You Are My Light Part II

329 - Unhappiness *Modern*

"How are you feeling?" Catherine asks  her, licking her lips clean of the hot tea she sips.

Mary glances up at her mother in law, fingers wrapping against the black mug. She shakes her hair from her eyes, hearing the slight 'clink' of her rings as they scrape against the mug.

She sighs. "How do you think?" she asks, straightening up in her overstuffed white settee, looking Catherine in the eye. "It's not how I pictured this would end."

"Why did you do it, Mary? Why come back after everything?" Catherine pushes herself forward in her chair so she can look her eldest son's wife in the eye. "You know I know how it feels, to see your husband with a child that doesn't hold your blood. You know I know how it feels for my children to have a sibling that doesn't belong to you, and I was there for you these months after everything came out in Tuscanny." Catherine pauses, reaching out to touch Mary's wrist. "I know how much it hurts to be in this position. So, explain to me why you chose to come back to it."

Mary sighs, glancing down at her drink once more. "I tried to put myself first, after Tuscanny, tried to build a life for myself and the children, away from Francis. On my own merrit, but I just couldn't go through with it."

"For Francis? You didn't want to be apart from Francis?"

"The children. I couldn't put them through it. It was hurting them too much, going back and forth, not seeing him and I together. I tried to make it easier on them, I tried to give them normalicy, I tried so hard to go through with it, to push through and get to the other side. But I couldn't. I couldn't stand to hear them cry at night, cursing and resenting and lashing out at us both because we weren't together. Vievie doing what she did, knowing why she did it, I just couldn't hold my own and commit to it. I could give them what they were asking for, what they were begging me for. How could I keep them in a situation that hurt them so badly?" Mary finishes, sniffling when she feels the tears gather at the back of her eyes. "When it all came out, when Remy finally snapped, I couldn't picture anything but divorce and leaving him, taking the children and moving out. But the lengths the twins went to, how happy they all are now that we're back here, I have to put my feelings aside, I have to do what they need me to do."

"But do you want to do this?" Catherine pushes, leaning forward to keep their eyes locked when Mary tries to break eye contact. "Do you want to be with Francis? Do you want to be in this marriage, take on Jean-Philippe as a stepson?"

"No." Mary replies. "I don't. As much as I still love him, being with him doesn't feel right. Knowing what he did with Lola, knowing they both lied to me for so long about Jean. I don't want to be with him, sleep with him and wake up next to him, I don't want to live with him and raise his son and keep a smile on my face." Mary breaks eye contact to hang her head in shame. "But how could I be so selfish as to leave? Hurt them just as badly as he hurt me? Catherine, my daughter threw herself down a stone staircase to get Francis and I in the same room, the twins started getting in trouble at school so he and I would be in the teacher meetings together. The twins would sneak down to the larder at night, take the peanut butter jars, hide them until we woke up and choke down fistfulls of the stuff just so your son and I would be in the hospital together." Mary sighs, running a hand through her hair. "It's hard, it's so hard seeing them like that, so unhappy and broken hearted. I did everything I could, I took them to therapy, had heart to hearts with them all, gave them one on one attention, showed up to every practice, game and recital, but nothing got through to them, and I couldn't put them through it anymore. It broke my heart, Catherine. Even more than Francis did."

"My girl." Catherine reaches out and strokes Mary's hand. "My brave, foolish girl. What a mess we're in, hmm?"

"Yeah." Mary lowers her head. "I have to focus on them, and only them. I can look past my feelings for Francis, the love and the hate, and focus on them. And maybe, when they're older, I'll have a chance-"

"At what? Martyrdom?"

"At the kind of happiness that I deserve, the kind I had with him before he fucked it all up. Maybe once the littlest ones are in high school, maybe they'll all be old enough to understand, to not be so heartbroken about the break up. I can look past Francis, Francis and Jean-Philippe, I just have to focus on the children and the buisness. It'll be enough."

"It won't." Catherine cuts in, her voice sharp. "Trust me, it won't."

"It'll have to be." Mary's quiet now. "I can't punish my children for Francis' mistake, I can't put that on them. I just have to be patient, and after all, it's not that bad, is it? I mean, he's not abusive, he doesn't hurt me or hit me, doesn't take my money from me. I suppose there's worse people in the world to be tethered to."

"You two are so much like me and Henry, Mary. So much."

"We'll have to be. Because I can't hurt them anymore, Catherine. I just can't. I just have to wait, I can do it, can't i? You did."

"At the expense of my heart, Mary. Is that what you want for yourself? This life?"

"Happy children at the expense of resentful thoughts and cold kisses? It's a price I have to pay. Isn't that what being a mother is, after all? Hurting so they don't? It's a price I'll pay a hundred times over, because they mean the world to me, even if your son decided I no longer meant the world to him."