She sat on her old bed, felt the still familiar sag to the middle from having so many people on it at the same time, all the time. Even when they weren’t scared, her siblings found their way into her bed.
“I always admired that about you,” Amanda said quietly, standing, hands clasped in front of her.
Belinda looked up at her, but even though she was sitting, it wasn’t very far to curve her neck. Amanda Riggs was tiny, her cap of pale blonde hair dusted liberally with white now, as if she’d forgotten to shake flour out of it after a baking day. In a lot of ways, Belinda knew she looked like her mother. The same hair, the same fine pale skin. But where Amanda was dainty, Belinda had taken her father’s rawboned height and dark eyes. Not to mention his big mouth and apparently, his ability to take the world on the chin.
“Admired me?” she asked, confused.
“Oh, yes.” Amanda sighed, finding a place to sit on Corrine’s old bed so that their knees nearly brushed. “That strength you had. The tenacity. You took all your brothers and sisters under your wing, did more for them than I did. You never went to anyone for help, always insisted you could do it all by yourself. Even when you were a baby, you were so independent. You never needed anyone.”
Belinda thought of Lucas and knew how untrue that was. Immediately, her eyes began to fill again.
Amanda sat next to her and took her hands into her own. “I always wondered what I would do if you ever needed me. I know it won’t make up for anything, but if I can, honey, I’ll do anything you need.”
Could she? Would her mother even be able to understand?
Then Amanda asked the one question Belinda couldn’t deny. “Is it Lucas?”
She laid her head on Amanda’s shoulder and sighed, closing her eyes and letting her tears fall. Immediately, her mother turned and took her into her arms, giving Belinda the one place she could let down all her walls and cry. Amanda crooned, laying Belinda’s head on her lap, running her hands through her hair until the storm was over.
“I know you think I don’t know what real love is,” Amanda murmured, still brushing Belinda’s hair back from her face. “You don’t respect me because you think I let him break me and crush me.”
“Oh, Mama.” She’d never wanted to say that, but it couldn’t be missed. All the silences had to have been easy to put together.
“If I could take back all the hurts you kids had, I would. If I could change my choices, I wish I could say I would do things differently, but I’m not sure I could have. You don’t get to choose who you love or how you love them. Or even how they go about loving you. I know it doesn’t excuse anything, Belinda, but I do love him. Good and bad, I love him.”
“He hurt you.” Didn’t that make any difference?
“I hurt him, too.” Amanda chuckled. “Remember the time I went after him with the rolling pin?”
Belinda frowned, then suddenly the memory of her father—half shaved, in a pair of boxers—running for his life to his rig while her mother swung that old wooden rolling pin, still covered with flour and pastry. Her smile and laugh caught her by surprise.
“He didn’t have his keys.” She remembered his panic, once he realized his underwear didn’t have pockets.
“And he climbed on top of the cab, yelling for David or Ella to come and save him.” Amanda laughed, probably at the thought of Lucas’s parents rushing to her husband’s rescue. They were nice people, but Adam was better off without his fate in their hands. “It wasn’t very funny at the time, but every time he’s a jackass, I remember how he looked up there while you kids laughed and pointed at him. That’s one of my best memories.”
“Why
were
you chasing him?” Belinda wiped her face with the back of her hand, reluctantly coming back to a sitting position.
Amanda’s smile stayed as it was, her gentle touch soothing Belinda’s heated skin as she wiped the other cheek dry of tears. “Oh, who knows anymore? Most of the things we argued about were stupid. I know you don’t believe it, but I gave as good as I got. Your father was always louder than he was smart. A good wife knows how to get her husband where he’ll miss it and he eventually stops doing the things that make you craziest.” She laughed again, a knowing laugh that Belinda couldn’t join.
She felt her humor drift. “
I
didn’t know how,” she said softly.
Amanda, still smiling, looked at her absently. “What?”
“
I
didn’t know how to get him where he’d miss it. Not for a really long time,” Belinda repeated, watching Amanda finally realize what she meant. The words she’d never said, had tried not to think. The things she’d blamed herself for…when she shouldn’t have. “I was just a little girl. And you never stopped him.”
Amanda’s shoulders sagged further. “I always wondered when we’d get around to talking about this.”
Belinda shrugged, then stared down at her worn boots. “There never seemed to be much point.” They would have just argued.
“Maybe,” Amanda agreed. “Most of it should never have happened. And I should have done more to protect you from it. I know that now.”
Now?
She’d had to
think
about it? “Why didn’t you know it then?”
Amanda sighed heavily. “Truthfully, there were times I thought you had some of it coming. You were always so provoking as a child. The way you prodded him… It’s like you
wanted
him angry at all of us.”
“I
wanted
him to go away,” Belinda corrected, rising to her feet. “I wanted to feel safe, Mom.”
Amanda just shook her head. “It’s like I’ve always said. For being so alike, you and your father are never going to understand each other. If you’d just consider the way he thinks—”
“I shouldn’t
have
to understand, Mama,” Belinda said tightly. She hated to admit she was like the pigheaded man in even the slightest ways, but the will she used to stand up to him all these years obviously hadn’t come from her mother. “There’s nothing to understand about dragging your child across the room by her arm or her hair.”
Amanda paled, her hands slowly drifting to her lap.
“I shouldn’t have
had
to understand when he slapped me instead of hugged me. When he wished over and over again that something bad would happen to me, like it was a joke. When he says he’d be glad if I never came home again. What’s to understand?”
Her mother wanted to say something typical. Belinda could see it on her face, but this time, she couldn’t let the old excuses end the discussion.
“It doesn’t matter that he was drunk. He wasn’t any different when he was sober. Maybe I did provoke him sometimes, but he
never
had the right to do that to me. Or to you. I don’t care what he’s like now. It doesn’t even matter what he was like
then
. Don’t tell me to blame myself. I won’t excuse him or say it was okay, because it wasn’t, Mama. It
wasn’t
.”
Belinda realized that while her hands had fisted, the words had finally come out. No more bottlenecking. No more cold feelings choking the sense right out of her. She was calm.
And she was right.
She wasn’t to blame for her father’s behavior. All the abuse, all the abasement. It was never her fault.
She looked at her mother with suddenly clear eyes. The urge to protect her was still strong, but the knowledge that you couldn’t save people who didn’t want to be saved leeched the anger from her soul, leaving only an old heartache behind. Amanda remained sitting on the bed, her face so sad, strangely looking aged in a way Belinda had never noticed before. She was fragile, awaiting accusation and hate, expecting to be crushed.
Was that what Lucas meant about
her
? That she’d had no faith in herself? Had she spent all these years trying so hard not to be her mother only to end up exactly like her, locked behind fears and rationalizations that never rang true?
“Why didn’t you ever leave him?” Belinda asked.
Amanda’s smile was solemn. “I loved him.”
“Didn’t you love
us
?”
“Oh, sweetheart, of course I did. I
do
. I love all of you.” She just didn’t love herself. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Belinda ached, knowing it was true. Amanda Riggs didn’t know who she was without Adam to define her. But what about herself? Who was she to point fingers? Hadn’t she fallen apart without Lucas?
But somehow, her broken heart was different.
Lucas didn’t define her. Making him happy wasn’t how she spent her day. She didn’t worship him. She didn’t make every decision by his leave. In fact, for the last twenty-five years, she’d made her decisions whether they aggravated and annoyed him or not.
He was gone and yes, she’d folded emotionally. She’d been lost, like a compass blinded to north. But she’d still continued. The world kept turning. Her work continued getting done. Even the dog had gotten fed on a daily basis. Losing Lucas hadn’t been the end of her existence.
Just the dumbest decision of her life.
They were never going to have a peaceful life together. He was too grumpy, stodgy and pushy. And those were his good points. He was also loyal and determined, and he had the kindest heart she knew. He would never ask the things of her that Adam demanded from his wife. And as his wife, she would never stand to be dominated.
She decided to skip a list of her own good qualities—that wouldn’t take long and really, the groveling should be saved for when he’d hear it.
Looking down at her own hands, Belinda forced them to open, forced herself to push her hurts and her fears away, sighing when the coiled energy seeped from her fingertips into the house that had borne them.
“I have to go, Mama.”
“To Lucas?”
Belinda tilted her head. “How did you know about him, anyway?”
Amanda smiled. “He came to see us yesterday. About you and your fountain.”
Lucas? Here?
“He must love you very much, honey. He was so sick, but he came anyway. I’ve never seen anyone treat your father like a gnat before. He’s been a royal pain ever since.” Which usually involved his stomping and other people ducking, but Amanda simply looked amused. “I knew he would wear you down sooner or later.”
“I thought you wanted me to marry Kyle.” Her mother’s sense of reality did not need some misconceptions about which Lonnigan was which.
“Heavens, where would you get that idea? I love Kyle, truly, but you’d be walking all over him in no time.”
“You wanted me to marry the
nice
Lonnigan boy, remember?”
“I know. Lucas
is
nice.”
Because nice men were capable of treating her father like a “gnat”? Better to let Amanda rewrite history. Fixing it would take more time than Belinda had. Right now, she wanted to get to Lucas.
Amanda stood quietly, immediately smoothing the blanket from the rumpling they’d created over the old dents. Belinda watched her, then took her mother’s hands and pulled them over her own heart. No matter her own hurts, she still loved Amanda. Still wished she could do more for her.
“There’s room for you with me,” she whispered. “There’s always room for you. That won’t ever change.”
Her mother’s faded blue gaze met hers with understanding. Then she shook her head. “My place is with your father. I’m happy with that.”
You can’t change them
, Lucas had said. Maybe that had been part of it, too. She had to stop trying. There had to come a time when she lived her life for herself and it had to start now. She let go of her mother’s hands and stepped back. A few steps later, she was out of her childhood room, leaving the hurts there where they belonged. As quietly as she’d come, she left the house.
She knew where home was now and for the first time, she wasn’t scared to go there.
“How sick is he?”
If Lucas didn’t know his fever was ridiculously high, he’d have thought Belinda was in his apartment. It sounded like her—loud, brash and pissed off.
“For God’s sake, Lonnigan, what have you done to yourself now?” her imaginary voice asked in his head.
Lucas managed to lift a ten-pound eyelid to see her peering down at him, pale, worried and touching his face with cold, cold fingers. Well, if he was going to boil his brain, at least he got nice delusions like this.
“Oh, the usual,” Kyle was saying tiredly. “First, he worked himself into a state. Didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and then I guess one of his neighbor’s kids here had a nasty case of bronchitis, which Lucas caught along with half the building. Did the moron go to the doctor? No. He spent two weeks turning it into a lung infection, then pneumonia. I’m surprised he’s still alive, he’s been so damn stubborn.”
“What’s his temp?”
Keeping his eye slit open took too much energy, so Lucas let it drift back shut. He could still hear them, could still feel her next to his bed.
“Just under a hundred and five. We made breakfast on his forehead this morning.”
“Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?”
“He won’t go. The doctor says to keep him cool and to keep fluids in him, but we can’t even keep the medicine in him. I’m not looking forward to making use of that suppository—”
“Go home, Kyle,” Belinda interrupted, just the way Lucas hoped she would. Someone had to. Fever or no fever, he’d kill Kyle before that particular indignity took place.