Calendar Girl 12 - December (8 page)

I shoved her arm. “Do
not
repeat that within earshot of Wes,” I whispered through her cherry-vanilla smelling hair.

Max grinned and closed his eyes. “Not the picture I want to see in my head right now. I appreciate the deflection, but what do you guys think of what that yo-yo said about our mother?”

I sighed and hugged Maddy closer to my side, wanting her support, thinking she might need mine as well. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It makes a whole lot of sense. Everything he said about her strange behavior is true. The highs with Mom were as high as the stars above, but the lows? They were hard to deal with and easy to come by. We never knew what we were going to get with her. On average, when she wasn’t in what he’d call a manic or severely depressed state, she would be changing jobs, putting us into debt, forgetting things like picking us up from school, or cooking things to ash because she wouldn’t remember that she had something in the oven. The behavior I recall fits with what he described.”

“Does that change how you think of her?” This was the million-dollar question.

I shrugged. “Maybe. Perhaps a little. It definitely helps me understand
why
she was the way she was. It doesn’t explain why she up and left. Why she didn’t talk to a doctor about her problems. Get help. By the time she left us, she was well into her thirties. How could a disease like that go unnoticed for so long? I hate myself for saying so, but it seems awfully convenient.”

Maddy chose that moment to chime in. “If she wasn’t in her right mind, Mia, maybe that’s why she left. Maybe she believed she was saving us? That she knew something was wrong with her.”

Max’s jaw clenched. “That wouldn’t answer why she’d leave me as a toddler, but stay with your dad for ten years.”

“No it doesn’t. Unless your dad saw something mine didn’t. Urged her to get help, and she avoided it.”

“I guess we won’t know until we speak with her. Should I call Kent and see about a time to meet? I’d like to get this done before Christmas, before the rest of your family arrives. What about the Matt’s family? Are they coming?” Max asked Maddy.

She shook her head. “Nope. Since Matt has me and all of us, they took a holiday cruise they’ve been dying to take. They’d never wanted Matt to be alone, but now that he’s not, they asked if it would bother us for them to go. I told them to enjoy, that we’d be spending it with you guys this year since it’s our first. Next year though, we’ll want to have all of us. If that’s okay.” She tilted her chin down and looked at me and then at Max.

I smiled and gripped her chin forcing her to look at me. “Hey, your family with Matt is just as important as Wes’s and Cyndi’s. Okay? We’ll do our best to get together for the holidays and make it as even as we can. Heck, there’s plenty of room here. And with Wes’s and Max’s plans for the two ranches, there will be plenty of room in Texas, too.”

Her eyes widened. “What plans?”

Max grinned and steepled his hands under his chin. “Wes wants to buy one of the farm houses and the land next to our home.”

“You’re moving to Texas?” Maddy started wiggling in her seat like she had ants in her pants.

“Ugh. No, yes. Kind of. Max, you suck!” I pointed an accusing finger at him. He just smirked. “Wes wants to have a home away from home. What better place than where Max and his family are? And since you and Matt will be looking to move to Texas in a couple years, that’s where you’ll be.”

“Oh my god! This. Is. Awesome! I’m going to have my brother and sister in the same place.” She smiled so wide it made the dark room seem brighter.

Wes made his way over with a tray of tequila shots. Not three. A tray. Full. He set the tray down, pulled up a chair, and sat. Matt slid into the booth next to Max. “I heard there was some drinking that needed to commence. Shall we?” Wes grinned. I loved that grin. It spoke of lightheartedness, naked times in bed, and lazy Sundays ahead of me. Endless days of being loved and loving in return. That’s what my life would be like with Wes as my husband. I could not wait.

We each picked up a shot. “To the future,” I said.

“Endless possibilities.” Maddy beamed.

“To family,” Max finished.

The five of us drank and scarfed down tons of pub food until Matt volunteered to stop drinking and drive us all back. The rest of us kept partying, because we had been collectively delivered a blow about our mother. What was there left to do but live for today? And we did. All night long.

K
ent set
up the time for the chat with our mother two days before Christmas. The day weighed heavily on each of us as Max drove us up the gravel drive to a sprawling log cabin mansion, much like the cabin Wes’s family owned. It wasn’t even that far from his. It took all of five minutes to get to Kent and Meryl Banks’s—Banks was the name she was living under now—home.

Kent answered the door and led us into an enormous open living room. There were windows showcasing the view, but not an entire wall like at Wes’s cabin. This one had perfect circular windows like what you’d see in a ship, only much larger than a porthole. These windows had at least a five-foot circumference, maybe more. A set of French doors in the distance, off the modern kitchen, looked like how one would access the outdoor patio. The kitchen had droplights in frosted royal blue that hung down in the all-white kitchen. The only spot of color were the lights and the ceramics on the granite slab counter tops. Everything was ultra-modern yet still felt homey. Touches of fabric broke up the color blocks of white here and there throughout the living room.

The most stunning feature, and the focal point of the room, was a painting hanging above the giant fireplace. It was a lifelike image of the landscape beyond the house, only in the spring when the view would be green and bursting with color. The artist who painted it had serious talent and an incredible eye for detail.

On the far edge of the oversized sectional sat our mother. She wore black leggings and a white chunky sweater. Her hair was so black against the sweater. It shined with almost a deep blue hue from this distance.

“Come, have a seat.” Kent gestured to the couches.

The three of us walked around the back of the couch and sat as one united front directly opposite Meryl. Kent took the seat next to his mate. She gripped his hand and squeezed the second he sat down. I could see the color drain from his fingers as she held him, as though he were the tether to her very sanity. Perhaps he was. Now that I knew her mental status was so fragile.

“Mia, thank you for coming. Maxwell…Madison…” Her voice cracked and tears poured down her cheeks. “It’s so good to see you. I never thought I would again…” She stopped on a choked sob.

Kent handed her a handkerchief, which she used to blot her eyes and nose.

“You look so… God you’re all incredibly beautiful,” she said, awe filling her tone.

I glanced at Maddy to see how she was doing. Her cheeks were tinged with blotches and her nose ran. She wiped it with her sleeve. Me? I had no more tears left to cry. I’d spent years crying over this woman, and more recently, days. I felt dried out…hollow.

“It’s good to finally meet the woman who bore us face-to-face,” Max said, putting an arm around Maddy. “I know for Maddy and me, it’s like the first time.”

Our mother nodded, more tears falling in a river down her face. She cleared her voice. “I know that nothing I can say will ever take away the hurt that I caused…”

I clenched my teeth, not wanting to make this about me, because it wasn’t just about me. She’d left all of us.

“But I’m better now and can understand the damage I’ve done. I know, Mia, that you are very angry with me, and had I known that my leaving would have been worse than my staying, I never would have left.”

“Why did you leave?” I asked the single question I’d been dying to ask for fifteen years.

She licked her lips and sat up straighter. “At the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly. There were more times that I’d find myself standing in the kitchen and not know what I was doing than not. More calls from the school that I hadn’t picked you up. Missed worked without realizing it. One day, I opened my eyes, and I found myself standing in the center of the freeway, walking barefoot toward the desert. I was in my nightgown. Your father was working a night job at the time, and I was between jobs at the casino. You girls were home alone. I had no idea where I was.”

“That sounds horrible,” Maddy spoke up, always the first one to try to mend the hurts of the world and all the people in it.

Meryl nodded. “It was. And those losses of time, the memory lapses all ended in dangerous situations, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop. The last straw was when I was so depressed that I drank an entire bottle of your father’s whiskey. I was convinced he was cheating on me.”

I scoffed. She glanced up and a blush ran up her cheeks.

“I know I was the one that was cheating. Well, I didn’t really know. Most of the time, I was confused where I was and what time I was in. But anyway…that last night I drank the whiskey. I put you two girls in the car, and I got behind the wheel.”

Max’s jaw tightened, and I could almost hear the grinding of his teeth as she spoke.

“Somehow, I drove off the freeway and out into the desert. A Good Samaritan saw my car go off the freeway, called the cops, and followed me. Eventually, the car stopped. I’d passed out at the wheel. The cops came, took you girls, and put me in the drunk tank. Your father bailed me out, and I was supposed to face charges of child endangerment and possibly do some jail time. Only—”

“You left,” I finished, digging the knife into her heart with malicious intent.

“I didn’t know I was sick then. No one did.”

“
A
nd what about me
?” Max asked.

I was wondering the same damn thing.

Max clarified. “You left me five years before you met up with Michael Saunders.”

Meryl inhaled slowly and wiped her nose. “You’re right, I did. Jackson was a good man. He wanted to take care of me, raise a family. At the time, I still thought I was going to be a famous dancer. You need to remember, back then, my illness was rampant, chaotic. My thoughts were always jumbled. I thought Jackson wanted to put me in a gilded cage. Tie me down by having his children.”

He huffed. “Tie you down?”

“You’re misunderstanding.” She cried harder. “I got pregnant with you right after meeting Jackson. My disorder was out of control. I didn’t trust anyone. I loved Jackson, but I wasn’t
in love
with him. Not the forever kind of love. Every day, I was more confused than the next. I didn’t know what was happening. My therapist here told me that it was probably the baby blues, complicated more by my extreme mental state. When a woman’s hormones are up and down like that, and she’s bipolar, the outcome can be disastrous.”

“Yeah, I’d say disastrous about sums it up,” Max said flatly.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t care, that I didn’t love you, Maxwell. I did. I do! Very much. But I didn’t know how to care for you. I was having all these horrible thoughts about Jackson, about killing myself and you. I did the only thing I could do…” More tears trickled down her face and her nose ran.

“Leave,” he said simply. Those words gutted me and made the snarling beast sitting on my chest pick up its head and take notice.

She nodded. “I knew Jackson had money, power, and support. He’d take care of you until I could get my head together. But that never happened. And then when I met Michael, he was so kind and loving. He took care of me. Worshiped me.” She sob-hiccupped. “At first, we were both wacky and different, and I liked that about us. It was us against the world. And then on a whim, in one of my manic moments, we got married in a Vegas chapel. Not long after we married, I got pregnant with Mia. And well…you know the rest.” She sniffed and blotted her tears.

“How come you never contacted us?” Maddy asked, her voice small and sad.

“Oh, baby, I wanted to. Every day. But I was afraid. Afraid of what you’d say. Afraid of what Michael would say. Afraid of going to jail. And then I was afraid I’d lose Kent. The one man that saw what was wrong and got me help.”

“So you didn’t know about us?” I asked Kent.

He shook his head. “No. Meryl broke down when she saw you on the
Dr. Hoffman
show that first time. Then it all came pouring out. The entire truth. Eventually, I contacted the show. Told them I was your stepfather, and that I knew where your long lost mother was and wanted to reconnect the family.”

I sighed, letting all the air leave my lungs. Fucking Shandi. We could have been made aware of this bomb well in advance. I could not wait to get my hands around her spindly little neck.

“What do you hope to get out of this?” I asked coolly, my eyes laser-focused on the broken woman across from me. Unfortunately, the beast inside me didn’t give a shit that she was hurting. The three of us had been hurting for years while she lived in a wooded forest, happily painting the landscape and whittling away her days as a painter and housewife with no responsibilities. But she’d had responsibilities. One’s she skirted from the very beginning.

She ran her hand up and down her thigh. “Um…I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I was mostly concerned about lifting this weight that’s been sitting on my chest for fifteen years. And I swear I had no idea about your paternity, Madison. I drank a lot during those days. To numb the pain. Jackson would come to town on business and often tried to get me to go back to Texas, but I refused. Told him I’d married someone else. Had Mia. He liked Mia.” She smiled softly at me. “The times he visited were a blur of liquor-induced highs and lows. I barely remember anything.”

Maddy nodded and played with her engagement ring, spinning it around and around her finger.

“I guess I should have known though. Seeing the two of you together…it’s incredible how much you look like Jackson. He’d have been so proud to have known you, Madison.”

Maddy nodded, and then her shoulders quaked. Max pulled her into his arms, where she buried her head and cried.

I hooked a thumb toward them. “Do you see this?”

Meryl’s frightened eyes widened.

“That’s what you’ve left behind. I’m not sure how we can come back from what happened…to all of us.”

Meryl licked her lips and then bit down on her bottom one. “I see that. I guess my greatest hope is that we could start over. I know I’ll never be the mother you wanted or the one you deserved, but I am your mother, and I’d like to try and get to know you. If you’ll let me.”

I shrugged, not sure how to respond. I’d hated her for so long and held such a grudge against her for abandoning us it was hard to just accept this new information and wipe the slate clean. I got that she had a mental illness. Logically I understood that a lot of what she’d done wasn’t her fault. That didn’t change that there were years and years of hurt to break through before I’d be able find the compassion within me to have a relationship with her again.

Max’s voice was rough and grated like rocks over concrete. “As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to try.”

Meryl blinked and smiled.

Of course, he did. Max was the epitome of the family man. Family meant everything to him and he was quick to forgive, even quicker to love. It was his greatest gift and his most vulnerable flaw. I wished I were more like him.

“My wife, Cyndi, and I have two children. Isabel is five and Jackson is just over two months. It would be nice for them to get to know their grandmother.”

Meryl lifted her hands to her lips. The tears, like a faucet, had been turned on once again. “Grandchildren. Oh, my heavens, Kent, we have grandchildren!” she said with exuberance, happiness coating every word. Max’s chest puffed out with obvious pride.

I closed my eyes and waited, and I heard Maddy’s shaky voice answer. “Me too. I’d like to try. But it will be hard. I don’t really know you. And, uh, my fiancé and I live in Las Vegas. Mia is in Malibu, and Max is in Texas.”

Meryl’s voice shook with hope as she responded. “That’s okay. We can start with phone calls and emails. Then maybe Kent and I can come out. My gallery is doing well. I have money saved I could use to fly out.”

Kent rubbed her shoulders. “You want to see your kids and grandchildren, Meryl, I have no problem flying you there. We’ve got all the time in the world to make amends, honey.”

Ugh. I wanted to dislike them both. Kent was proving to be a kind, supportive, and patient man. He’d make an excellent grandfather to Max’s children.

At that point, all eyes were on me. I closed mine, not wanting to be judged for my feelings. I’d had years to love her and even more years to miss her…and eventually hate her.

“Mia?” Our mother asked. “And you? Is there any part of you left that misses me, wishes things could be different?” Her voice cracked and more sobs ensued.

My hands were curled into fists, my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palms. “I missed you every day for
years
. Every time a boy hurt me, I missed my mother. Each day that Dad forgot to provide a meal, I missed my mother. Every drink Pops sucked down his gullet that landed him in a drunken oblivion, I missed my mother. All those years of hardship. I had to be my father’s caretaker and Maddy’s mother and sister. Because of you, I stole, went without food more times than I can count, and lied to every school counselor and medical professional about the status of our lives.”

Meryl gasped. “I’m so, so sorry…”

“I’m sure you are. And I’m sorry I had to steal when I was barely a teenager. I’m sorry I had to wash our clothes in the sink with dish soap at twelve. I’m sorry that my sister and I never had a real Christmas, or birthdays where our mother spoiled her little girls like all of our friends growing up. But most of all,
Mother
”—I spat the word through clenched teeth—“I’m sorry that we weren’t enough for you to get help. That Pops wasn’t man enough to take charge and help you. Not only for you and him, but also for
us
. Maddy and me. I can’t even begin to address what a mind fuck it was finding out I had a brother five years older than I was. Twenty-five years, Mother!” I grated through clenched teeth. “Twenty-five years I could have had Max. Do you have any idea how enriched our lives would have been had we known he existed? He’s now everything to us! And
you
…
you
kept him from us. Mental illness or not. You knew you had a son and didn’t breathe a word of it. For that alone, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you, or whether I have room in my heart right now. Maybe in the future, but definitely not today.”

On that note, I stood. My entire body was trembling. “I’ll be in the car,” I said to Max who had already stood along with Maddy. He was probably planning to hold me back from striking her again. I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, but it wouldn’t ease the ache in my heart. Wouldn’t mend the gaping hole that she’d put there all those years ago. Only time would heal these wounds.

“I’m sorry!” Meryl wailed behind me.

I didn’t turn around. Instead, I filled in the cracks around my heart that seeing my mother had opened. I stuffed them with caulk and concrete, slathered them with plaster, and wrapped my arms around my chest in a protective cage. She would not break this wall down. Not yet.

When it came right down to it, regardless of her disease and disorder, I needed her to care more about me than herself. Which I imagine with a severe problem like hers would be hard, but I needed people who were strong willed in my world, people who stuck their necks out for one another. Right now, I didn’t have room to help pick up the pieces of my past with a woman who’d done nothing but leave me high and dry.

T
remors racked
my body as I walked silently into the cabin and right into my room. When I got there, I tugged off all my clothes except the tank and boy shorts I’d worn under my clothes. I pulled back the thick comforter and got back into bed. Gripping Wes’s pillow, I sank my face into his scent. Before I knew what was happening, a warm body plastered up against mine, and a heavy arm wrapped around my chest.

“Want to talk about it?” Wes asked.

I lifted his hand, brought his fingers to my lips and kissed each one. “Not really.”

“Wanna fuck?” he said with a hint of humor. The old Wes was coming back more and more every day. I was beyond thankful for this medical and mental miracle.

I let out a relaxed sigh. “Not really.”

He snuggled into my neck with his warm nose. “Not really. Is that going to be your answer to everything today?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Sweetheart, you have to talk about it. Tell me what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours.” To make his point, he placed his hand on my head and started massaging my scalp.

The massage was divine and exactly what I needed to help relieve some of the stress that had built up after seeing Meryl.

“I’m a bad person,” I finally admitted.

His fingers stopped momentarily on my head but then picked back up. “You are not. Tell me who put that idea in your head so I can find that person and throat punch him.”

I snickered. So protective. “Well, you wouldn’t have to go far, because that person is me.”

He ran his fingers through the entire length of my hair, fanning it over my shoulder. “Okay, then explain to me why the woman I love, the woman I adore, the woman I worship, thinks so poorly of herself?”

God, I loved him. Even in times like this, where I would normally hide out, remove myself from all personal connection, he was the one who could push through. In the car ride over, Maddy and Max had both tried to talk to me, work out what I was feeling, but I brushed them off. Actually, I was rather mean to them, telling them to leave me to my own shit and back off. Not one of my proudest moments.

I kissed his knuckles again, resting my lips against the familiar weight and skin. “Max and Maddy are both willing to let Meryl back in.”

“And that makes you a bad person because…?” He left the question for me to fill in.

“Because I don’t want to let her back in. I’m still mad as hell. I’m angrier now than I was before. I mean, I understand that she doesn’t always have control over her mind, but what about the times when she did? What about those times when she was lucid? She could have reached out, called us, checked on her children. Divorced Dad so he could move on. Her leaving left a giant hole in the Saunders household that could never be filled. And worse, I don’t know that she cares about that part. Just that we were left to fend for ourselves because of her illness, but it’s more than that.”

“It’s okay to be angry. Shit, babe, I’m angry for you. But eventually, that anger will simmer down, and then who knows?”

“And what about the fact she never told us about Maxwell? In my opinion, that’s inexcusable. If Jackson Cunningham had not put my name and information in his will, we’d never have known about Max. There would have been no happy family reunion, no niece and nephew. No ranch in Texas to have as our home away from home.”

Wes groaned into my neck and kissed me there. “I understand, and you’re right. I think she could have found a way to shed some light on this. And if she’s had medication most of her time with Kent, it means she’s been clear-headed for most of the time she’s been gone. Why didn’t she reach out then?”

That’s when I told Wes about the driving under the influence and child endangerment charges, but seriously? Do the crime, do the time. The likelihood that the State of Nevada would put a woman behind bars who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly after that incident happened was slim to none. Besides that, I knew plenty of people who’s gotten DUIs who never did jail time. Sure, adding in the two children in the back seat and the endangerment charge would probably not get her time with her kids for a while, but we’d have known where she was. We’d have known about Max. Pops wouldn’t have been the washed out drunk he was. At least there was a possibility of that.