I don’t trust him anymore, and that…it’s too hard to love someone I can’t fully trust with my heart or happiness.
“Dove, listen to me—”
“Nope. Have a good evening, Vincent.”
Chapter Thirty Three
“But Sis, you have to come over for Justin’s birthday! He’ll be crushed if you miss it.”
“Mama, I told you I already talked to him yesterday and explained how busy I am. He said it’s fine as long as the gift arrives on time,” I say for the hundredth time, frustrated by her nagging and the blob of color staring from my canvas.
“But… You haven’t spoken to Beau since you got back. Please, Sissy, just come home for a few days so we can clear things up between you. I can’t understand what’s going on.”
It’s the same conversation we’ve been having for the last two months since I left my husband and filed for divorce. She nags me for answers and I deflect, telling her my life is my business and mine alone.
If it hurts her feelings, well, too bad. I’m done with everybody running my life and pulling my strings as if I’m some kind of freaking puppet. I realize that I can put a stop to her three phone calls a day and constant nagging by just telling her the whole truth, but I’d already decided months ago not to ruin her happiness by pointing out what a dick my father is.
“Mama, I’m not coming home anytime soon because I’m very busy. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but that’s just the way it is. Now tell that idiot brother of mine that I love him and go potter around in your vegetable garden.”
“Fine, but if you and your father don’t pull your heads out of your asses soon I’m gonna get mad and bring him up to you.”
“Please don’t, Mama. I’m really too busy right now.”
And I don’t want to see Beau yet, not until this anger has dissolved enough that I won’t scream obscenities at him.
“Cecelia Blake, you can’t hide from life in those paintings of yours like you did when you were little. It won’t get you anywhere but to a deeper misery,” she says harshly.
I’ve heard all of this before, enough times that I just nod sagely at the phone and roll my eyes, keeping my opinion to myself. Her use of my married name, though, that gets me somewhere deep, in that place I’ve been keeping locked up to this point.
“I’m not hiding from anything, Mama; I’m just goddamned sick and tired of men trying to rule my life. If I let them, I’ll be locked up in the same gilded cage you are, and I can’t accept that,” I whisper raggedly, hurling the paint brush in a fit of temper. “I—”
“Sissy, darlin’, the only cage you can ever be in is the one in your own mind. I’m as free as anybody else, freer if you consider I’ve been leading your daddy around by the short and curlies for the good part of three decades,” she says softly, a tinge of laughter coloring her voice.
“But—”
“No buts. You’ve obviously been looking at life from a vantage point that’s skewed, darlin’, so I’ll help you out here. When Justin was two years old, I left your father and took myself off to a cabin in the woods, fully intending to never lay eyes on the man again till he finally fessed up and admitted he loved me.”
The picture she paints is so far from Beau’s stories of love at first sight and months of wooing that I can’t get a word out before she starts speaking again.
“When he finally did track me down and haul my ass home, it was with such heartfelt professions of love that eventually I had to tell the man to shut up already.” She giggles, making me smile ruefully. “The point is, nothing worthwhile comes easy or without a fight. I had to fight to get the love I wanted. After that, well, I’ve been leading that man around by the nose ever since.”
“But I don’t want to have to fight for love, Mama. I want a man who’ll love me without reason. Someone who’ll give me affection for no other reason than he wants to, not because I’m nagging like a freaking fishwife.”
“Sis, honey pie, men are simple creatures. They don’t think the way we woman do. If you’re looking for some fairy tale hero who’ll profess undying love to you from the get go, you’re in for a lot of disappointment, honey. Vincent is just a man—”
“Vincent doesn’t matter anymore, Mama. My lawyers already served him with the divorce papers, and since I don’t want anything out of it he says all it’ll take to get things moving is both signatures. I’ll be single again in a few weeks,” I remind her, bracing myself for the inevitable.