Page 72 of The Confidant
“Probably almost as weird as seeing my sister walk through the door last night with her hair all messed up and knowing that my best friend was responsible for it,” Mack said.
They both laughed.
But what they were saying did make me think.
If Scarlett was as important to me as my friends’ girlfriends were to them, shouldn’t I be trying harder to fix things?
Ugh, but it was so hard when neither Scarlett nor I could compromise our beliefs.
I certainly wouldn’t be willing to live a lie or raise a family in an environment that could be dangerous and spiritually abusive.
Scarlett didn’t see any of those things yet, of course. But there had to be a way for me to at least try.
I mean, it wasn’t like things could get much worse from where they were right now.
25
SCARLETT
My tourof Columbia went well on Saturday. My mom and I made a whole day of it, and it was fun seeing her favorite hangout spots on campus from back in the day.
“I always kind of regretted not finishing my degree here when I had the chance,” she said as we walked past the Butler Library—a ten-story, neoclassical-style building that had an amazing colonnade with the names of famous writers, philosophers, and thinkers inscribed above the twelve columns. “It’s not every day that you get accepted to an Ivy League college, you know. And while I had so much fun my freshman year, I always felt like I missed out on some of the college experience when I married your dad, got pregnant right away, and had to drop out.”
“Do you sometimes wish you hadn’t gotten married so young?” I asked, curious since I knew a lot of that had been influenced by my dad and the church. And now that she was inactive and divorced, it would make sense if she was upset about those things the same way that the lady whose story Hunter accidentally emailed me about did.
“Would I recommend it to you?” she asked, looking at me with her brown eyes that matched mine. “Probably not. Just because when you’re young, there is so much to experience and so many opportunities. It was hard taking care of a baby and figuring things out with a husband who was so much older than me when I hadn’t quite figured out who I was as a person.”
“So it was hard?”
“It was hard forme.” She nodded. “I didn’t think so at the time, but I was a lot more immature back then and had no idea what I was getting into when I married your strait-laced, pastor father.”
“You were immature when you were nineteen?” I asked with a teasing glint in my eyes, since my mom had always been more of a free spirit, despite being an extremely successful investment banker.
Her motto was that she worked hard so she could play hard. She thought I should be better at adopting that motto myself, always commenting on how I needed to loosen up and have a little more fun instead of stressing so much about the future.
“I know it’s hard to imagine I was ever immature, since I’ve always been such a fabulous mother to you.” She chuckled like she’d just told a joke. “But those first few years of motherhood were rough, and there were many occasions when I felt envious of all my friends who were able to just get their degree done all in one go without the complications of a husband and family.”
“So you regret having me so young?” I asked, trying not to feel hurt at being seen as a complication.
“It’s not that I regret having you. It’s definitely not that.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “I would never give you back in a million years. You’ve always been such an amazing daughter.”
“But you would have waited a few years if you had to do it all over again?” I asked.
“Probably,” she said. “Sure, there are positives to having kids young. You have more energy then. And because I was only twenty when you were born, it totally means I’ll be a cool, hip grandma when you have kids…” She squeezed me closer. “In, like, ten years—after you’ve had a chance to figure out what you want to do, right?”
I responded with a non-committal shrug.
Waiting until after college was probably smart, but I also knew from what I’d learned at church that even if I did have a baby before the time my mom recommended, the Lord would provide a way since he always did.
My mom must have seen something in my eyes, because she looked at me sideways. “You’re not planning to elope with Hunter right after graduation, are you?”
“What? No.” I took a step back and shook my head. “I mean, H-Hunter and I— We’re not like that.”
“You’re not?” She raised an eyebrow, like she didn’t believe me. “I know I don’t always see everything that goes on, since you spend most of your time away at school. But I could have sworn you two were an item and just pretending to be friends because your father has that stick up his butt about steady dating in high school.”
“It probably looked like that,” I said, somewhat surprised that she’d thought I’d gone behind my dad’s back and had been okay with it. “But Hunter and I—well, we’re actually barely even friends right now.”
“What?” Mom gripped my arm and stopped in the middle of the walkway, forcing the people who’d been walking behind us to quickly step around us. “You and Hunter are having problems?”
