“To have my children with me in New York.”
She said it so wistfully that it stunned him, especially when he knew it was a lie. “Come on,” he scoffed. “You never wanted that. I overheard you tell Dad more than once that you hadn’t signed on to be a single mom. Am I supposed to believe that changed just because you’d divorced him? Did you suddenly get all warm and fuzzy over the idea of raising us on your own?”
She looked stung, then shook her head. “Sometimes I’m still astonished by how much you all heard, when your father and I tried so hard to keep our arguments private. You heard just enough to be hurt, but not enough to understand.”
“Come on, Mom, what’s to misunderstand? If you ask me, you made yourself pretty clear.”
“Actually the point I was trying to make to your father was that we’d agreed to be partners in our marriage, that if he wasn’t going to be around to share in the responsibilities of parenting, I might as well be a single mother. At least then I’d know that everything was up to me.”
Kevin knew she was trying to make a distinction, but he wasn’t sure he bought it. “What’s the difference?”
“I’ll give you an example,” she said at once. “Do you remember the first thing that would happen every time your dad came home from a business trip?”
Kevin thought back, but couldn’t think of anything specific. He shook his head.
“Then I’ll remind you. You or Connor or one of your sisters would greet him at the door with a laundry list of things you wanted to do that I’d already refused to let you do. Mick would automatically say yes, undermining my decision without knowing any of the relevant facts. He loved being the good guy, which left me to be the hard-nosed disciplinarian. Then he and I would end up fighting about it.”
Though he hated admitting it, Kevin did recall exactly how they’d used Mick’s absences to their advantage. On some level, they’d known that their dad’s guilt at being away so much would keep him from saying no to anything. They’d also known that Megan wouldn’t overrule him.
“You’re saying it would have been easier to be the final authority,” he concluded.
“Pretty much.”
“Couldn’t you just have told Dad to butt out until the two of you had a chance to talk? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than divorcing him?”
She smiled at that. “We’re talking about your father. Have you ever known him to butt out? Besides, you know the divorce was about much more than that.”
“I still think you’re revising history,” he said bitterly. “It’s easy to say now that you wanted us with you. How are we supposed to prove otherwise?”
There was a quick flash of hurt in her eyes at his remark, but then she said, “Don’t you really mean how am I going to prove that I’m telling the truth? Okay, fair enough. Do you remember my first visit back here after I left?”
Kevin shook his head. He’d made it a point to be away from the house as much as possible whenever he knew she was coming. He’d been so angry then. And Gram and Mick had let him get away with it, buying whatever excuse he’d offered. They’d gently tried to coax him into sticking around, but the minute he’d balked, they’d given in.
“You spent the weekend with Jake,” she reminded him. “On a camping trip.” She let that sink in, then asked, “How about my next visit?”
He tried to think back, but nothing specific came to mind. “How do you expect me to remember something from that long ago?”
“You seem to remember pretty clearly that I supposedly abandoned you.”
“Well, of course, because that’s exactly what you did.”
Her gaze steady, she said, “No, Kevin, I didn’t, not the way you’re implying, anyway. I was here, time after time. You were all so angry, and who could blame you, but I kept coming back. I encouraged all of you to come to New York. I was supposed to share custody with your father. Mick and I had agreed to that. He provided enough alimony and child support for a place big enough for all of us. My apartment was filled with empty bedrooms intended for you. I had schools picked out. Ask Abby if you don’t believe me. When she moved to New York, she visited the apartment, saw the room I’d decorated for you and Connor with all sorts of sports posters, the one for Bree and Abby with a computer, the perfect little girl’s room for Jess.”
Shaken, Kevin regarded her with disbelief. “Why did you do all that, then never take us with you?”
“Because I was convinced you’d be miserable if I took you away from here. It was the wrong decision, no question about it, but I did what I thought was best for you at the time. Your friends were here. You had family here. In New York, with me working, you all would have had too much time on your own in a strange place, even if I’d arranged for a housekeeper. And, on top of all that, most of you were barely speaking to me. Eventually I had to face the fact that you all wanted to be here, rather than with me. I finally gave up that ridiculously expensive apartment and got one I could afford without any help from your father.”
He hated the image that came to mind of his mother sitting all alone in that large, empty apartment. For an instant, his heart filled with compassion, but it took only a moment before it hardened again. He’d had years to perfect the anger and no time at all to absorb this other side to the story.
Apparently his mother wasn’t expecting a response or even a reaction, because she continued, each word another blow to the wall of defenses he’d erected.
“Instead, I settled for being the outsider,” she said. “I settled for coming again and again for uncomfortable visits, trying to chip away at all that anger.” She gave him a rueful look. “Every one of you kids inherited the O’Brien gene for stubbornness in spades. Not one of you ever cut me any slack.”
“Did you expect us to?”
“I hoped, with time, you would. That’s why I never stopped trying.”
The conversation made him look back from a different perspective, see that period of his life in a new light. Maybe she hadn’t been quite the monster he’d turned her into in his own head.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, will you answer one of mine?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
This time when she reached out to touch his cheek, she didn’t pull back. “Tell me why you’re in so much pain?”
He stared at her incredulously. “I lost my wife! How do you expect me to feel?”
“Oh, Kevin, I know grief when I see it, and that’s not what I’m seeing with you, not entirely, anyway.”
“You think you know what it’s like to grieve for someone?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “I grieved for you children every day of the past fifteen years.”
“Not the same. You could have had us back. All you needed to do was move home, or at least back to Chesapeake Shores. There’s nothing, nothing, I can do to get Georgia back.”
To his dismay he saw something in her eyes that scared him, an apparent understanding of every emotion that was in his heart.
“If you could wave a magic wand and bring her back, would you?”
“Of course,” he said at once, stunned that she’d even ask such a ridiculous question.
She waved off the quick response. “I don’t just mean having her safe and alive,” she amended. “Of course, all of us want that. I meant here, with you.”
He was slower to respond this time, though