What I Should Have Done ✓

Chapter 28

The last extended family holiday dinner was here. Tomorrow I could go home with my core family and we would all go over to business as usual, until the drama would start anew before Dad would try and ship me off to "spend time with your mom" for the next holiday. But anyway, live in the moment, right?

While I stirred the split pea soup Mom was serving as a first course, poultry was roasting in the oven. Elsie was in her room reading or watching a TV series or whatever it was one did before life relentlessly struck with the seriousness of college, but she still had her phone hooked up to the speakers playing Christmas pop.

Although this music genre wasn't my favorite, it was Christmas Day, and I had to admit it made the house even cozier as the snowfall outside turned into a blizzard. In the living room, where Dad and Grampa were watching Encore Western, the logs crackled in the fireplace. Mom wore a hideous reindeer sweater and was humming along off-beat to the cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" as she sprinkled herbs into the yeast roll dough she was preparing. Honest to goodness, I had missed her cooking.

"Mom, can you give me the recipe for the soup before we leave?"

She looked up and smiled at me for a second before answering: "Sure, sweetie."

With both hands in the metal bowl kneading the dough, she cleared her throat.

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Oh. That's never a good sign. We'd been getting along so well.

"Okay," I stated, but it sounded like a question.

"Michael and I were talking the other day and he was telling me how his colleague's partner was in this terrible wreck—he's okay now, but still."

"That's awful," I offered, wary of where this would lead.

"It was. Anyway, when his colleague's partner arrived at the hospital, they wouldn't let him see him at first because while they had been together for years, they weren't married. And, well, we thought how unbearable it would be if that happened to one of us, so—we want to make sure everyone's comfortable with this, but not much would change."

What? My mind froze, then my body. Mom continued talking, but I wasn't listening anymore. My heart started pumping as if I had done a triathlon.

"You want to remarry?"

"Yes. It just makes sense. I mean, we've been together for almost seven years anyway."

"'It makes sense'?"

"It does," Mom said and stopped kneading to push a strand of hair off her forehead with the still clean back of her dough-covered hand. Still, a speck of dough stuck to her eyebrow.

My stomach churned and I took deep breaths so as not to hurl. While actively trying to calm the breaths in my heaving chest, I turned back to the stove and stirred the soup some more.

"Grace? You don't think it's a good idea?"

With unexpected force, I jammed the wooden spoon into the thick, green liquid and whirled around.

"What I think? I don't know, Mom, what do you think? A second attempt at marriage and a second attempt at a family after you ruined the first one? Do you think you'll be able not to cheat this time?"

I regretted the words already as they left my lips, but that didn't absorb my anger.

Mom's face turned white as the wall and her eyes wide as saucers.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she choked on her words.

"Yes, I do, you just didn't know I knew. I've known ever since you left us."