PART5

“I’m not asking you not to come.”

“Then what are you asking?”

He sighed.

“Mom, please don’t make this difficult. You know how these events work. People have expectations.”

There it was again.

Appearances.

Expectations.

The invisible rules that somehow always required me to become smaller.

“Bryce, did Caroline’s mother tell you she called me?”

Silence.

It lasted only a second, but it was enough.

“How do you know about that?”

“She called me herself.”

“Oh my God.”

His voice changed immediately.

“What did she say?”

“She told me what happened at dinner.”

“Mom, she completely misunderstood everything.”

“Did she misunderstand when you said I would make everyone uncomfortable?”

He didn’t answer.

“Did she misunderstand when you said I didn’t fit the image you wanted for your future?”

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“How did you mean it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“No, Bryce. It isn’t.”

I could hear him breathing through his nose.

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what the conversation was like.”

“That’s true. I wasn’t there because you didn’t invite me.”

“Because I knew you’d react like this!”

I closed my eyes.

For a moment, I was back in the kitchen with a sixteen-year-old Bryce, standing over a broken laptop and telling me he was afraid he would fail his classes.

I had wanted so badly to protect that boy from the world.

I wondered when protecting him had become the same thing as protecting him from the consequences of his own actions.

“I’m not yelling at you,” I said. “I’m asking you to take responsibility for what you said.”

“I apologized for the way things came out.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Mom—”

“You called me an embarrassment. You excluded me from an important family dinner. Then you publicly thanked Whitney for being your amazing mom while allowing everyone to believe I had played no meaningful role in your life.”

“I didn’t say you did nothing!”

“You didn’t have to. You let the photograph and the caption speak for you.”

He was silent.

Then he said something I wasn’t prepared for.

“You have no idea how much pressure I’m under.”

I leaned back against the couch.

“Tell me.”

“What?”

“Tell me about the pressure.”

He hesitated.

“Caroline’s family is successful. Her father knows people in my industry. Her parents have expectations about the wedding, and I want them to respect me. I want them to see that I’m building a good life.”

“And you believe having a mother who works as an electrician prevents them from respecting you?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you’ve shown me.”

He let out a frustrated breath.

“You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make everything about how hard you worked. Like I’m supposed to feel guilty forever because you raised me.”

The words struck harder than I expected.

I didn’t speak immediately.

When I finally answered, my voice was quiet.

“I never asked you to feel guilty for being raised. I asked you to remember that you were loved.”

For the first time in the conversation, he sounded uncertain.

“Mom, that’s not fair.”

“No, Bryce. What wasn’t fair was making me feel ashamed of a life I worked hard to build.”

I heard movement on his end, followed by a muffled voice.

Caroline, perhaps.

He lowered his voice.

“Can we just move past this?”

I looked down at my hands.

I wanted to say yes.

I wanted to tell him that he could come over for dinner, that I would make his favorite meal, that we could pretend the last two weeks had never happened.

It would have been easy.

I had done it countless times before.

But something had changed.

“Not until we can talk honestly about it,” I said.

“So you’re punishing me?”

“No. I’m refusing to pretend.”

He made a sound of disbelief.

“Fine. If you want to make this into a huge family drama, go ahead.”

“I don’t want a family drama. I want a relationship in which I don’t have to earn the right to be acknowledged as your mother.”

He hung up.

I sat on the couch for several minutes, listening to the television.

Then I turned it off.

The room became quiet.

And although the silence hurt, I knew I had finally said something I should have said years ago.

The following Saturday, I received a message from Caroline.

It was short.

Joanne, I know this may be uncomfortable, but I would really appreciate the chance to meet you. Not because anyone is asking me to. Because I want to. Would you be willing to have coffee with me sometime?

I read it twice.

Then I placed the phone on the counter and walked around the kitchen.

I didn’t know Caroline well. I had met her only a handful of times, usually at birthdays or brief visits when Bryce was home.

She had always been polite.

Quiet, perhaps, but not unkind.

I had assumed she was simply busy with her own life.

Now I wondered how much she had been told about me.

Had Bryce described me as a difficult woman?

Had he suggested that I was jealous of Whitney?

Had he made Caroline believe I was someone who would embarrass her in front of her family?

I didn’t want to put Caroline in the middle of a conflict between her fiancé and his mother.

But I also didn’t want to reject someone who was reaching out in good faith.

I typed a reply.

I’d be happy to meet you. There’s a little coffee shop near the river in Rockford. Would next Saturday work?

Her response came almost immediately.

Yes. Thank you. I’d really like that.

I put my phone down.

For the first time since the dinner in Madison, I felt something besides hurt.

Curiosity.

I wanted to know what Caroline had seen that I hadn’t.

I wanted to understand why she had challenged Bryce when other people had accepted his explanation.

And perhaps, if I was honest with myself, I wanted to know whether my son had been telling her the same stories he had told Judith.

Because the more I thought about that dinner, the more I realized that I had been asking the wrong question.

I had been asking why Bryce was ashamed of me.

Now I needed to ask something else.

What had he told the people he wanted to impress about the woman who had raised him?

I would soon find out.

And I had a feeling that the truth was going to change far more than one Christmas dinner.

CONTINUE FOR NEXT PART6…