"Amanda. I didn't know if Ben had told her about us, but I was guessing that he hadn't. In which case, I didn't want to spring a past affair on her when she was having to cope with his getting shot, undergoing surgery, all that. I was afraid that, if I told Ski, it would open a can of worms, unnecessarily. I kept quiet to spare Amanda's feelings and to spare Ben trouble with the wife whom he loves and adores. So much for my good intentions. They blew up in my face."
Caroline spoke quietly. "From here on, I advise you not to withhold anything from Ski."
Berry lowered her arm and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "For instance, you think I should tell him about the phone call I placed to Oren the day before yesterday?"
Caroline looked at her aghast. "Phone call?"
"Thursday afternoon. Oren and I talked for several minutes."
"I don't understand. You came here to escape him. Why on earth did you call him?"
"To make amends."
"For what, for heaven's sake?"
Berry worked her way to the other side of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. Moving to the window, she looked out toward the lake, although all she could really see was her own reflection in the windowpane.
"In order to explain, I have to back up," she said. "Do you remember-- Of course you remember," she said ruefully. "The day of my big blowup?"
Caroline said nothing. Berry turned her head. Her mother was looking down at her hands. "You were upset, Berry. Justifiably upset. You didn't mean what you said."
"Don't excuse the inexcusable, Mother. At the time I meant it."
A co-worker had received a commendation from an account manager on the day the same manager had criticized some of Berry's work and had gone on to shoot down all her suggestions for correcting it.
Stung and angry, she'd sought out her mother at her real estate office and, for half an hour, had vented her outrage. She'd cited how unfair the criticism of her work had been, how lackluster the praised campaign was. "Which only goes to show how lousy this manager's taste is!" she had exclaimed. "And I have to answer to him. My position in the company is dependent upon this bozo's crummy opinion."
Caroline had tried to placate her, but Berry had refused to hear the reason behind her mother's observations. She'd discounted Caroline's advice to carry on and not to let this minor setback become a major self-fulfilling stall.
"You work harder than anyone I know," Caroline had told her. "You're the most dedicated employee that company has. You're talented. Eventually the right people will notice, and your labor, as well as your patience, will be rewarded."
The soft-spoken encouragement had only caused Berry to seethe. She'd gone to her mother for sympathy and got banalities instead. Seeing red, she'd sneered, "Or, in order to get to the top of my profession, I could skip all that kowtowing and do what you did. I could marry the boss."
Even as she spoke the words, she'd known them to be untrue. For years Caroline had worked diligently late into the evenings, on holidays, and over long weekends. Her success was well deserved, based on intuitiveness and hard work, not nepotism.
Berry had also known how wounding the words were and had regretted them the moment they were spoken. But she hadn't apologized. Instead she'd stormed out, leaving her mother reeling from the unexpected and unwarranted onslaught, the source of which was something deeper than anger and disappointment. With that outburst, Berry had revealed a long-harbored resentment of her mother's achievements.
"When I got home," she said now, "Oren was there waiting for me." She laughed drily. "I remember thinking that I probably deserved that for being so hateful to you. He'd brought me Chinese food. He admonished me for working too hard, too long, for not eating right, and for not taking care of myself properly.
"I was in no mood for more gentle chiding, especially his. So I lost it. I yelled at him, told him to take his moo goo gai pan and get the hell off my porch and out of my life. I told him that I'd had it, that if he bothered me again, I'd sic the police on him.
"At first, he responded weepily. How could I be so cruel as to break his heart, crush his spirit, destroy his dreams? I listened to a few minutes of that, and then I cut him off. I told him that he was a joke to everyone who knew him, but particularly to women. I told him that he was boring, that he was a pest, just wrong, and that I wasn't the only one who thought so. I told him that he was creepy and pathetic, and that I couldn't stomach the sight of him."
She rubbed her eyes, wishing she could rub out the memory, too. "I must have struck a chord. Several, in fact. Because he flipped out. Right before my eyes, he morphed into the Oren Starks rendition of Mr. Hyde. Outside a movie theater, I'd never witnessed such a dramatic transformation.
"His face became congested and red with fury like I'd never seen before, Mother. He shouted, 'You can't do this to me! I don't deserve this!' He threw the carton of food against my front door. It split open, splattered. He called me horrible names. Said awful, obscene things. He said it was no wonder that I didn't return his affection when Ben Lofland was fucking me."
She shuddered. "I can't even bring myself to repeat all he said, and you don't want to hear it. He ended with a chilling vow to make me sorry for rejecting him. In language more elaborate than that, but that was the gist of it.
"I went inside and bolted the door behind me. I had my cell phone in my hand ready to call 911--that's how afraid I was--but he drove away. I went into the bathroom and threw up. When I was done and was washing my face, I looked into the mirror above the sink."
She paused, then said slowly, "That's when I saw what I'd become. I barely recognized myself, Mother. I was as much a monster as Oren. I had been cruel, I'd said terrible things to him, I'd been horrible to you, the person I love and respect more than anyone in my life. And why? Because I was upset over a hand-slapping I'd received at work."
She turned to face Caroline. "I wanted to succeed at all costs. Ambition had consumed me. I'd lost all perspective. I was jeopardizing my relationships with co-workers, with friends, with you."
Dashing tears off her cheeks, she continued. "Oren made me fear for my life that day. But I was just as scared of the person I'd become. I stayed up that entire night, with all the lights in the house on, afraid he would come back, also afraid that I would change my mind about doing what I had decided must be done. By morning I was packed. I came here, hoping that I would find some balance in my life, find the me that had somehow got lost."
She returned to the side of the bed and sat down beside her mother, who placed her hand between Berry's shoulder blades and began to massage the spot. "I'm proud of you."