Page 84 of The Boss I Can't Stand
I nodded.
“Good. Follow me.”
She escorted me back to a simple room. Inside, lying on a hospital bed, her hand freshly bandaged and looking slightly put out, sat my mother.
“What happened?” I demanded, checking her over. The nurse answered first.
“She was in a car accident.”
“A car accident?” I practically hissed.
“It’s just bumps and bruises,” Mom said, her voice flat with exhaustion. “Car’s not in great shape, but the airbag protected me. The doctor said I was cleared to leave, if someone would come to get me.”
“I’ll get the discharge paperwork for you,” the nurse said before leaving.
I realized abruptly that this was the first time I’d been alone with Mom since blowing up at her that day in post-production. To mask my discomfort, I slumped down in the chair next to her bed and asked her the question I’d been mulling over since I got the call. “Why did you callme?”
Not only that, she’d specifically asked me not to tell the others. I’d argued that they were bound to find out eventually, but she’d said she wasn’t ready to deal with them yet, and I’d given in…for now.
Mom ran her bandaged hand through her hair. It was in desperate need of a comb. Her fingers catching in the knots was probably driving her up a wall. My thoughts flashed back decades, to ten-year-old Connor standing behind Mom at her vanity, brushing a comb through her hair when she was too depressed to do it herself.
“We both know I wouldn’t usually have been your first choice,” I said. No use in pretending.
She turned to me, giving me a thin-lipped smile. “I knew if I called either of your brothers, they’d definitely come to get me, but then this would be aconversation, and I didn’t want that. I don’t want this to be a big deal. It happened, I’m fine. I just want to go home and forget about today, and I knew you’d make that happen. You’ve always been so good at just making the hard parts disappear.That’swhy I called you.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “I’ll take you home,” I finally said. “But not until you tell me what happened.”
Mom huffed. “I thought you’d be the one who wouldn’t care to know all the details.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t very well dump you at home with a concussion without having something to tell Connor and Liam.”
Mom rubbed her hands together in her lap. She used to do that when I was a kid, too. I think it brought her a modicum of comfort. “X ended things with me,” Mom said. “After what happened with that take that was ruined.”
My stomach sank. I’d seen what one heartbreak had done to Mom. I’d never wish another one on her.
“Anyway,” Mom said, her voice still so tired, like she didn’t even have the energy to be sad. “I wallowed a bit, then I realized what I really needed was to get out of the city. So I packed up and left.”
“And where does the car accident come in?” I asked.
“A deer darted across the road,” she admitted. “I swerved to avoid it, and the next thing I knew, I was in the ditch.” She lifted a shoulder. “And now here I am.”
Relief bled through me at the realization that the accident was a fluke and not Mom being too unstable to drive safely.
Mom’s shoulders slumped as she looked at me. “You’re really never going to stop bracing for me to fall apart, are you?”
I ran my hand over the back of my neck. “Can you blame me? You’ve been falling apart most of my life.”
“I know that,” Mom said, her gaze falling as she picked at the thin sheet on the bed. “And I wish things were different. But I can’t change the past. All I can do is decide the kind of life I want to lead now. After really committing to therapy and getting on a good medication regimen, I started to see myself in a new light. I realized I was someone who didn’t have to be defined by the hurt that led me here. I could write a new story, make time for family, take myself back to school, even fall in love again.”
Love. Was that really what she’d found with X? I swallowed hard. If it was, then she was certainly handling the end of it better than she had when my father walked out.
“I hoped coming on board as the historical consultant would give me a chance to rewrite my story with you, too,” she said, her words surprising me. “That we could finally start building a new relationship.”
“I, uh…” What the hell did I say to that? “I don’t know if I can, Mom.” I’d been burned by her so many times before. I didn’t know if I had the capacity to start again.
“I know life with me hasn’t always been easy,” Mom said softly. “But if nothing else, I hope for your sake that you can find a way to stop living constantly prepped for the worst possible scenario.”
Her words reminded me of Sierra’s, transporting me back to the night of the screening.
