My head begins to spin.
“Can we,” I beg, “put this topic in the Cone of Silence?”
“Fine,” Mom sighs. “I won’t talk about my tattoo.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Mom,” I snap, pleading with Amanda with my eyes. “But yeah—Cone of Silence for sure on your crotch tattoo.”
“All right,” Amanda says reluctantly, “but I can’t stay quiet for long.”
“I know.”
“You kept this from me? And what about my job?”
“If you want to keep it, sleeping with the CEO of your acquisition company might help,” I joke.
“Don’t tell that to Josh,” she growls.
At first, I welcomed this distraction. Drained suddenly of the will to talk or think or argue or do anything other than drink coffee, I slump down into a chair and start to whimper softly to myself.
“Sorry,” Amanda says. “You’re worse off than I am. You and Declan need to patch things up.”
“I know.”
“You have to actually talk it out,” Amanda says in a hushed voice. “It’s time.”
“Why do all the feelings have to happen at the same time?”
“Because life doesn’t make sense.”
“Not fair.”
“You’re just figuring this out now?”
“I’m a slow learner.”
She snorts. “You’re anything but.”
I start to shake. My hands can’t wrap quite right around the white paper coffee cup, and the logo blurs before my eyes.
“What have I done?” Declan’s back in that hotel room where I left him behind an angrily-slammed door, and all I can feel is a white-hot abyss of pain, a hollow point in an arrow that’s stabbed my heart. I did that. I stormed out and left.
I take a sip of my latte.
“It can be undone. You just need to make up with him.”
“And with me,” Mom says, her lips pressed together, eyes filled with hope.
“Why is exercising my own power so fraught with misunderstandings?” I ask Amanda.
“I think that’s called growing up,” she says.
“It sucks.”
Mom grins. “No kidding. Wait until you’re in your forties, like me, and you realize no one’s really an adult.”
“You’re in your fifties, Mom.”
“Shhhhhhhh.” She looks around, frantic, like someone we know will hear me. I hate to break it to her, but no one she’s trying to impress gives a crap, and to a twenty-something person, the difference between someone in their forties and fifties is negligible.
You’re all old.
“That is the most unnecessary lie in the world, Mom.”
“There are plenty that are worse,” she counters.
Amanda gives me a hug and whispers, “You can do this.”
“I know. I’m just so tired.”
Her sympathetic smile is the last image I have before she leaves, because I close my eyes and put my forehead on the back of my hands, resting on the table.
“You used to do that when you were a little girl and overwhelmed.”
“I’m a big girl now, and I still do it.”
“You must be so tired.”
I look up. Mom gives me a close-mouthed smile, her eyes jumping from me, to her cup, to her fingernails.
“Yes.”
“Some of that is my fault.”
“Some?”
“Not all of it.”
“A lot of it, Mom.”
“I’m sorry.” The expected waterfall of words doesn’t come. Mom’s simple apology stands on its own, like a messenger sent ahead of the troops.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again. Her shaky breath adds to the sincerity. “I can’t explain it. I won’t even try. Your father had a long talk with me and now I understand better what I did to you and Declan.”
“He told me about Grandma Celeste and your wedding, too.”
She looks like I slapped her. “He what?”
“I’m sorry your mom did that to you.”
Tears well up in her eyes, pouring over her lower lids, streaking through her blush.
“I ruined your wedding, just like my mother ruined mine.”
“No. Not the same at all.”
“I made you come up with that cockamamie scheme to run away from me.”
“You did.” I have to agree.
She chuckles, wiping the tears with a Grind It Fresh! napkin. I take the opportunity to shove a chocolate macaron in my mouth to stop myself from saying more.
“I suppose,” she whispers, “I could give you a bunch of reasons for why I made your wedding into such a production—”
“And invited the person who bullies me most in the world to my own wedding.”
She swallows hard, nodding. “And that. But nothing would explain away the pain I’ve caused you, honey, and so all I can do is ask you to forgive me.”
I frown. “Did Daddy put a new microchip in you?”
She gives me a patented Mom look. “You use sarcasm to avoid your feelings.”
“No, I use food to avoid my feelings. You have me confused with Amy.”
She sniffle-cries. “Oh, Shannon.”
I lean over and hug her. Mom squeezes tight.
“I don’t really have a tattoo,” she says, hot breath filling my ear. “I just knew that was Kari Whitevelt from Foked and made a scene to throw her off to help you.”
My laughter plumes out of me as if my heart were a sage stick and we’re performing a cleansing ritual.