“Evan, please, I’m sorry…”
The laugh I give verges on maniacal, but I can’t help it. “You’re sorry? What? And you think that’s all you have to say? All you have to do? And I still don’t understand what the hell you’re doing here.”
“You need to listen to your mom, Evan.”
I turn back around to face Dana. “I’m sorry. I need to do what?”
“She came to me, Evan, because she had no one else to go to. She couldn’t really talk to Alicia because – well, their relationship’s a little strained now. She’s no longer the family’s attorney…”
“You just push everyone away, huh?”
“Please, Evan…”
“To hear you beg makes me sick, do you understand that?”
“I’m going to leave you both alone now. Because you really need to listen to her, Evan.”
I look at Dana, watching as she gathers her coat and purse and makes for the door. “Where are you going?”
“To see Heath. Come and find me when you’re done here, okay?”
“I shouldn’t be long. Believe me.”
She looks at my mother, and now it’s obvious there’s something going on here, and I don’t know whether to be angry or scared or, what? I can’t get my head around this.
I wait until Dana closes the door behind her before I look back at my mother. And this time, when I glance over at her, it’s almost like another woman has taken her place. She looks different, somehow. Not quite as pristine as she usually is, and by that I mean her hair’s a little out of place, and her make-up’s a lot lighter, her clothes more casual.
“Come and sit down, Evan. Please.”
I let out a sigh, one filled with frustration, but I’m not sure I can let this go now. She’s here, she obviously has something to say, and she’s come a long way to say it. I should hear her out, at least. But no one says I have to like what she tells me.
I sit down on the chair opposite her, and I lean forward, clasping my hands together between my legs, I want my stance to let her know I don’t really want to be here, but I’ll be generous enough to give her some of my time.
“When your father and I started having trouble conceiving, I always knew we’d look to adoption. All I ever wanted was to give a child a good life…”
“I’ve heard all this, mom. We’ve had this conversation, we’ve done this…”
“Do you know why I chose you, Evan?”
Her eyes are boring into mine, and I frown, because there’s something in her expression I can’t read now. The look on her face, it’s almost haunting. And I don’t know why, but that’s making me nervous.
“My birth parents were addicts, too, just as yours were. Only, I wasn’t taken away from them until I was ten years old. Ten years of living that hell, of seeing things I can’t erase; things that, maybe, turned me into the woman I became, I don’t know, that could just be an excuse…”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach, way, way harder than I’ve ever been hit before. The shock, it’s gut-wrenching.
“The way I lived, as a child, I wouldn’t treat an animal that way. But, you know, there were days when my mom and dad had lucid moments, when they’d try and be a proper parent. Those were the days when I got food, at least. But those days never lasted, because their next fix was always at the forefront of their minds, not their child. I was just there to look after them, make sure they didn’t choke on their own vomit…”
“Jesus…”
“But they never over-dosed. Somehow, they always managed to keep just the right side of killing themselves. Until that day. The day when a bad batch of heroin found its way into our home, and into their veins, what was left of them. The day I had to call 911 and hope the ambulance got there before death took them. Both of them.”
I don’t know what to say, all I can do is listen, and watch her speak, because I have never seen my mother this way before. For the first time in my life she seems real; human, and that actually scares me a little.
“I was taken into the care system, obviously. There was no way they were going to give me back to my parents, and in the end they couldn’t anyway. My mom died a couple of weeks later. That heroin finally got to her. And my dad, he died a few months after that. Killed by his dealer, stabbed to death when he couldn’t pay what he owed. I was an orphan, a ten year old girl so damaged by everything I’d had to endure in my short life that it seemed impossible that anyone would want to adopt me. And yet, somebody did. Two of the most incredible people this world could ever know. They took me in, they gave me a life that it took me a while to get used to because I’d never known that level of kindness. I’d never experienced love, never known what a hug or a kiss felt like. They were good people, but I fought them every step of the way, I really was too damaged. But they never gave up on me. They could see beyond the damage, they knew there was something inside of me worth fighting for. And I repaid them back by working hard, throwing myself into my school work because I had so much to catch up on. They paid for me to have tutors to help get me up to speed, and that’s when I realized I was actually good at something. I enjoyed working hard, I enjoyed learning new things, and by the time it came for me to go to college, I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my adoptive parents and practice law. It was all I wanted to do. And by that time…”
She trails off, and I watch as she turns her head away for a brief second, and I see a sadness etched on her face that I have never seen in her before and, yeah, that freaks me out, it scares me.
“My mother – my adoptive mother, she contracted cancer, just before I graduated college. It took her too soon, it was too advanced for anyone to be able to do anything, and my dad, he just couldn’t cope. I always say he died of a broken heart, he just wanted to be with her. And there I was, an orphan again, but this time I was a stronger person, everything I’d been through, that had changed me, I was okay, this time. I’d already decided, I was going to be a great lawyer, build myself an amazing life…”
She looks at me, and that sadness is so evident now, her eyes brimming with tears and I don’t have a clue what to fucking do here. This isn’t something I’ve ever been faced with before, my mother has never cried, not in front of me. I’ve never seen this side of her.
“I became the woman I turned into because I didn’t want to go back there, Evan. Back to a life I couldn’t control, something bad and dark; a life of having nothing. I wanted everything. I didn’t want to go back there. So, I was determined to focus everything I had on making sure that didn’t happen, I wanted to be someone, and when I met your father… He wanted the same. It was like meeting my soul mate, this perfect person who wanted everything I did, and together we knew we could do it. We could get that perfect life, be those perfect people we strived to become, but we weren’t perfect…”
She trails off again and I don’t know whether to sit next to her, comfort her, tell her it’s okay, I don’t know what the fuck to do.
“And I wanted children, I really did, so, when we realized that part of our life wasn’t working out quite so perfectly… Adoption seemed like the right thing to do. And I knew if that’s what we had to do then I was going to make sure the child we took in was one who…”
“Needed rescuing?”
Her eyes lock on mine, and I feel my heart break when I look at her. It’s fucking breaking. “If that’s how you want to see it, Evan, then yes. But your situation… I didn’t want you to have to spend any time in a life I knew too much about, I wanted to give you something else. Something safe and secure and I know, now, that we made mistakes, your father and I… We made mistakes, but the only thing we ever wanted for you and Heath was for you to be happy.”
“You wanted us to be successful.”
“We wanted you to be able to do anything you wanted…”
“As long as it involved working in law?”
“It gave us a good life, Evan. And I’m sorry, if I pushed you too muc
h, if I took it too far, but both you and your brother turned into great lawyers. And you – you earned your success, and you deserve it all, because you are a good man.”
I bow my head and look down at my clasped hands, and that’s when I realize my wedding ring’s still there, I’m still wearing it.
“We just wanted what we thought was best for you, but now I see that we didn’t always get it right.”
I stand up and I walk over to the window, and I can’t help laughing, but it’s a cold laugh. “No. You didn’t.”
“I forgot to love you, Evan. The way a mother should love her son, I forgot to do that. And I more than anyone should never have let that happen. I was just so focused on pushing you boys to make something of yourselves that I lost sight of what really mattered. And I’m so, so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.”
I say nothing for a few beats, I’m still trying to take all this in, because what she’s just told me, that’s huge. It’s fucking huge, and it’s going to take some time to get my head around it all. “I loved her, so much. Lola. She was my whole fucking world, but I couldn’t handle it. Being in love, it was too hard.”
I hear her get up, and I know she’s walking over to me but I stay where I am. I don’t move, I keep staring out of the window.
“I never should have said those things, Evan.”
I turn around, and I look at her, and I can feel an anger simmering away inside of me but I try to keep it down. Being angry isn’t going to change anything, it won’t make things better.
“You said you only wanted me and Heath to be happy. I was happy, with Lola. I had my own law firm, I had an incredible home, I was respected as a lawyer; I had a wife I fucking adored. But she was my secretary. And in your world that just wasn’t right. And you just couldn’t stop yourself, could you?”
“Evan, baby, I don’t know what to say…”
“There’s nothing you can say.” I turn away again, and I take a long, deep breath, I compose myself before I turn back around. “Maybe it wasn’t entirely your fault my marriage failed, it’s just… Jesus, this is such a fucking mess.”
I lean back against the window ledge, and she reaches out to take my hand but I pull it away. I’m not sure I’m really ready for this. Not yet.
“Do you love her, Evan?”
“Yes, of course I fucking love her.”
“Do you still want her?”
“I don’t know.”
She sits down beside me, and this time when she reaches for my hand I let her take it. And as her fingers curl around mine I feel like this is the first time she’s ever really felt like a mom. Before she was just this person who worked us hard, taught us how to focus, guided us through college and law school but she never really showed us love. Is that why I’m so terrified of it now? Because I don’t understand it? How it works, what it can do to you? Is it because all of that scares the hell out of me?
“Don’t let her slip through your fingers, Evan. If you love her; if you still want her, then you need to talk to her.”
“It’s too much of a mess.”
I think I might be too defeated already. We pushed each other away, so far away I’m not sure there’s any hope left at all now.
“Is that the boy I raised? The one I said could do anything? Be anything…?”
“This is different. This is so fucking different, and I – we handled it all so fucking badly…” I drag a hand through my hair and throw my head back, letting out a loud and heavy sigh.
“If you still love her, Evan, then you get on a plane, go to the UK, and you find her and talk to her and you sort this out. If you love her, tell her.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?”
“Then at least you tried. Because I don’t think you can move past this unless you try.”
I look at her, and she squeezes my hand and she smiles the kind of smile I only very rarely saw from her before. “Why couldn’t you have been like this more, huh?”
She wipes a tear away from her cheek and squeezes my hand again. “Don’t make mistakes like I did, Evan. Please, don’t do that.”
I look down at our joined hands and I still don’t know what to do. How to feel. Right now, I don’t know anything.
“Look, Evan, I know things are still going to be difficult between us, I can’t expect you to accept everything I’ve said just like that, if you accept it at all. I just want you to know that I really am sorry, for everything. Your father and I, we did what we did because we thought it was for the best, but now I see that, although it turned you and Heath into the successful men we wanted you to become, we made mistakes, big ones. And we can’t take them back or change anything but… I’m sorry…”
“Don’t keep saying that, I know you are.”
“I want things to change between us, Evan, I really do. I don’t want to shut you out – I don’t want you to shut me out anymore, because I love you. So much. And you can choose to believe that or not, but you and Heath, you boys are my world. And when your brother came here, with you, to New York… I thought I’d lost him, too.”
“You should talk to Alicia. You should makes things right with her, she’s almost part of the family.”
“I know. And I will talk to her, I promise, but, Evan…”
I let go of her hand and stand up, walking over to the other side of the room. “How long are you in New York?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really put a time limit on my stay.”
“For as long as it takes, huh?”
She frowns slightly. “I just want you to be happy, Evan.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all of that sooner, huh? Why did you never just tell me the truth?”
“Because I was scared. I was terrified of what would happen if I did. And that was wrong and selfish and you didn’t deserve that, any of it, but I am trying to make up for all those mistakes, Evan, I’m trying, really hard, to pull this family back together.”
“I know.”
“It’s going to take time, I understand that, but I just want to try and put right everything I got wrong. I want to try and make it all better. Or as better as it can be.”
“By telling me to go get my wife back?”
“I know it isn’t that simple, Evan. But if you don’t try you will regret it.”
“She left without even telling me she was going.”
“So, go tell her how that made you feel. Tell her everything, Evan, all the things that scare you, all the things you want, tell her everything. Don’t hide the truth. Don’t lie to her. Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
I drop my head and I close my eyes and I wonder, for a second, if this is really happening; that my mother is really standing here, actually being the kind of mom I wished she’d tried to be before.
“Maybe it wasn’t all you fault.” I keep my head down, and I lean back against the wall, I’m exhausted. The working day has barely begun and I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. “Maybe I could’ve tried to be a better son, not fight against you so much…”
“It’s over, Evan. It’s done, and we can’t change what’s happened. The past is the past, and no matter how hard it is to do maybe we should try and leave it there. But you can change the future. Or, you can try, anyway.”
I look at my watch. “I need to go.”
I start to walk toward the door.
“Evan?”
I swing around to look at her. My mother. A woman I blamed for so much when, in the long run, she wasn’t really to blame, not for everything. The messes I’ve made, some of them, they were all on me.
“Are we okay?”
I wait a second or two, and then I throw her a small smile. Just a small one. I’m still wary, and I think I might be for a while yet. But, you know, maybe not forever. “We will be.”
Twenty-Nine
Lola
I sit down on a wall and take a sip of coffee as I look out over the landscaped lawns and terraces of Cathedral Gardens, a smal
l city center park sandwiched between the Manchester Corn Exchange, Chetham’s School of Music and the National Football Museum. It’s a cold day, but the place is full of city center workers and shoppers and I indulge in a few minutes of one of my favorite pastimes – people-watching.
I start my new job next week, and I’ve been inside my new law firm all morning, taking a look around, being shown what’s expected of me, and I’m looking forward to making that fresh start. Everyone I’ll be working with seems nice, so I’ll hopefully make a few new friends. What I’m finding harder to deal with is living alone, again. In New York it was never so bad, because Kat was close by, she was always there, if I needed her. But here – here she’s on the end of the phone and we speak via Skype almost every other day, but it isn’t the same. I miss her. I miss a lot of things. But I’m learning to deal with it, I’m moving on.
I take another sip of coffee and stand up, pulling my scarf tighter around my neck as a cold breeze whips up around me. The one thing Manchester and New York do have in common is the weather. Both can be freezing in the winter.
Throwing my empty coffee carton into the nearest trash can I slide my hands into my pockets and make my way out of the park, back toward the city centre. Despite the cold it’s a beautiful day. The sun’s shining, there’s hardly a cloud in the sky, it’s the kind of day that makes you feel good. And I have plenty to feel good about. Being here, it’s not been as painful as I’d thought it would be. It hasn’t been as hard. In fact, coming back here, I think it’s finally allowing me to deal with something I maybe hadn’t fully dealt with before. I’m not saying I’ll ever forget, what happened. I’ll never, ever forget, I can’t, forget. But the memories that are flooding back now, they’re not killing me anymore.
Willfully Hers (The Dirty Business Series Book 2) Page 24