Page 75 of The One You Want

Chapter Seventeen

3 days to Maggie’s wedding...

Rose sat with her mom at the kitchen table, sipping tea and enjoying a moment of peace and quiet. For the first time in a long time in this house, it felt companionable between them. A sense of comfort came over her that she’d never felt in her mother’s company.

“Did you decide on a paint color for the living and dining room?” Rose asked.

Her mom had painted a dozen different paint samples on the walls. Different shades of white, pale blue, and green. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, if you pick one and it doesn’t feel right after it’s up on the walls, you can always change it again. It’s just paint.”

Her mom pressed her lips together and nodded.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect, Mom.”

All of them had spent countless hours worrying about doing everything right. Mistakes were not dismissed or overlooked.And every time there was a rip, a tear, a slash mark in the fabric of their family.

She gave her mom a soft smile of encouragement. “Sometimes in order to make a change, you have to make a mess first.”

Her mom returned her smile. It came much more easily now.

Rose kept going. “Like going through the rooms and deciding what to keep and what should go.”

Her mom had filled half a dozen boxes with things from the house and two large garbage bags of clothes to donate, and Poppy had helped her haul out several pieces of furniture for the donation truck to pick up this morning. The house looked a bit bare in some areas because she hadn’t had time to rearrange things and buy anything new to make the place feel like hers—not his.

“If you don’t really love it, it should go, so you can make room for what makes you happy.”

Her mom held her gaze. Rose wondered if she understood that statement didn’t just mean the things in the house, but the people in her life, too. Without her father here, dominating the conversation, the room, the house, their lives, they could breathe and be themselves.

If her mom had put him out of the house years ago, things could have been so different for her, for all of them.

“I loved what you did with your room. It suits the new you,” her mom said.

Rose’s room felt like a cozy, welcoming space to come home to now. “And this place will suit the new you you’re just discovering. It’s a transition. It will take time. It doesn’t have to happen all at once.”

Her mom tilted her head to the side and stared at her tea. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough time to figure out who I am?”

“Not when you’ve allowed him to live in your head. How does it feel to put paint on the walls and toss out all that stuff he wanted but you didn’t like?”

“Like I’m being defiant,” her mom admitted.

“Because you still feel him judging you. You still think in some way you’ll be punished for wanting what you want and liking what you like. He’s not here to say or do anything about it. It’s time for you to live your life the way you want and stop living the one he forced you to live.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It was, wasn’t it? You take out the old and bring in the new. Keep the good. Get rid of the bad.” She reached across the table. “And repair the things you’ve damaged and broken that you want to hold on to.”

Her mom squeezed her hand. “I wish I knew how to make up for all I didn’t do for you and Poppy. I wish you knew how much I love you both.”

“We know. And I love you, too. I’ve been angry for a long time about the past. I blamed you for not stopping him, for not taking us away. I was a kid who needed to be protected and I felt like you didn’t do that for me.”

“I didn’t. Not in the way you really needed me to.”

Rose took in that acknowledgment of the pain her mom had caused by her inaction. “But I also learned from my counselorto see things from others’ perspectives. I don’t know what I would have done in your shoes. I’d like to say I’d have walked right out the door the first time he hit one of my kids. But that’s easy to say and harder to do. As a grown working adult who has bills to pay and likes to eat, I get what you were up against.”

“I sometimes wonder now that he’s gone and I don’t feel so...”

“Incompetent,” Rose suggested. “Someone tells you that enough times in a lot of different ways, you start to believe it. I know, Mom.”