Judith jerked her hands away and did the stiff upper lip thing she’d perfected long before Carol could recall. “Maybe some of us aren’t ready to forgive and forget.”
She walked away, leaving Carol to wonder who her mother wasn’t ready to forgive. Because the cold stare and pointed words certainly seemed like they were directed at Carol.
Noticing her aunt standing in the doorway, Carol shrugged. “That went better than I expected.”
The concern in Ellen’s eyes didn’t waver. “She still hurts over Katie’s loss.”
“So do I,” Carol stated with more of an edge than intended. The following silence lingered long enough for her to regret her response. “I’m sorry. Touchy subject.”
“For all of us.” Crossing the room, Ellen gave Carol a weak smile. “I’m glad you feel more at peace, but your mother is right. You always did let John twist you around until you couldn’t tell which way was up. Sounds like he did it again.”
Carol wasn’t surprised Ellen saw things that way. John had been a master manipulator, and Carol had been easy prey. She’d been starved for affection when she’d met him. He found her weakness and exploited it until she was in over her head, which hadn’t taken long. But the John who’d resurfaced in her life had been truly repentant.
“I’m not the only one who changed over the last twenty-four years. John had as much loss and sorrow to work through. He wasn’t the same man I divorced all those years ago. It’s been twenty-four years. People change a lot in two and a half decades.”
“People do change,” Ellen said, “but not fundamentally, Carol. John was a schemer and a liar. He knew how to play you.”
“We were both toxic back then,” she said, “in different ways.”
“You said he made you realize you’re responsible for Katie’s death. Seems like he was still pretty toxic to me.”
“Putting the blame on him was easy,” Carol said instead of trying to convince her aunt of something she would never believe. “Pretending I didn’t have a hand in how things turned out was easy. But those were lies I’d told myself so I didn’t fall apart more than I already had. Now that I’ve accepted the truth, I can finally grieve for my daughter in a healthy way. I can think of her without a burning ball of rage in my heart. I’d never been able to do that before. Crazy as it sounds, I needed to face John in order to accept responsibility for my mistakes and forgive myself.”
“The only mistake you made was loving that son of a bitch too much.”
Carol squeezed Ellen’s hands. “He was a good man underneath his many flaws. I watched his drinking consume him, and then I blamed him for being weak.” She shook her head enough to stop Ellen before she could protest. “I was a textbook enabler. I avoided, denied, and blamed. When I got fed up, I would set ultimatums, and he would pretend to meet them until the pattern started all over again. Every time. That was on me as much as it was John.”
Ellen tightened her hold on Carol, as if begging her to reconsider her views. “Don’t let that guilt eat you up.”
Ever thankful for her aunt’s tenderness, Carol smiled sweetly. “I’m not. We were young and had never dealt with adult problems. We both let things go too far, and it cost us our daughter. Neither of us ever expected to pay for our ignorance the way we did. I forgave him. And I forgive myself. Because of that, I’ve started to heal instead of ignoring how much pain I’ve been in.”
“Your mother needs to hear that. She worries about you, even if she doesn’t know how to show it.”
Carol bit her bottom lip, bracing for another round of explaining herself. “Part of why I’m here is because I hate how distant we are. We always have been, and I want to change that. But I can’t, not until I lay everything out there and find a way to forgive her and Dad for the way they’ve always treated me.”
As expected, Ellen’s concern visibly grew. “Oh, Carol, tread lightly. She’s been through a lot too.”
“I know. I’m trying to make things better, but we can’t ignore the last fifty years.”
“You can’t push her. You know how she reacts when she feels cornered.”
Carol rolled her eyes. “Like a feral cat?”
Ellen grinned. “Sometimes feral cats are better left alone.”
“I’ve left this alone for too long. If we don’t work this out now, we never will.” Carol shook her head and let her shoulders drop with the weight of the burden she felt. She’d come to realize, probably too late in her life, she wanted to be close to her mother. “I can’t tell you how sad that makes me. I want to know my mother.”
Ellen gave another of her sympathetic smiles. “I understand, more than you can imagine, but she’s a bit old to change her ways, honey.”
“I have to try.”
“Well, the first step is to convince her to join us for lunch. No more talk about John. Not right now. Enough has been said about that subject.”
Carol preferred to pull the bandage off, so to speak, but she understood where her aunt was coming from. She could only push her mother so far at once. Convincing Judith to change her views was better done in small steps, gentle nudges. Though she’d like to force her mom to sit down and hash everything out right then, Carol decided she’d nudged as much as she could. For now.
Two
Carol looked across the small kitchen table when Judith let out a long, dramatic breath while staring at her breakfast. After an afternoon of working on a puzzle, a short walk, and then dinner at a local restaurant the night before, Carol had left her mom and aunt and returned to her motorhome. She’d been restless until the wee hours of morning when she’d gone to the park’s guest center and taken out her aggression on the treadmill.
Even so, her mother’s early morning play for attention was grating Carol’s nerves before she’d even sat down for the bacon and eggs Ellen had prepared. “Are you okay, Mom?”
Judith eased her mug down and blinked several times. “No, I’m not. I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep a wink for worrying about you. I don’t want you sleeping in that RV alone. It isn’t safe. I told you that last night.”
Oh boy, had she told her. They’d spent almost half an hour going around and around about Carol sleeping at the campground, as well as walking the short distance between there and the townhome.
“I’m in a secured park,” Carol reminded her. Again. “People have to check in before gaining access, and there is an officer patrolling all the time. Like here in your neighborhood.”
Pressing her lips together, clearly frustrated that Carol hadn’t simply caved into her demands, Judith stared. “I suspect they use the term ‘officer’ loosely.”
Carol focused her attention on buttering her toast. “The RV doors lock.”
“Locks can be picked,” Judith pointed out. “What would you do if someone broke in while you were sleeping inside?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“How?”
Wiping her hands on a napkin, Carol pinned her mom with the same hard look she was receiving. “I have a gun.”