Cecelia, I love you with my heart and soul. I did what I thought was best for you. We both did. You, too, are the love of my life, and I’m sorry I was selfish, and I’m sorry I got sick, but I hope one day you’ll forgive me, that you’ll forgive us both.”
“I have to go.” I pull my hand away, and she nods, her eyes glossing with fresh tears.
“Please don’t do what he did, please, Cecelia, don’t shut me out. I can’t lose you too.”
“You aren’t the only one who’s paid. Don’t you get that?”