Part of her wanted to walk out there and announce she’d changed her mind about how long she intended to stay. She’d hang out for a day, maybe two, and then be on her way. But she was here with a purpose, one she couldn’t walk away from. Facing the chasm between them was the only way to cross it. She couldn’t run from her past forever.
The last few months had taught her a brutal lesson—the past always came back to be resolved. She had to work this out while she could. Life had shown her time and time again that people could be ripped away without warning. Her mother was older—time was running out.
“You can do this,” she told herself before folding and rehanging the cloth precisely how it’d been before she’d dried her hands and face.
Back in the kitchen, Carol stopped at her mom’s side. “It’s nice to see you.”
“You too,” Judith said, though her attention remained on the soup.
“So you’re one of us old retirees now,” Ellen said, busying herself with fixing a pot of coffee. Though she hadn’t looked at Carol as she’d spoken either, her lack of eye contact didn’t feel nearly as deliberate as Judith’s.
“I am.” Carol tried to not overanalyze the slight she felt, but her mother’s cold shoulder was already irritating her. She hadn’t been in the house for five minutes yet, not nearly enough time to start reading too much into her mother’s behavior.
“And living in an RV,” Judith stated.
Then again, the clipped tone illuminated everything Carol needed to know. She was getting a frigid greeting because her mother disagreed with her choices. As usual.
“For now,” Carol said. “That will grow old eventually, and I’ll settle down somewhere.”
“Where, Carol? You’re selling your house.”
Carol cast a glance at her aunt, who diverted her eyes like a child trying to avoid trouble. From the moment Carol had filled her mom in on her plans, Ellen had likely been listening to all the ways Carol was messing up her life this time.
Judith turned and stared Carol down. “And what about your belongings?”
“I’ve sold most of them.” She stood a bit taller—a matador bracing for the bull to attack. “Mary took the rest to St. Louis.”
Her mom scowled as if she were already fed up with Carol’s foolishness. “You burdened your mother-in-law so you could roam the country without a care?”
“I’m sure Mary didn’t mind,” Ellen offered. She was well-practiced at diffusing the tension between Carol and Judith before things erupted. For years, whenever Ellen was visiting, she would wade into turbulent waters in an attempt to calm them. She was rarely successful.
“No, she didn’t mind.” Carol’s words were almost as sharp as her mother’s. “I didn’t send her home with anything larger than a few boxes of framed photos. Mary was happy to take them.”
“You told me she drove home in Tobias’s car.” The slight smirk on Judith’s lips seemed to imply that she’d caught Carol in a lie. “That’s a bit larger than a box.”
Carol bit the inside of her lip. Pictured flowers in the wind. Heard Tobias’s voice in her mind.
Don’t take the bait, she imagined him telling her.
“I gave Tobias’s car to his mother,” Carol said calmly. “She’s not storing it for me. I gave it to her after I paid off the loan. All we had to do was switch the title. There was no burden passed to her. Thank you for being concerned, though.” The last bit came out dripping with sarcasm, but Carol didn’t care. For Judith to suggest Mary viewed Carol as the inconvenience her parents always had enraged her. She would never place undue stress on Tobias’s family. They were the best thing in her life.
Judith narrowed her eyes into an accusatory stare. “Is this some kind of midlife crisis or…or…some kind of mental breakdown?”
Ellen carefully set three bowls on the counter before turning toward Carol. Where her mother had been direct and borderline harsh, her aunt offered Carol a concerned look and soft smile. “Honey, did something happen at that conference?”
Carol creased her brow with confusion. “What conference?”
“You went to a conference, and then, out of nowhere, you decided to retire and sell everything to live in your camper,” Ellen said. “Why? What happened?”
John. John had happened. Her ex-husband had shown up and turned Carol’s life upside down, as he’d always done.
Carol had loved being an executive at a pharmaceutical company. However, she’d clung to the monotony like a life preserver after Tobias’s death. She’d stopped living—socializing was limited to work; her home became an extension of her office. When John resurfaced, he’d forced her to face that she’d put herself on autopilot and was in danger of never coming out. He had woken her from a daze and made her promise she wouldn’t spend her life hiding behind her desk. She had the money and the means to travel. She only had to find the courage to leave the security of her self-inflicted prison—which she’d done without much of an explanation to her mom and aunt.
Though it pained her to concede so soon into her visit, she had to give this one to her mom. From Judith’s point of view, Carol’s abrupt redirection came out of nowhere. She didn’t know where Carol had been or what she’d been going through because Carol had constructed a story about going to a conference rather than dealing with the fallout of her mother’s reaction to her taking a trip with John.
Explaining to her mom and aunt where she’d been, as well as what she was planning to do after her visit, was one of the many reasons for needing to see them in person. This wasn’t something she’d wanted to discuss over the phone.
“I wasn’t at a conference,” Carol said calmly as she sat at the small round table in the corner of the kitchen. “I was on the road, but I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
Judith slammed down the wooden spoon she’d been using. Droplets of soup landed on her apron. “So you lied?”
Ellen waved a hand at Judith, as if to dismiss her anger, and stepped closer to Carol. “Why would we worry, sweetheart? Where were you?”
Carol took a second to brace herself, knowing the reaction from her mother was going to be over the top. “I was with John.”
Judith visibly stiffened, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin as she widened her eyes. “John Bowman?” She spit out his name as if the words tasted bitter on her tongue.
Carol supposed they probably did to Judith. Her parents never forgave her for falling in love with a man they hadn’t deemed good enough. When she’d gotten pregnant and switched from premed to nursing, John became the bane of their existence. Though Carol and John’s daughter, Katie, had been the best thing in Carol’s life, her parents had never come to accept John.
On one hand, Carol didn’t blame them. John’s devil-may-care attitude had been an affront to everything they stood for. They’d warned her he was going to drag her down. They’d been right. He’d distracted her from her studies, seduced her into his bed, and spent the next eight years undermining every attempt she’d made to get her life back on track.
However, her parents had made things so much worse than they should have been. If they’d been kinder and more supportive, she might have felt she’d had the support system she needed to leave John long before she did. Long before staying with him had cost her everything.