Page 55 of Unbreakable
“Are we rich?” Greyson asked.
I hitched Bella higher up my hip. “We have more money than a lot of people, yes.”
“Are we richer than Jeff Beeswax? Tyler said he’s the richest man in the world.”
I scanned through my brain to figure out who the hell Grey was talking about.Bezos.“No, we are not richer than Jeff Beeswax. Now mind yours and go set the table with your sister, please.”
“You can’t make children set the table, Dylan,” Ma said. I got a pang in my stomach. Maybe Jeanine was right about Mom’s incessant picking, and teaching me to be helpless. I’d never been on the receiving end of the picking, but now in place as the default parent, it was hitting hard and fast.
“They’re perfectly capable of it,” I said through an almost-clamped jaw. Bella’s tiny little kitten nails dug into the side of my neck. “Bella, honey, that hurts. Can I put you down?”
“No!” Bella whined, tightening her legs around me and winding up to break into a full-on wail.
Meanwhile, Mom just sat at the kitchen island like she had nothing better to do. “Can you do something? I’m struggling over here.”
“What, Dylan? I’ve been waiting on you to tell me what to do. You said you wanted my help before Christmas.”
I had my suspicions that Mom visiting was the straw that broke Jeanine’s camel back or whatever. She’d always been tense around my mom, but it only got worse after we had Greyson. Hell, even before that. When we lost the first pregnancy, Mom said it must be a problem from her side of the family, because she had an easy, healthy pregnancy with me. At the time, I was grieving and just focused on Jeanine. But that was just the tip of the picking iceberg.
And here, I invited Mom to come help Jeanine. I could see the folly of my ways now.
I couldn’t let my mother ruin my marriage. “Would you make the salad, please?” I barked.
Mom’s mouth gaped. “Dylan, that’s no way to speak to your mother. And in front of your children, no less. Is that how you talk to Jeanine?”
“Are you here to help or not?” I asked. She may be my mother, but I was a grown man, and she was treating me like a teenager.
“I’m just saying, she might have left because you’re not treating her with respect. I raised you better than that, Dylan Peter.”
Mom had a point. Had I really been treating Jeanine as well as I thought I was, or was my frustration from work seeping into life at home? When did I start seeing Jeanine as my adversary rather than my partner?
She peered around in the refrigerator. “Shelves could use a clean,” she grumbled.
Was it really this bad, and I just never noticed?
“Sounds like you’ll have something to do when I’m gone then,” I griped back.
Mom screwed up her face. “Your wife shouldn’t have messy shelves.”
I turned from the pan on the stove to face my mom fully. “Did you really come here to help us out, or did you come to find new evidence of everything we’ve done wrong?”
Mom glared everywhere but at me. “Youhaven’t done anything wrong. That’s why I came to help. You asked me to come here, and you know I’ll always support you, Dylan.”
Bella tightened her grip on me, and I set my jaw. She was trying to cover up her critique of Jeanine by pointing out her own superiority. Did she not even realize how harsh she was? “Who is it you’re implying has done something wrong, then?”
Mom sniffed.
“If it’s Jeanine, you need to make a choice. Jeanine is not going anywhere if I can help it. If I can get her to take me backafter all the ways I’ve let her down, then I plan to keep her in my life forever. If you can’t respect my wife, we need to have a different discussion about your position in my life.”
“Dylan Peter—” she raged.
“It’s simple, Ma,” I cut her off. “Respect my wife, or?—”
“Or what?” she dared me. “What are you going to do? Cut out your mother, who gave you everything? Cut me out when I’m the reason Jeanine even went after you?”
I screwed my face up, shifting Bella again. “What?”
“You think she’d be interested in you if you didn’t have the money and the career? You think you’d be where you are without me?”
