Ex on the Beach (22 page)

So, yeah, this conversation was definitely odd. And Andie hadn’t missed the fact that her mother hadn’t answered the question of
why
she wasn’t out traveling with John.

Andie looked across the table and made eye contact with her mother, knowing deep down that something was going on. “What’s wrong, mom?”

Was there a medical issue? What else would drag her mother to the island?

Instead of answering, Cassie changed the subject. “I can’t believe you told your aunt I never liked you. Of course I like you. I
love
you. You’re my daughter.”

Oh, so her mother
had
heard that part of the conversation, too. Andie flushed.

“I didn’t mean you didn’t like me, Mom. Not really.”

“Then what?”

“Well,” Andie began, glancing out the window behind her mother and focusing on the moss hanging from an old oak tree just beyond the courtyard area. The tree was outside the ring of lights on the patio, but with the faint glow from them, she could make out the moss swinging slightly in the breeze. She loved the live oaks that covered so much of the island, but they seemed so sad to her — heavily laden with moss, all of it drooping toward the ground.

She focused again on her mother, deciding to put everything out on the table. Might as well state all the things she’d felt over the years. Wasn’t as if she was going to risk ruining a good relationship by doing so.

“It’s not like you ever went out of your way to see me, Mom. From the first day I left for college. Visiting me just never seemed important enough. I figured that was because I didn’t meet your expectations.” She looked away, unable to continue making eye contact. “Like I wasn’t good enough,” she whispered.

They both sat silently for a long time, each fiddling with whatever she found in front of herself, doing everything to keep from looking at the other. After several long seconds, her mother spoke in a low, heartbreakingly sad voice. “You were more than I could have ever asked for, Andie. I just wasn’t a good mother.”

A heaviness lodged in Andie’s heart. What did she say to that? Because, no, Cassie hadn’t been a good mother. But for the first time, Andie wondered if that was because of her mother’s inabilities instead of her own faults. She glanced up from where her hands played with the silverware. “Why?” she asked softly.

Her mother ran a slim finger down the outside of her water glass, making a path through the condensation. “I wasn’t born to be a mother.”

“Maybe not, but couldn’t you have at least tried?”

“John wanted to go places. It was one of the things I promised him when we got married.”

“That you would travel a lot?”

Her mother nodded.

“And what? That you two would do it alone? Without me?”

“Genevieve wanted time with you, Andie. She wanted to see you.”

Andie hadn’t known her aunt before she’d been shipped to Turtle Island that first summer when she was eight. She’d been terrified but had quickly fallen in love with Aunt Ginny. The woman had been more of a mother to her than Cassie ever had, and Andie had cried when she’d had to return home at the end of that first summer. “Then why didn’t I know her before you married John?”

“There were…extenuating circumstances. Your aunt and I … had a falling out.”

“Yet she knew about me?”

Cassie nodded. “From before you were born.”

Andie had a lot of questions in her mind about her aunt and her mother’s relationship. Neither had ever claimed a problem, but when she’d been visiting her aunt on the island and had called home to her mother, or vice versa, she was always the one on the phone, relaying messages between the two. The sisters rarely, if ever, had spoken to each other directly.

“When was the last time you were here, Mom?”

This question seemed to catch Cassie off guard. Unconsciously, she slipped a hand to her stomach. “For James’s funeral. I was seven months pregnant at the time.”

“So you knew Uncle James?”

Cassie nodded. “I met him here one summer, before he and Ginny married,” she said. A faraway look crossed her face, as if the memory was a nice one, and Andie wondered if her mother had secretly liked her uncle more than anyone knew.

Had that been the falling out? Ginny had married James, but Cassie had liked him, too?

“I was there for your wedding,” her mother blurted out.

“Yes, but would you have been if I’d been marrying someone you didn’t feel would up your standing in the world?”

An angry flush stole across her mother’s face. “Really, Andie. That’s just rude.”

“Yet the question stands.”

Green eyes narrowed on her before Cassie broke connection and took another quick sip of her drink. “The Kavanaughs have a good name, yes. But of course I would have been there, no matter who it had been. You are my daughter, after all. You were getting married.”

“Only I didn’t.” And she’d seen even less of her mother in the years since.

“His loss.” Her words shocked Andie. “He was an idiot for letting you go.”

“I’ve come to realize it was probably the best thing for both of us. We didn’t really know each other like we should have back then.”

“Then you could have learned. I can’t imagine you weren’t the best thing that ever happened to him.” Bright spots of anger flushed her mother’s cheeks, and all Andie could do was pick her jaw up off the table and continue listening to the words pouring from her mother’s mouth. “And just look at him now. Back here. Still mooning over you. That boy knows what he lost. You shouldn’t give him the time of day.”

The tirade floored Andie. She would never have guessed that her mother had any of the thoughts she’d just voiced. Andie had spent the last four years assuming Cassie thought she was the one who’d taken the loss that day.

“You really believe that?” Andie asked.

“Of course I do. I’ll also join your aunt with kicking his butt if he hurts you again. He was a jerk to you before. I won’t stand for that again.”

Oh my God!
What had happened to her mother?

“Is he trying to get you back?”

Andie almost spat out the sip of wine she’d just taken. “No, Mom. He’s not trying to get me back.”

“He sure went after you today like—”

“He went after me like a friend would,” she interrupted, not wanting to get into what they’d done after he’d come upstairs to check on her. “We’ve had a couple talks since he’s been here. He’s apologized. Explained himself. And we’re …” Andie waved her hand in the air. “Friends, I guess. We’re friends now.”

Except they weren’t. He’d said they couldn’t be.

“I don’t like the way he looks at you,” Cassie stated. It wasn’t a question, and it didn’t require a response. She simply didn’t like the way Mark looked at her.

The admission made Andie smile. Who knew her mother could be protective?

She suddenly wondered what the two of them had missed out on over the years. And why they’d never been close. She wanted to understand the gap between them. And she had the idea that she just might want to try to change it.

“What was the deal with us, Mom?” Andie felt the walls she always erected between herself and her mother take a hit. It was twenty-nine years in the making, but wasn’t it time to try a real relationship? “I know you never wanted kids, but couldn’t you have at least pretended that you cared? Did you blame me for your first husband leaving you? Was that the problem?”

Cassie blanched at Andie’s words. Before she could reply, servers arrived with salads. Dishes were placed on the table, freshly ground pepper was offered, and water glasses were topped off. Her mother ordered another martini, and Andie pointed to her mother’s drink and nodded. She’d take one, too. It seemed like the night for it.

After the servers retreated, she and her mom spent the next few minutes digging into their salads, and though Andie felt a little ashamed at what she’d said, it was time to get it all out in the open. There had been a distance between the two of them their whole lives, and Andie wanted it gone.

Maybe they could form a decent relationship and maybe they couldn’t, but she wanted to try. Her mother wasn’t getting any younger. But could she ever accept Andie for who she was without Andie having to constantly work to prove herself?

With the salads eaten, the servers promptly exchanged the empty plates with their entrées, and at last, her mother looked across the table at her. “It was not your fault Parker left me. That was all me.”

The bread Andie had just swallowed sat heavy in her stomach. Parker had left because her mother had had an affair with Andie’s father. That had always been clear. Good to know her mother didn’t have some misplaced blame about that.

“What, then?”

Her mother remained quiet for so long that Andie didn’t think she was going to answer, but finally she peered across the white linen tablecloth, and locked her gaze on Andie’s. Vulnerability unlike any Andie had ever seen from her mother shone from her eyes.

Gone were the barriers Andie had witnessed her whole life. It was just her mother, looking old and seeming to beg for some sort of forgiveness. “Talk to your aunt. She’ll tell you everything.”

“What does Aunt Ginny have to do with you and me?”

“I should have let you live with her year-round. She would have been a better mother than I ever was.”

That was no answer. In fact, it ticked Andie off. Now her mother wished she hadn’t had to put up with her at all?

Andie had had enough.

She tossed her napkin to the table. “Fine, Mother. If that’s the way you want it, we’ll go on as we’ve always been. I’ll talk to Aunt Ginny. Like I always have. She’s always been the one to be there for me, anyway. Not you.” She glared at her mother, then sighed in resignation. She muttered, “Never you.”

She rose from the table and, with shaking hands, opened her purse for money to pay the bill.

“Don’t insult me by offering to pay for dinner, Andie.”

Andie shot her mother a snide look. “I don’t think insults matter at this point. I stupidly had hoped that you’d shown up because you wanted something from me. From …” Andie’s words slowed and softened, and she let out a long breath. “… us,” she finished. She dropped back to her seat and leaned across the table to whisper, “I’d hoped you might finally want a relationship with me, Mom. Seems about time we try one.”

“I do.” Cassie said quickly. Her words were urgent, but she neglected to make direct eye contact.

“Right.” Andie wouldn’t believe it until she saw proof. “That’s why you send me to Aunt Ginny for answers.”

“It’ll be better coming from her, is all.” Her mother reached out and squeezed Andie’s hand. “She would have made a great mother. She’ll do a better job explaining than I could.”

A sudden realization hit Andie on the head. Whatever was going on, did it have something to do with the rift between her mother and her aunt? But that made no sense. Given that her mother hadn’t visited in over forty years — other than for Uncle James’s funeral — how could
their
issue have anything to do with Andie?

But fine, she would talk to Ginny.

And she would insist someone come clean about what the heck was going on.

She stood again, but her mother’s words stopped her cold before she could walk away. “John and I are getting a divorce, Andie. That’s why I’m here. I’m sixty-six, alone, and I miss my family.”

The room spun with her mother’s rushed words. “What?” Andie whispered. “Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

Her mother nodded, taking the bill from the server and signing the charge to her room. She then rose beside Andie and began walking with her out of the restaurant.

“I retired last year, and we’ve been around each other every day since.” She took Andie’s arm as they walked from the restaurant and headed to the lobby. “I discovered I don’t like him.”

The way her mother voiced the statement made Andie suddenly burst out laughing. She’d sounded half shocked and half disgusted.

“I’m serious, Andie. I’ve been married to the man for over twenty years, and I can’t stand to be around him.”

Andie continued to laugh but worked to rein in her giggles. “That’s something I’d have thought you’d have figured out a long time ago, Mom.”

“You would have thought, but we both worked such long hours that, actually, we rarely saw each other. Even working at the same company, I didn’t see him until whichever one of us got home last each night.”

She’d seen him enough early in her career or she never would have caught his eye. Andie had often thought that their relationship was based more on how he could help her mother rise in the company instead of honest love.

Looked like that was potentially turning out to be the case.

“So, what?” Andie asked. “You decided to hide out here?”

They reached the front doors and her mother turned to Andie. “I decided it was time to heal past wounds with my sister,” Cassie admitted. She squeezed Andie’s hands in hers. “And to work on a relationship with you. I miss you, Andie.”

Would wonders never cease? “I didn’t think you’d ever missed me, Mom.”

Pain triggered by Andie’s words quickly flashed across her mother’s face. “I deserve that, I suppose. But it’s true, nonetheless. I miss you. And I’d like to spend some time getting to know you. I plan to stay here for a while so I can do just that.”

A heavy pressure pushed in against Andie’s sternum. She wanted that, too. But again, she wouldn’t believe it until she saw it. And sending her away to talk to Ginny instead of talking to Andie herself was not a good start.

“I’d like that too, Mother,” Andie whispered, and leaned in to give her mother a brief hug.

They said their good-byes, and as she stepped through the outer door to ask a valet to fetch her car, her mother softly called out her name. Andie looked back.

“The ankle bracelet looks good on you.”

Andie glanced down to see the gold chain glittering in the light. She’d forgotten to remove the jewelry. She’d never worn it around her mother before, but her arrival had come as such a shock — and then there was the sleeping with Mark thing — that it had never even crossed Andie’s mind to take it off.